Posted on 08/14/2004 7:30:42 AM PDT by Brian Mosely
The current issue of the Hoover Institution's Policy Review has the first English translation of a remarkable document ("Outline of a Doctrine of French Policy") written in 1945 by French philosopher Alexander Kojeve, and given to Charles de Gaulle. This appears to have become a guiding light to French diplomats and politicians over the last 60 years.
The thesis begins with an understanding that the post WW II world will be split into a US-dominated bloc and a Russian-dominated bloc. Kojeve called on France to develop a third bloc -- which he called the Latin bloc. This bloc would be composed of groups of nations bordering the Mediterranean and which share a certain cultural sensibility. He advocated for an economic alliance which presciently resembles the European Union. Tellingly, he also called for an accommodation and partnership with Islamic nations, and stated that this unity can be based on a mutual opposition to other trends (the enemy of my enemy is my friend).
In the glorious future he foretold, France would reign over this transnational alliance of nations as primus inter pares. Only this transformation would ensure continued French power in opposition to the Anglo alliance lead by America.
A worthwhile read-even if studded with occasional flights of philosophical fancy.
Sorry, I don't think France has done very well in preserving "Catholic" values, let alone promoting them in the world.
Ping. Interesting.
You may like it or not, but I think that US created French policy. First of all they shouldn't have gotten occupation zone in Germany after WW2.
Even today many people in USA say that for example Europe is against Iraqi war. Why? Because France is against ! That's why French think that they are still a world power.
OK, I've got some reading cut out for me.
But based on quickly scanning it, it is fairly prescient, it describes future French foreign policy and French strategic thinking, and French strategic psychology, pretty well.
France did abandon NATO, and refuse to be a reliable ally in the war against the Soviets, and it has focused on the muslim world, and in developing a European bloc in opposition to non-european power.
The piece is, in a way, infantile, believing that a France which allied itself with the West against the Soviets would somehow cease to be French. But France does believe this, French policy is infantile in this way. For this reason we had to do without them during the long confrontation with the Soviets, and they won't be there for us in our war against muslim fascism.
It is also rather simplistic, in that it sees only power structures without seeing the moral forces driving them. For the writer, the three blocs are the protestant bloc (Germany and the Saxons) the orthodox (the Soviets and eastern europeans) and the catholic (France and the mediterranean). Such a focus misses Hitlerian fascism altogether, which was a thing quite apart from any protestant cultural roots and which its anglo-saxon cousins had no problem putting down. And it misses Stalinism, which was an aberration that had nothing to do with orthodox faith, and again needed to be put down if civilization were to survive, orthodox or otherwise.
This brings up something I've been thinking about lately, which is the observable fact that most countries are inward focused, and do not see the world outside their borders as of any importance until the outside world spills across their borders. The anglo-saxons seem to be unique in looking far afield, far in advance, and thinking in a truly strategic manner. If there is a crisis far from home, it is primarily the US that takes an interest, and if they need help, it is primarily Britain that can be persuaded to get involved, because Britain still thinks internationally.
It is an election season cliche' that the present war is unique in that for the first time we have had to go alone. The truth is more depressing. We and the other Saxons had to face Hitler alone, and we and Britain and Germany faced the Soviets alone. We and the Aussies faced Japan alone. The rest of the world could be persuaded to confront Nazi or communist insurgents within their borders, but only the US and Britain ever saw the wars as a whole.
That remains the case today where again, as in the forties and as in the Cold War years, France seeks to sit on the side. This piece is a must read for anyone who seriously believes France is our ally. Vichy France is not an aberration, Vichy France is France.
We are often accused particularly by Europeans as being provincial and ignorant of the outside world, but the reality is completely reversed, there isn't a sparrow that falls to earth anywhere that Americans aren't calculating the moral significance and the strategic implications. In the world of nations we are weird in that way.
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