So they did it anyway. typically French, off once again on their own arrogant course, a Gallic shrug of indifference the only reaction to critics of their decision to resume nuclear testing in the South Pacific. Damn the diplomatic fallout, tricolor burnings, protesters chaining themselves to fences. Bombs away!

France has, naturellement, a well-rehearsed explanation that involves technology and a claim that actual tests are necessary because its current computer models are insufficient. This explanation is a charade--if only because the U.S. has offered to share its own modeling expertise with the French bombmakers . The real reason is raison d'etat, a diplomatic strategy initiated by Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII's chief minister, in which a state dispenses with moral restraints to pursue its national interest. The approach guided France to the forefront of cultural and political influence in the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was Europe's biggest and wealthiest power.

Then came the 20th century and two world wars in which France needed rescuing by the U.S., Britain and others. The U.S. even stepped in, albeit unwisely, to clean up the mess France left in Indochina. Such humiliation for the homeland. So much for la gloire. "We will never descend to the level of American vassals," De Gaulle crowed like the noisy barnyard coq that is France's national symbol. But France already had-even with its own nuclear bombs. Without the American deterrent, France could not defend itself and knew it.

Fast forward to the 1990s, during which France's influence has waned further. Germany is united, the undisputed power on the Continent. The collapse of the Soviet Union , to the dismay of France's reigning intellectuals, has boosted the global primacy of "les yankees," the former saviors France treats with habitual disdain.

Last May, finally, enter the tanned, energetic Jacques Chirac, eager to reassert raison d'etat and make a splash, unfortunately too literally. Chirac, though, was acting totally in national character. Daring to be different is nothing new for France, where galling allies is as enduring a national pastime as boules. Winston Churchill, who was host to Charles de Gaulle after the majority of his guest's countrymen had capitulated to the Nazis, grumbled famously that of all the wartime crosses he bore, the heaviest was the Free French leader's cross of Lorraine. It didn't help that De Gaulle constantly nattered on about how France was the "light of the world; its destiny is to illuminate the universe." General Dwight Eisenhower managed to avoid gagging, but did complain that of all the Allies he was supremely commanding, "those damn French" were by far the most nettlesome.

De Gaulle gave clout to the once weak French presidency and stabilized France. But jealous of the Churchill-Roosevelt wartime bond, he remained a passionate anti-Atlanticist with a long memory. In 1963, still irate over Britain's cave-in to U.S. pressure to pull back from Suez in 1956, he vetoed Britain's application to join the European Economic Community. (His successors obstructed the entry of Spain and Portugal.) The following year, he withdrew France from the nato military command and asked President Lyndon Johnson to remove U.S. troops from France. A seething Secretary of State Dean Rusk flew to Paris to seek clarification: "Does your order include the bodies of American soldiers in France's cemeteries?"

The French President was not a total ingrate. Lord Carrington, former British Foreign Minister and NATO Secretary-General, found a certain logic, bred in the 20th century disasters, in the way De Gaulle assumed Richelieu's mantle. "De Gaulle believed that if the French are told their security is the concern of another, rather than their own undiluted responsibility, they will do nothing," wrote Carrington in his 1988 memoirs. "If they are told it is up to them, that they can rely on nobody else, they will bestir themselves, hackles up, pride aroused." Henry Kissinger is less generous. "Much of the prickly style of [France's] diplomacy has been due to attempts by its leaders to perpetuate its role as the center of European policy in an environment increasingly hostile to such aspirations," the former U.S. Secretary of State wrote last year in his book Diplomacy.

Both analyses are true, as is the reality that the hackles remain much in evidence. When the Reagan Administration sought permission to overfly France in 1986 to bomb Tripoli, President Mitterrand refused, although the action virtually eliminated Libya as a terrorist threat. Since then, constant other transatlantic and intra-European battles have involved everything from trade pacts, agricultural subsidies and Bosnia to the popularity of U.S. culture in France and Paris' cozy commercial ties to Iran.

There will be more friction. No nation will be deterred by mere riots and opprobrium when its man of letters, Victor Hugo, penned , "France, France, without you the world would be alone." After last week's detonation, much of the world wished France would leave it alone.