An Incomplete Education: 3,684 Things You Should Have Learned but Probably Didn't by Jones Judy & Wilson William

Author:Jones, Judy & Wilson, William [Jones, Judy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2009-07-19T16:00:00+00:00

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO READ THE NEWSPAPERS: It would certainly help to know what a neo-Gaullist is. Unfortunately, no one really does. Gaullism was the political ideology defined by Charles de Gaulle’s presidency (1959–69), but since so much of de Gaulle’s presidency was a matter of personal charisma, being a Gaullist didn’t necessarily mean you subscribed to all of his policies. The heart of Gaullism was and is, however, the insistence that France be able to survive on her own, without depending on—or taking orders from—any foreign power. The practical effect: Since the end of World War II, France has hardly been what you’d call a team player. Determined, throughout the Cold War, to take what it saw as its rightful place among the superpowers (third on the dais next to the United States and the Soviet Union), it adopted a foreign policy aimed at asserting its independence from both American and Soviet influence and at creating a strong Europe with itself at the helm. It fought for the creation of the Common Market (and fought to keep Britain out); exploded its own atomic bomb back in 1960; withdrew militarily from NATO in 1966, kicking U.S. and NATO forces out of the country; was one of the first to recognize the government of mainland China, long before the United States did; and made a point of maintaining a “special relationship” with—which usually meant selling arms or plutonium to—whichever radical Middle Eastern country nobody else was speaking to at the moment. Merely by saying non to whatever the superpowers wanted, France was able to position itself as a country that stood on principle (which, in a self-serving, self-aggrandizing, semisincere way, it did) and was the champion of nonaligned nations everywhere. The end of the Cold War, however, left France without a fence to sit on and worse, without a cause. (For a brief period in 2003, fierce opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq provided the French with an exhilarating sense of national unity, but it couldn’t last. Sure, the French knew they were right—the French are always right—but was it God or Allah who was on their side?)

Meanwhile, the task of uniting Europe has turned out to be remarkably annoying, requiring all sorts of risks and sacrifices—of jobs, prestige, market shares—the French hadn’t counted on and which further divided public opinion. Look for shifting alliances—particularly with her old nemesis Germany—as France struggles to get a grip on geopolitical reality and jockeys for position in the new balance-of-power game.

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