National Denial

ABOVE IMAGE: GEN. CHARLES DE GAULLE

DEENA STRYKER

The seven foot tall general led the French resistance to German occupation from London, ruled France after the Liberation, then again in the late fifties, when he designed the Presidential Vth Republic and steered France out of its North African colonies – and NATO. De Gaulle was to twentieth century France what George Washington and Abe Lincoln combined are to the United States: a country’s enduring image of itself with a halo.

The political class in France coped with their country’s defeat in World War II by mocking and denigrating the United States: Americans were loud and ignorant, and they were going to destroy European culture! (Venom aside, they were not exactly totally wrong about that.) The earliest modern graffiti was the ubiquitous slogan “US Go Home!”, similar to the “Yanqui go home” we can see all over Latin America. But by the early 1980’s, Fulbright and other government-sponsored programs having lured European decision-makers to the US for comfortable stays among America’s best and brightest, even left-wing intellectuals found things to admire, while the rest of the country took to ‘Le Drug Store’ and the latest street memes.

Fast-forward to 2015: the Fifth Republic’s second socialist-in-name-only president, Francois Hollande, dubbed its least popular ever among other things for his kow-towing to Washington and the neoliberal project, faces recession, an avalanche of immigrants, and the looming dissolution of the European Union that neither France nor Germany can prevent without taking their heads out of the sands of America’s Empire.

For forty years, Europe told itself that it shared the convictions of the superpower across the seas, even though “liberte, egalite, fraternite” implies solidarity, whereas the pursuit of happiness—the individualist’s anthem— does not. Each individual country had an array of left-wing parties, and Europe was content to play off Washington and Moscow, clinging to the Atlantic Alliance in case the Red Army really was poised to strike – or to save itself from the soft takeover known as ‘Finlandization”, which turned out to be Atlantization.

Marianne, France’s symbol, on a coin.

In the nineteen-eighties and nineties, instead of letting its myths go, France continued to claim a unique place among America’s subalterns – right behind Great Britain (“Perfide Albion”)! As long as Marianne, the symbol of France, was standing, English would never become the world’s lingua franca (franca….). The ‘Academie’ continued to Frenchify American words, while mainly Arab immigrant youth adopted hip-hop and created a street language incomprehensible to Sorbonne/Harvard-educated  adults.

Today, Atlantization still rules, but sanctions against Russia made Europeans realize they can have equitable relations with Eurasia instead of subordinate relations with the hegemon overseas. But this piece is not about Europe, it’s about the US refusal – so similar to the one I witnessed in France for decades! – to admit that its time in the sun has passed, and to graciously, for the good of humanity – pass the baton to Eurasia.

The American version of National Denial is no longer about cultural icons, but a commitment to full-spectrum dominance. Faced with the daily, embarrassing proof of the failure of its campaigns against ISIS, half-assured  by Washington reluctance to really go after the Jihadis it created as a sort of rogue Foreign Legion, compared to evidence that the Russia intervention requested by President Assad is moving the Syrian tragedy toward resolution, the US paints Putin as a sort of evil Lone Ranger, while trying to impose the TPP on the Pacific rim and the TTIP  on Europe, as proof of its military and economic dominance. But these assertions—for those not entirely brainwashed by incessant Western propaganda— are even easier to debunk than France’s ‘rayonnement’.

Washington claims the TPP accounts for 40% of the world’s GDP, but the math says otherwise: the US accounts for 17%, and even with Japan’s 4.6%, the other members only account for 10%, for a total of 27%. A statement on the TPP site reveals the deliberate obfuscation: “Through this agreement, the Obama Administration seeks to boost U.S. economic growth and support the creation and retention of high-quality American jobs by increasing exports in a region that includes some of the world’s most robust economies and that represents nearly 40 percent of global GDP. “

But the Pacific region only represents around 40% of global GDP if China, the world’s second largest economy, with 10% of GDP, is included, while the treaty deliberately excludes China! The two mega trade deals pursued by the US are a desperate attempt on the part of the hegemon to preserve its status – a major exercise in denial.

Ironically, thanks to the sanctions against Russia that it was forced to apply, Europe is rejecting the TTIP in favor of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and others that Russia and China are creating across the Eurasian continent. Never completely identifying with Europe, Britain had already signaled its interest in them even before the Brexit vote.

While France still believes that its culture outshines all others, Obama claims that when the world has a problem (almost always created or exacerbated by America’s fierce allegiance to raw capitalism) it does not go to Moscow or Beijing, but to Washington. But even as he claimed that the world has “no alternative” to American leadership, Russia was meeting with Iran and Turkey to organize post-war assistance for a sovereign Syria.

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