Our Oldest Enemy

Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America's Disastrous Relationship with France
John J. Miller and Mark Molesky
Doubleday, ISBN 0385512198

Quick: against which nation did America fight its first post-Revolutionary military conflict?

If you answered France, either you're well-versed on American history, you've read Our Oldest Enemy, or you're a good guesser. The Quasi-War of 1798 is underplayed in American history textbooks, which is a pity, because it's an amusing story and is oh so quintessentially French.

In the aftermath of the Revolution, both France and Britain preyed on American merchant shipping as part of their ongoing conflict with each other. President Washington sent Chief Justice John Jay to Great Britain to ask them to please stop. The resulting Jay Treaty did little to alleviate the problem, granting few concessions to the United States, and was seen by many in this country as a failure.

The French, however, were so incensed that the United States would even talk to their hated enemy that they threw a full-blown Gaulish snit-fit. When Washington's successor John Adams sent a three-man delegation to Paris to negotiate, French foreign minister Talleyrand refused to even meet with them. After forcing the delegation to wait for several weeks, he secretly sent three representatives of his own to tell them his terms. As a precondition to negotiations, America would have to grant France a loan of twelve million dollars, apologize publically, and pay a substantial bribe. On this, they were intractable.

American public opinion had been heavily pro-French. Americans remembered with gratitude French assistance in the Revolution, and furthermore the French had just fought a Revolution of their own, although the Republic thus established would prove to be far, far shorter lived than the American one. This reservoir of good will evaporated virtually instantly when the news of the French demands broke. An ugly anti-French sentiment quickly took its place, and a declaration of war would certainly have been forthcoming had Adams asked for it. Instead, he chose to fight a low-level, undeclared war on the seas.

In this "quasi-war", the infant United States Navy received its baptism by fire, and passed with flying colors. The brand new navy was augmented by the addition of several excellent formerly French prizes, including the frigate L'Insurgente. The USS Constellation, under the able command of Thomas Truxton, fought the far more heavily armed Vengeance to a draw and would have captured her but for suffering too much damage to accept the larger ship's surrender. American sailors successfully raided and spiked cannon in French forts in the Carribean.

After two years of this, the French called it quits and agreed to leave American merchant ships alone. Their arrogance in refusing to negotiate and demanding bribes cost them dearly... a pattern which would be repeated frequently.

In Our Oldest Enemy, Miller and Molesky tell this tale along with myriad others that show conclusively that France is not our ally, has rarely been our ally, and has often been our enemy. And on those rare occasions that France was with us, it was a thorn in our sides more often than not.

Miller and Molesky start their story of French emnity in the colonial period, with the French and Indian Wars. During these wars, the French used their Indian allies as a kind of premodern weapon of mass destruction against the Americans, allowing them to commit atrocities including prisoner slaughter and cannibalism, then threatening defiant American cities that unless they surrendered, the Indians would be unleashed. As it turns out, even surrender didn't save some Americans from suffering the depredations of the Indians.

Apologists for the French in this country often point to their assistance in the Revolutionary War. Miller and Molesky point out that the most valuable French ally, the Marquis de Lafayette, traveled to America against orders and was considered by France a fugitive criminal for a time. When the French did arrive, their blunders cost American lives. It was not until Yorktown that French assistance proved helpful, let alone decisive. And the ink was scarcely dry on the Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution before the two nations were trading cannonballs on the high seas.

During the Civil War, France's dictator attempted to conquer Mexico and assist the Confederacy. General Grant was convinced that a war against France in Mexico would immediately follow the defeat of Lee, and it might have had not the French retreated. After World War I, French intransigence led to the disastrous Treaty of Versailles, despite clear warnings that it would lead to a second war, and may have contributed to President Wilson's failing health. In the runup to World War II, France ignored its treaty obligations, allowing Hitler to build up his forces, preferring instead to cower behind their ridiculous Maginot Line. After the fall of France, Vichy forces fought and killed Americans attempting to invade North Africa. During the Cold War, De Gaulle never missed an opportunity to criticize his supposed allies while ignoring atrocities committed by the Soviets, eventually pulling French forces out of NATO and implying that French nuclear missiles could be targeted at American cities. When incontrovertible proof arose that the Libyan government had ordered its agents to commit terrorist atrocities, resulting in a bloody bombing in Berlin, France closed its airspace to American pilots on a retaliatory mission, necessitating the longest fighter mission in history to that point. After Iraq invaded Kuwait, France somehow found a way to blame America, and insisted that Iraq itself should not be attacked, prompting a retired French politician to ask what would have happened in World War II had the allies limited themselves to attacking France rather than pushing on into Germany. And during the War on Terror, France has done all it could to thwart the Coalition.

All of this and more is laid out in remarkable detail in Our Oldest Enemy, and convincingly makes the case that French amity is a myth. It has an unfortunate tendency to take cheap shots at the physical appearance of certain French adversaries, which marginally detracts from its main thrust, but the book is otherwise a compelling indictment.

Our Oldest Enemy paints a picture of a country suffering from a national inferiority complex, a once-mighty empire reduced to a third-rate power desperate to preserve the illusion of relevance. To this end, they elevate to demigodhood their temporarily-successful non-French dictator and insist on intruding themselves where they don't belong. Today, many Americans point to French opposition as evidence that our cause is not just. They couldn't be more wrong. French opposition to American goals isn't a novelty, it's the norm, seldom deviated from.