ANOTHER ONE WE'RE NOT BRIGHT ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND:

A Statesman Without Borders (JAMES TRAUB, 2/03/08, NY Times Magazine)

Half a century ago, as a cadre in the Communist student league, [Bernard Kouchner] threw pots of red ink at the United States Embassy in Paris to protest American imperialism. But he was too fond of girls and cafes to submit to revolutionary discipline. And his medical training disposed him to think more about individual people than about abstractions. Over time, like a number of European intellectuals, Kouchner migrated from the radical left to the antitotalitarian center. In 2003, he argued for a humanitarian intervention to oust Saddam Hussein. He is, by French standards, stoutly pro-American. On foreign policy, with only a few exceptions, he shares the views of the conservative Sarkozy. In less than a year, the two have torn France loose from its Gaullist moorings. They have, however, run into opposition at home; the French seem to be suffering from a serious case of motion sickness.

It is easy to make fun of French foreign policy, but not so easy to think what you would do if you were France. Europe’s other traditional great power, England, threw in its lot with its former colony across the pond. Germany, a 20th-century power, is largely shaped by “never again.” What, then, of France?

Huh? Why is this a hard choice? The Anglosphere has defeated you and/or saved you in four World Wars and it's a tough call whether to try and join it or not?

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 2, 2008 12:30 PM