A Freeman in France

I just picked up a book by Jean-Francois Revel titled Anti-Americanism. Revel is that rare Frenchman who admires America and believes that the nations of Europe have to get their act together and stop blaming America for all of the world's problems. This book was published in France in 2000 but was not translated into English until 2003.

An excerpt:

The American liberal revolution was becoming the driving force behind what was to become known as "globalization." This liberal invasion of the world, which would triumph resoundingly above all after 1990 and the disintegration of Communism, is what Francis Fukuyama would call the End of History, an expression that has come in for some criticism because it has been poorly understood, especially by people who think they have read a book when they have only read its title.

The world should take note that America, for the time being, is the sole power at once capable of saving Mexico from economic collapse (in 1995); dissuading Communist China from attacking Taiwan; mediating between India and Pakistan in the matter of Kashmir; pressuring the Serb government to compel Slobodan Milosevic to appear before the International Court of Justice at The Hague; and working with some chance of success towards the reunification of the two Koreas under a democratic regime.

The [American] unilateralism in question arises automatically from the weakness of the other [European] powers, a weakness more often intellectual than material; that is, it stems from faulty analysis rather than inadequate economic, political and strategic resources. Nothing, for example, prevented the Europeans from joining forces with the Americans as the latter went to the aid of the Afghan resistance fighters in their struggle against the invading Soviets in the 1980s. It was not for want of means that they sat on the fence, but from obsequiousness towards the Soviet Union and obedience to a lamentable geopolitical analysis, whose chief priority was "safeguarding detente" --- as if detente were not by then well and truly dead, and as if it had ever existed apart from naively optimistic Western fantasies.

Perhaps France has had its Victor Davis Hanson in the person of Jean-Francois Revel for decades and just did not know it.