Trouble in Paris? There's a Gaullist cure for that American hubris 50%
By Natacha Polony0%
7/30/2026, 9:05:02 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Indoctrination, Post Hoc (False Cause), and Confirmation Bias, with False Dilemma as the most egregious example at 15.3% saturation with 206 hits. Analysis detected 2,184 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,347 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 49.4% and a BS Rank of 50% (11,467 of 22,830 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 50.20% of the article peer group.
Last month, as world leaders prepared to gather in France for the G7 Summit, French officials had Donald Trump on the mind.
Using its privileges as host, Paris worked diligently to avoid any hiccups that might upset the U.S. president.
First, it delayed the meeting from June 14 to June 16, ensuring that it wouldn’t interfere with Trump’s 80th birthday celebration, or the cage match on the White House lawn that accompanied it.
Then, French President Emmanuel Macron went “out of his way” to design an agenda to “appeal to the sort of things Trump wants,” as one analyst told Reuters.
Last, and perhaps most bizarrely, French officials delayed the ceremonial transfer of the remains of French Resistance hero Marc Bloch, who was set to be reinterred at France’s illustrious Panthéon in the heart of Paris on June 16.
This decision was consequential; it meant that, instead of carrying out the ceremony on the anniversary of Bloch’s murder by the Gestapo in 1944, officials had to pay tribute a week later, delaying a national tribute of exceptional historical significance for one of France’s greatest historians and patriots.
In the end, France ultimately gave up honoring Marc Bloch on the very day of his martyrdom in order to adjust its schedule to the imperious wishes of the White House and, ultimately, to welcome the U.S. president to nearby Versailles in an effort to curry favor with him.
These decisions reflect a sorry state of mind.
Even when it comes to our own national history, France has grown accustomed to treating constraints originating in Washington as overriding priorities.
Yet nothing required the ceremony to be postponed or the agenda to be reshaped.
The relationship that should bind two great allied republics too often resembles one of political dependence, in which Paris is less concerned with defending its own interests and values than with deferentially anticipating Washington's wishes.
This situation serves neither France nor the United States.
A common misconception is that America's interests are best served by compliant allies who implement decisions made in Washington without question.
That is the logic of empire, not of sovereign nations joined in partnership.
The United States has far greater need of allies willing to speak candidly than of vassals eager to please, as recent history has repeatedly borne out.
When Jacques Chirac's France refused to join the 2003 invasion of Iraq , it was accused of betraying the Western alliance.
With the benefit of hindsight, who can seriously argue that Paris was wrong?
No weapons of mass destruction were ever found, nor any relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.
The war shattered the Iraqi state, fueled the rise of jihadist terrorism, strengthened Iran's regional influence, and cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars – not to mention the vast number of American and Iraqi lives lost.
France's refusal was undoubtedly unwelcome in Washington.
Yet it proved salutary.
It served as a vaccine against hubris – a timely reminder that no power, however great, is immune to error.
It also echoed the enduring lesson of Thucydides' “History of the Peloponnesian War”: no democracy can ultimately prevail abroad while violating the very principles it claims to uphold.
It was precisely this lesson that General de Gaulle understood when, in his 1966 Phnom Penh speech, he denounced the Vietnam War.
He was not seeking to weaken the United States; he was trying to spare it a strategic disaster.
He reminded Americans that no foreign army can indefinitely impose its will upon a people determined to shape its own destiny.
History ultimately proved him right.
This Gaullist tradition did not consist in systematically opposing Washington.
It meant supporting the United States whenever shared interests converged — and saying no when it embarked on a dangerous course.
It is precisely this capacity for independent judgment that has gradually disappeared.
The Ukrainian crisis offers a striking example.
At the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel initially understood the risks.
Both opposed extending the prospect of alliance membership to Ukraine and Georgia, knowing that Moscow regarded such a move as a strategic red line that risked triggering a major confrontation on the European continent.
Had France firmly maintained that position and continued to promote a European security architecture encompassing Europeans, Russians, and Americans alike, the Ukrainian catastrophe might well have been avoided.
Instead, Paris gradually abandoned this vision in favor of growing alignment with NATO enlargement and, inevitably, a logic of confrontation.
The same mistake was repeated with NATO's missile defense system .
By agreeing in 2012 to join a project purportedly aimed at Iran but viewed by Russia as a hostile strategic deployment, France helped fuel a new arms race.
After President George W.
Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the priority should have been to rebuild strategic trust.
Instead, we chose the opposite course.
The same pattern emerged over Iran.
When President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, France should have firmly opposed the decision.
It should have defended an agreement that was working, reduced the risk of war, and refused to force French companies out of Iran at Washington's behest.
Once again, deference prevailed over independence.
The successive crises that have engulfed the Middle East – and above all the recent war against Iran, which was interrupted, if only briefly, with the Memorandum of Understanding – have demonstrated the cost of that failure.
The conflict ended in what many observers regard as a strategic setback for the United States, a conclusion reached by analysts as different as Robert Kagan in his widely discussed Atlantic essay "Checkmate in Iran" and John J.
Mearsheimer .
Even worse, should the recent resumption of hostilities evolve into a prolonged conflict, the consequences could extend far beyond the Middle East, triggering a severe global economic crisis in which Western economies would almost certainly bear the heaviest costs.
The paradox is that this growing subordination by France, and Europe more generally, to the U.S. has not strengthened the transatlantic alliance; it has weakened it.
A genuine alliance depends on partners capable of contributing distinct strengths.
France possesses precisely such assets.
It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
It has the world's second-largest maritime domain, an extensive diplomatic network, an independent nuclear deterrent, and a world-class strategic industrial base.
In other words, France has all the attributes required to be an indispensable partner to the United States — provided that it rediscovers the confidence to act as itself.
The world now taking shape is no longer that of the 1990s.
The United States must increasingly shift its strategic resources toward the Indo-Pacific in response to China's rise.
It will no longer be able — or willing — to shoulder the burden of Western security indefinitely.
Its long-term interest therefore lies not in maintaining economic and cultural dependencies but in fostering allies that are more autonomous, more capable, and more willing to assume responsibility for their own security.
France could play precisely this role.
One fundamental truth must be restated: the United States is stronger when surrounded by free and sovereign partners.
A Gaullist France — capable of offering support when circumstances require it and dissenting when necessary — would be far more valuable to America than a France preoccupied with securing Washington’s approval.
The United States does not need a France that behaves as a supplicant.
It needs a France willing to speak with candor — a France capable of reminding its ally that no great power remains truly great once it ceases to listen to its friends.
By recovering the Gaullist spirit, France would not distance itself from America; it would once again become the ally America respects.
Such a relationship would be more balanced, more effective, and better suited to the strategic realities of the twenty-first century – not a relationship of dependence, but an alliance between two sovereign republics united by a shared commitment to democracy and human freedom.
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.