It is common in the US to view France as a fading nation. Last week’s carnage in Paris has reminded Americans what they value in their oldest ally. France may suffer from steep unemployment and a sclerotic public sector. It remains an à la carte ally of the US, rather than adopting a British-style prix fixe. But its effective handling of the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo — and the symbolic nature of the target — has invoked something in America’s DNA. “Solidarité” is the cover of the New Yorker against a cartoon of the Eiffel Tower as a pencil — an artful echo of Le Monde’s “We are all Americans” post-9/11 headline. The slogan, “Je Suis Charlie”, may be overblown. But this tragedy has brought out America’s underlying sympathy for France. The more is the pity that no senior US official was able to attend Sunday’s unity demonstration in Paris.
Though recent, the neoconservative view of France as a nation of “cheese eating surrender monkeys” is now a memory. Yet the lessons of the Iraq invasion look ever more relevant. In 2003, many Americans saw France as a weak-kneed appeaser of Third World dictators — Saddam Hussein being the latest. Some of it was true. The French have few scruples in dealing with thuggish regimes when there is profit to be made. But France — and Germany — stood against the Iraq invasion on principle and substance. With hindsight they were prescient. History will treat Jacques Chirac more kindly than Tony Blair. Besides, the US and the UK have histories of arming their own strongmen — at one time that included Saddam. Whether you view the fight against Islamist fascism
as a war, or as an international police operation, the French are doing some things right.