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Target FRench Vulnerable, New Frenc (r)
Subject: Re: Target FRench Vulnerable, New French Think Tank, Washington DC
Dawn Star wrote:>
> try this free burma demonstrators, and hit the french where they are
> vulnerable, in front of the cameras and publicity, at this posh
> washington dc think tank. read this from the iht today, and organize a
> 9999 STOP THE TOTAL UNOCAL BURMESE PIPELINE DEMONSTRATION
>
> why not, the french dont like to be embarrassed, in washington dc
> perhaps they will get the message a little more clear
> ds
>
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> -------------------------------------------------------
> Paris, Thursday, September 2, 1999
>
> In U.S. and France, New Effort to Listen
>
> Think Tanks in Paris and Washington Aim to Improve
> Relations
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> By Brian Knowlton International Herald Tribune
> -------------------------------------------------------
> WASHINGTON - U.S.-French differences? Yes, there have
> been a few, Philip Gordon pleasantly conceded, as a
> reporter ticked off a long but quite incomplete list:
> U.S. trade sanctions against Iran and Cuba; the bombing
> of Iraq; handling of the Middle East peace process;
> leadership of the United Nations (and, it sometimes
> seems, of every other international body of note);
> various interventions in Africa; the U.S. ''cultural
> invasion'' on the one side versus French ''cultural
> protectionism'' on the other; mounting French
> resentment of U.S. ''unilateralism''; and a series of
> snits over every sort of foodstuff, from beef to
> Roquefort to bananas.
>
> As director for European affairs at the National
> Security Council, Mr. Gordon has been enmeshed in some
> of these flaps.
>
> Beginning in December, however, the study of the
> long-tortured U.S.-French relationship will be his very
> raison d'etre, as he takes up the directorship of the
> new Center on the United States and France, which
> opened its doors Wednesday at the Brookings Institution
> in Washington.
>
> ''Our aim is not to reverse these disputes,'' he said
> recently. ''It would be too ambitious. But if we can
> chip away at that boulder, then we want to try to do
> it.''
>
> The new center, which many involved in U.S.-French
> relations believe is long overdue, is a first in the
> United States.
>
> It is being established in tandem with a Paris
> counterpart, the French Center on the United States,
> which also opened Wednesday in offices at the French
> Institute for International Relations.
>
> Why did it take so long for both sides to see the need
> to help calm what has long been the most contentious
> U.S.- relationship in Western Europe?
>
> Guillaume Parmentier, who heads the French Center and
> was a motive force in establishing both programs, noted
> that the private think tank is not a particularly
> French institution. ''We have this tradition that
> things have to be done officially, through the embassy,
> for example,'' he said.
>
> Gallic pride may have played a role as well, he noted.
> ''The French find it hard to admit they're not popular
> abroad.''
>
> After World War II, Germany and Japan felt a desperate
> need to reach out to the new world power and seek
> influence with its governing elites, said Mr. Gordon.
> Countries like Britain and Italy had their own sort of
> influence, based on historic ties or large U.S.
> immigrant populations.
>
> There is no shortage now of think tanks devoted to
> Germany or Japan, or of academic programs that examine
> French history and culture, but there are no real
> U.S.-French policy centers.
>
> Beginning in the 1980s, with the Euro-
>
> missile debates, French elites began seeing the need to
> make their side better understood in the United States,
> Mr. Gordon said.
>
> ''I had been aware for many years that France was not
> pro-active enough in Washington,'' said Mr. Parmentier.
> ''I had admired the way the British and the Italians
> reached Congress and lamented our inability to do so.''
>
> A dozen years ago, he wrote his first memo to the
> foreign minister suggesting a new approach. When he
> received promises of support - first from the German
> Marshall Fund of the United States, a German-funded
> U.S. institute that promotes U.S.-German understanding,
> and then from Richard Haass, director of foreign policy
> studies at Brookings - wheels began to turn.
>
> Ambassador Felix Rohatyn, who is said to have been
> greatly troubled by the state of the U.S.-French
> relationship when he arrived in Paris, is an
> enthusiastic supporter, Mr. Gordon said. In Washington,
> French Ambassador Francois Bujon de l'Estang is a great
> fan of the project.
>
> Neither government played a direct role in creating the
> centers. Both directors loudly proclaim their
> independence, though the center in Paris will receive a
> ''marginal'' level of government subsidies, Mr. Gordon
> said.
>
> Policy issues will be the focus of the two centers.
>
> Mr. Parmentier, who has worked for the French Defense
> Ministry and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
> tossed out some likely issues for study: the rise of
> state powers in the United States; trends in the
> high-tech and defense industries; the developing role
> of telecommunications.
>
> Cultural stereotypes and misunderstandings will be
> dissected as well, on both sides: the American ideas of
> French arrogance and truculent resistance to
> globalizing capitalism; and the French notions, as Mr.
> Parmentier put it, that ''the U.S. is a society where
> there's no social protection, where crime is rife.''
>
> Both Mr. Gordon and Mr. Parmentier say that the
> disputes sometimes masks underlying commonalities.
>
> ''It has always been the case that when push really
> comes to shove,'' Mr. Gordon said, ''France and the
> U.S. stand by each other - from the Cuba missile crisis
> and the Berlin crisis'' to ex- President Francois
> Mitterrand and Euromissiles.
>
> ''The same is true about Kosovo,'' he said. The two
> sides cooperated closely, though after the war, ''We
> immediately got back to carping about who should head
> which reconstruction mission.''
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
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