TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/072291/0722000.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 18.1 KB | 367 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 30

FRANCE

The New France


In a transformed Europe, the French contemplate their place,
their problems and their purpose

By JAMES WALSH -- Reported by J.F.O. McAllister/Washington and
Frederick Ungeheuer/Paris, with other bureaus


    If geography is destiny, the fate of France would
assuredly seem blessed. A temperate climate and gentle,
well-watered terrain have contrived down the ages to produce a
civilization sans pa reil. It is a culture abrim with
connoisseurs of the good life and nature's bounty. Charles de
Gaulle, father of the Fifth Republic, used to cite France's
prodigious number of cheeses -- 265 by his reckoning -- as an
example of the land's lavish variety. Some benighted souls
across the Channel may still believe God is an Englishman, but
the French have never doubted that heaven is their home.

    So why all the buzz today about discontent, about social
gloom and political drift, a crisis of faith in the future and
a fading sense of national identity? An identity crisis -- in
France? It sounds as unlikely as the notion of Cyrano de
Bergerac fumbling his sword or groping for the mot juste. In his
1983 book The Europeans, the Italian journalist Luigi Barzini,
a seasoned and mordant observer of the Continental scene, cites
Edmond Rostand's fictional Cyrano as the quintessence of French
character, at least as outsiders exaggerate it: the boastful,
cocksure Gascon whose fellow provincials are defined in
Rostand's play as "free fighters, free lovers, free spenders,
defenders of old homes, old names and old splendors . . .
bragging of crests and pedigrees." Yet now it seems that the
rooster, the national symbol, is crestfallen.

    How can a people so certain of their birthright be
disoriented? More to the point, how can the French feel lost
when France has emerged as the master builder of modern Europe?
Not since the mid-19th century, when Baron Haussmann thrust his
boulevards through rancid slums, has Paris experienced such a
fever of construction and renewal. With a Metro that works,
streets kept remarkably clean by 5,000 green-uniformed sweepers,
parks planted like Impressionist paintings and bakeries galore,
Paris may well represent the apogee of civilized city living --
for those who can afford the rent. Yet not since Parisians
finally ousted Haussmann for his arrogant, free-spending ways
has there been such a struggle over progress versus
preservation.

    The French can look with pride at high-speed trains and
modern aircraft, fashion and luxury goods better than most of
the world's; yet the country is, more than ever before, obsessed
with its ability to compete in a global marketplace. It sees the
power-house of a united Germany bulking over a Europe destined
to become the world's biggest single market in 1993. According
to the authoritative World Competitiveness Report for 1991,
France has dropped to its lowest ranking since 1986 and is
listed 15th, behind most other members of the European
Community. Industrial growth has lagged, and the trade gap with
behemoths like Germany and Japan has grown severalfold. But the
world's fourth largest economy, with a gross national product
of $956 billion, is far from an also-ran. Under the steady hand
of President Francois Mitterrand, France now stands to become
a keystone of 21st century power -- so long as the French people
manage to keep their cool.

    At the moment, their aplomb seems to be deserting them.
Judging by opinion surveys and diagnoses in the press, a country
that long prided itself on being the lumiere du monde is awash
in dark soul searching. The French are said to be fed up with
politics and politicians. There is the hangover from the gulf
war, an episode that deflated the vaunted image of French power
and influence. Paris waffled about what to do almost to the
last minute and ended up sheltering behind U.S. policy. In the
harsh judgment of Jacques Julliard, a columnist for the
progovernment weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, "The gulf crisis
revealed the weak influence of our diplomacy, the modest
competitiveness of our industrialists and above all the archaic
state of our military equipment."

    And there is a nagging anxiety over the nation's soul.
French culture, so some worry, is in danger of turning into
pasteurized processed cheese: wholesome, possibly edible, but
lacking distinctive tang and texture. What the country managed
to preserve despite humiliations over the centuries -- pride in
a singular civilization -- it now risks losing under the impact
of American pop culture and in the homogenizing vat of that
mysterious entity called Europe. Chauvinists like the immigrant
baiter Jean-Marie Le Pen say the greater threat comes from
African Arabs and blacks who have had the inestimable privilege
of settling in France but refuse to accept its folkways.
Meanwhile, with Marx in the dustbin of history, leftists have
no prophet, right-wingers no archfoe.

    The French, in short, seem to be losing their bearings,
their ideals and dreams. It is a bitter vintage, all the more
so considering how high expectations were running. Just last
year France looked well placed to become more than the center
of gravity of a newly ascendant Europe. By some lights, it was
emerging as the best of all possible worlds. Three centuries
after the reign of the Sun King, Louis XIV, and nearly two after
Napoleon bestrode the Continent, Paris was confidently pulling
the strings of Europe, positioning itself to be the capital of
a new political-economic imperium.

    It may be yet, for France still enjoys copious advantages.
Its standard of living is among the best in the world, and the
quality of life, as many a visitor will attest, remains as
invigorating as it is gracious. Modern arts and sciences
flourish in a landscape adorned with Gothic cathedrals,
tree-lined avenues and grand siecle chateaus. Philosophy is
still as much in fashion as fashion is the ultimate philosophy.
Together with modern farms, a medieval patchwork of agriculture
still yields its plenty to cordon bleu tables in a country
better prepared for the 21st century than most -- a land
crisscrossed by bullet trains, a nuclear-electric power grid,
Airbus jetliners and satellites borne aloft in Ariane rockets.

    The jewel of French assets in recent years has been
stability: a sureness about the nation's place and purpose in
the world as well as its material prospects. Inflation was
reined in, exports rose comfortably, and a Socialist President
managed to guide France's fortunes, at home and abroad, with the
confident generalship of a De Gaulle. A people famous for
crossing swords over the slightest trespass or ideological
difference settled into a harmonious political dispensation.

    Now the country seems to be suffering an outbreak of that
endemic French affliction called malaise. The symptoms:
widespread public unease; a volatile mixture of boredom, anxiety
and irritation, carrying the potential for triggering sudden
acts of collective furor. Change is beginning to look
overwhelming to many of the French, eroding the old certainties
that once defined Frenchness for everyone. Traditional
institutions are in decline, including the church, marriage,
labor unions and even the leisurely lunch. In foreign affairs,
defense, economic policy, even eating habits and consumer
tastes, the French are becoming more like their neighbors -- and
they're not sure they like it.

    They are no longer strikingly different in the way they
dispute power, practicing instead a pragmatism and consensus
building that is unfamiliar, perhaps even unwanted. The
disturbance involves what the French call the banalization of
politics -- the end of ideology as the center of political life.
Mitterrand's great achievement has been bringing the left into
the political mainstream, giving it the respectability that was
once a conservative preserve. But with the old partisan banners
faded today, people sense a lack of choice in politics and are
vaguely spoiling for a fight.

    The President's May 15 selection of Edith Cresson as Prime
Minister, to shake the nation out of its sullen mood, soured
after little more than a month. With only a 38% public-approval
rating, the bride of high office may be headed for divorce at
a point when she has barely assembled her trousseau. French
unemployment has reached 9.5%, and the record number of jobless
looks as if it will go higher still. Meanwhile immigrant riots
broke out in June, even as municipal policemen went on strike
-- along with air-traffic controllers, railway workers and
doctors.

    Cresson's idea was to rally the nation behind a
centralized industrial policy, marshaling economic forces in a
war footing against competitors -- notably her designated No.
1 enemy, Japan. But her summons to arms has fallen flat at a
time when the treasury is tight and Paris is striving to meet
the conflicting imperative of a less subsidized, state-driven
economy in advance of Europe's experiment with open market
frontiers.

    The undercurrent of these quarrels is a yearning for a new
national myth, a sense of grandeur and destiny. As author
Barzini points out, it was Francois Rene de Chateaubriand, the
great Romantic writer, who said of his compatriots, "They must
be led by dreams." De Gaulle, after founding the Fifth Republic
in 1958 and establishing a presidential form of government
verging on monarchy, set France apart from NATO, apart from "the
Anglo-Saxons" -- conveniently lumping in superpower America with
France's ancient enemy, England -- and even, in important ways,
apart from Europe.

    Though the general often talked up the idea of a
like-minded, cooperative Europe, he viewed the infant Common
Market circa 1960 largely as a device to control West Germany.
From De Gaulle's day on, the E.C.'s chief purpose, as successive
Elysee Palace incumbents saw it, was to bind French and Germans
so tightly together economically that another war would become
unthinkable. In exchange, Paris would champion West German
interests in international councils where measures proposed by
Bonn might sound Teutonically threatening.

    That relationship remains as useful and vital as it was 30
years ago. The trouble is, the French today are no longer in
league with West Germany. Their chief partner is now a larger,
unified country, raising some worst-case nightmares of an old
nemesis reborn. The two times in modern history when Germans
ventured to consolidate -- under Bismarck and under Hitler --
France was eclipsed and conquered. Apprehensions today do not
envisage anything so dire as a panzer plunge through the
Ardennes, but many French wince at the prospect of an expanded
Federal Republic overmastering them with its money, industry and
technology.

    Even France's famous "civilizing mission" to the rest of
the world has come under question. French policy toward the
Arab countries, supposedly an example of Paris' understanding
approach to Third World aspirations, sank practically without
a trace in the quicksand of the gulf crisis. Says Gilles
Martinet, an ex-ambassador with close links to the Socialists:
"For most of our statesmen, whether they belonged to the left
or the right, France was always strong, feared, respected,
admired and envied -- until the gulf war taught us otherwise."

    Yet France's seat as one of the five permanent members of
the U.N. Security Council still gives the country a leverage in
world affairs far beyond that of Germany, Japan or Italy. The
seat explains why Mitterrand insists that any new security
arrangements for the Middle East must gain the U.N.'s
imprimatur. Moreover, France's nuclear arsenal continues to
assure it a place at high table with the superpowers, while its
economic clout provides membership in the exclusive Group of
Seven. Political punch aside, French humanitarian efforts
overseas, such as the war-defying missions of the volunteer
doctors known as Medecins sans Frontieres, remain leading lights
of compassion.

    Even in the image department, the hand wringing in Paris
before the gulf war measured up favorably, in the end, against
Germany's self-paralyzing angst. Bonn's inability to weigh in
for battle against Iraq except as a financier was greeted across
the Rhine with relief. France's strengthened transatlantic
relations have also reinforced the case for keeping U.S. troops
in Europe, which Paris endorses as protection against any
resurgent Soviet threat and a means of ensuring that Germany
remains anchored in the West.

    Though Mitterrand continues to exploit the French position
in the middle, signaling his country's potential for mischief
in dealings with difficult regimes, he can now justify his
approaches to China or Iran as those of an eclaireur, or scout,
for American diplomacy. France's ace in the hole remains its
latitude for independence, especially in framing an autonomous
"defense identity" and common foreign policy for Europe. Says
a senior French military officer: "We will always stand with the
U.S. in the great battles of the West. After that, we again
become a difficult ally."

    Though the fiction of a singularly influential and
enlightened French "Arab policy" was exploded in the gulf, the
result has been a more realistic, selective outreach across the
Mediterranean. Mitterrand and Foreign Minister Roland Dumas are
now concentrating attention on their Maghreb neighbors. In many
French eyes, the North African lands that were once colonial
possessions are a time bomb. Arab immigrants have for the most
part rejected assimilation, and in future years may become a
heavier challenge to the concept of what it means to be French.
Surprisingly, residents of foreign origin constitute no greater
a share of the population today -- 6.3% -- than they did in
1931. The novelty is the highly visible intrusion of
non-Europeans, largely Muslims, and their practices: schoolgirls
wearing the chador, the electronically amplified wails of
muezzins from mosques, suburban concrete ghettos where the
culture smacks of Algiers or Tunis more than Paris or Lyons.

    Mitterrand himself has warned about a "threshold of
tolerance" for immigrants, and Jacques Chirac, the conservative
mayor of Paris and former Prime Minister, has weighed in to the
debate with a vengeance. He voiced sympathy for French families
who have to live with the "noise and smells" of tenements
inhabited by the newcomers. Cresson proposed last week to
charter aircraft to send unlawful immigrants home, but an
outburst of protests from fellow Socialists in Parliament caused
her to withdraw the idea.

    Now the more pessimistic oracles are casting doubt on the
nation's ability to absorb the shock of the new, of a more
rough-and-ready economic atmosphere, as well as the unfamiliar
idea of multiculturalism. While the mainstream political parties
cast about for fresh directions, Le Pen's racist National Front
can count on a basic 15% of the popular vote in any election.

    A recipe for trouble? For a civilization that may be the
fastest changing in Europe, France has shown remarkable
resilience and political staying power. The existential debate
has not deflected Mitterrand from his nouveau Gaullism, a policy
of working with and through Germany to secure a decisive say
over the Continent's future. In the E.C.'s halls of power France
remains paramount, and relations with Washington, prickly at the
best of times, are on a surer footing.

    If in the past Americans and others in the West often saw
Paris as a withered peacock, strutting grandiosely when it was
not perversely kicking up dust, the firmness with which
Mitterrand steered his nation after the gulf war's outbreak gave
their old ally a taller stature. France is still a tough
customer on many issues -- agricultural subsidies, for example,
the big snag in the current troubled round of world-trade talks.
Stubbornness is the Gallic style: a demonstrated readiness to
scuttle agreements is Paris' way of showing that it means
business.

    Yet the country views its new challenges as especially
dicey. Its postwar identity depended on the postwar system,
which has come unglued. Mitterrand's ambitions for E.C.
political union and a joint defense policy are central to his
design of preserving France's status as the Continent's anchor.
Washington-based analyst Jenonne Walker notes, "De Gaulle was
never willing to meld France into a Europe able to act as a
unit. Mitterrand is willing to do that." Trickier is the
question of whether the French people, fearing for their
national soul, will go along.

    Mitterrand himself has adjusted to the idea of France as
a middling power. Under him, says economist Peter Ludlow,
director of the Brussels-based Center for European Policy
Studies, "France came to terms with the fact that it was the end
of the era of medium-size states with protectionist policies."
Germany continues to rely on its partner in a relationship that
is more a symbiosis than an axis. "Paris and Bonn," says German
policy analyst Ingo Kolboom, "are condemned to act in concert."
Jean-Pierre Cot, the French chairman of the European
Parliament's Socialist bloc, sees a bright future for his
homeland. He says, "I am struck by the fact that France seen
from the E.C. today looks a lot better than France seen from
within France. We are now in the best position to do the job of
European integration."

    So has the lumiere du monde lost its way? Not yet,
certainly. If the home of the Rights of Man could absorb
one-third of its population growth by way of immigration between
1946 and 1982, its cherished identity seems rather safe. After
all, 30 years ago, at the Fifth Republic's outset, the living
embodiments of sophisticated Frenchness to much of the world
were the film stars Yves Montand and Simone Signoret -- the
former a native Italian from a town near Florence, the latter
born in Germany to an Austrian-Polish-Jewish father. As Cyrano
himself might have crowed, in a slightly different context, Vive
la difference!