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What the Internet commentator meant, however, was that there was little to choose between both candidates from the standpoint of U.S. interests. Both are anti-American and propose policies designed to limit or obstruct U.S. power. And here he is onto something. Writing in the Washington Post, Sebastian Mallaby put the same point even more strongly, pointing out that of the original crowded field of candidates, three Trotskyists, the communist, a Left nationalist former minister, and the two "mainstream" standard-bearers, Chirac and Jospin, had all struck anti-American postures in the course of the campaign. Le Pen, he argued, was building on a strong cultural and political resentment of America that permeated the French political establishment and public life. His version of it was simply more "sinister" than that of other French politicians. Well, yes and no. Le Pen's anti-Americanism is part of an all-encompassing decidedly French chauvinism. He is anti-American, anti-European, anti-globalization. If the concept of "isolationism" existed in French politics, he would call himself an isolationist. [Historical footnote: This version of extreme nationalism cannot be traced, as some commentators have tried to do, to the wartime collaborationist Vichy regime. Vichy's politics were, in fact, a fascist version of "Europeanism" and saw a united Europe as an independent third force between Soviet Russia and the liberal capitalist "Anglo-Americans." Rather it goes back to a famous Frenchman, viz., Monsieur Chauvin, and has been a recurring feature of French politics since the Revolution.] Such chauvinism has no future in the modern world. Francois Mitterrand tried a socialist isolationism in the early eighties and had to abandon it in less than two years to avert a financial collapse. Even if Le Pen were to be elected and to enjoy a National Front majority in parliament — both highly fanciful hypotheses — he would be negotiating with the EU over trans-border corporate takeovers, NATO over defense, the U.S. over Iraq, the WTO over tariffs, and North Africa over immigration within a very short time — and amending his original policies accordingly. His chauvinist anti-Americanism too would fade under the pressure of political necessity because it is backward-looking and serves no practical purpose. Modern France as such has no strong reason to quarrel with the U.S. and many common interests that justify cooperation. In particular, it does not need an American "enemy" or "other" to stimulate popular support for French nationalism. With its constant intrusions on the sovereignty of its member-states, the European Union fills that role admirably. The anti-Americanism of the French establishment is another matter entirely. It is forward-looking and practical. It is not confined to French elites but instead has spread to the Brussels bureaucracy and the political elites in many other European countries. Above all, it is one of the major themes of Euro-nationalism. But Euro-nationalism — which prudently masquerades under the soporific title of "European integration" — is currently suffering from a crisis. Whenever any Europeans have recently been allowed to vote on its expansionist plans — the Danes on the Euro, the Irish on the Nice Treaty — they have rejected them. And Le Pen's modest success is a symptom of the same lack of enthusiasm. This crisis stems from the failure to create a binding sense of European nationality. Soviet Russia no longer frightens Germans, Frenchmen, Italians and Brits into political togetherness. Economic prosperity is an inadequate motive for a wholesale surrender of national sovereignty. "European values" turn out on examination to be the social democratic values of remote bureaucratic elites; many European voters — notably recent electoral majorities in Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Denmark — reject them. And no European statesman has yet managed to develop a European patriotic "narrative" that matches the appeal of the older French, Italian, and British national "narratives." That leaves anti-Americanism. By depicting America as a threat to the world, a superpower too strong for its own good (and that of others), hostile to international cooperation, and "unilateralist" in its pursuit of narrow economic self-interest, Euro-nationalists seek to frighten Europeans into abandoning their existing nations to construct a European super-state and superpower that will be, in the words of the Swedish prime minister, Goran Persson, "a balance to U.S. world domination." UPI commentator James C. Bennett calls this kind of talk "Euro-Le Penism." It is threaded through the foreign policy prescriptions of Chirac, Jospin, most of the first-round French presidential candidates, and other leading Euro-nationalists in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere. It is far more likely to guide policy than anything written or said by Le Pen. And, to that extent, it is more sinister. So, yes, we should be rooting for the Crook from motives of political hygiene. But, no, America has no frog in this fight. John O'Sullivan is
NR editor-at-large. This column first appeared in the Chicago
Sun-Times. — Mr. O'Sullivan is editor-at-large of National Review. This piece first appeared in the National Post; it is reprinted with the author's permission. |
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have no frog in this fight," wrote one wag in an Internet discussion
of the French presidential contest between President Jacques Chirac and
challenger Jean-Marie Le Pen. In the larger sense he was, of course, wrong.
Mr. Chirac's alleged sins of political corruption pale beside the coarse
brutality of Le Pen's politics. As some of Mr. Chirac's reluctant supporters
on the Left now argue, borrowing the Louisiana bumper-sticker slogan from
the Edwin Edwards-David Duke gubernatorial race: "Vote for the Crook
— It's Important." 
