In an unguarded moment during last year's primary season, Senator John McCain referred to a minor diplomatic incident as "one of the many reasons I hate the French." McCain probably does not hate the French, but his comment does give some indication of France's place in the American imagination. For more than fifty years, France has been tweaking America's nose, refusing to tow the U.S. line on subjects as diverse as NATO, Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, and what Americans until very recently were encouraged to think of as "rogue states"-the very concept of which, of course, the French do not accept.
The latest example of French obstreperousness has been the growing tendency of France's leaders to criticize American unilateralism and call for a more multipolar world, in which a strong Europe provides a counterweight to the United States. Statements such as the recent one of Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine, that France "cannot accept a politically unipolar world, nor a culturally uniform world, nor the unilateralism of a single hyperpower", led Michael Gonzales to warn, in a Wall Street Journal article of November 23, 1999, of "a serious split in the North Atlantic Alliance" caused by France's "increasingly petulant attacks on the U.S." The article, entitled "Can America Trust the French?", suggested that France's aim was to "contain U.S. might in all areas." Former Reagan administration official and George W. Bush adviser Richard Perle provided the answer: "To be perfectly blunt about it, we don't trust the French."
