André Fontaine
Essay
Special
1980
The differences that arise more or less regularly between the nations bordering the two sides of the North Atlantic are customarily laid to "misunderstandings." But the fact that these differences multiplied all through 1980 indicates that there exists between the United States and two of its principal European partners something of a crisis of confidence.
Essay
Jan
1971
All Gaul is divided into three parts. Curiously enough, American intellectuals resort to the celebrated quotation from Caesar more often than do their French counterparts. Similarly, the divisions in Europe and in their own homelands are no doubt felt less keenly by the citizens of the Old World than by those of the New. Americans are used to vast expanses without frontiers. It shocks them to see that there still persist in Europe the antiquated particularisms which their grandfathers left behind in favor of the comforts of the melting pot.
Essay
Oct
1966
Three years after having signed a treaty of coöperation with Dr. Adenauer, designed to make the marriage of France and Germany the foundation for the regrouping of Europe, General de Gaulle has travelled to the Soviet Union to talk of rediscovered friendship, agreement and even "alliance" between the "new France" and the "new Russia." Now the latter, pending information to the contrary, is the principal adversary of the German Federal Republic, and the Soviet leaders do not hide the fact that they look upon the rapprochement with Paris as a means of gaining support against German "revanchism." We may therefore be permitted to question the degree of coherence in the foreign policy of the Fifth Republic and to wonder whether such changes of course-there are other examples-cannot be best explained by psychological factors, the first of them being excessive amour propre.
