The New France

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Though the fiction of a singularly influential and enlightened French "Arab policy" was exploded in the gulf, the result has been a more realistic, selective outreach across the Mediterranean. Mitterrand and Foreign Minister Roland Dumas are now concentrating attention on their Maghreb neighbors. In many French eyes, the North African lands that were once colonial possessions are a time bomb. Arab immigrants have for the most part rejected assimilation, and in future years may become a heavier challenge to the concept of what it means to be French. Surprisingly, residents of foreign origin constitute no greater a share of the population today -- 6.3% -- than they did in 1931. The novelty is the highly visible intrusion of non-Europeans, largely Muslims, and their practices: schoolgirls wearing the chador, the electronically amplified wails of muezzins from mosques, suburban concrete ghettos where the culture smacks of Algiers or Tunis more than Paris or Lyons.

Mitterrand himself has warned about a "threshold of tolerance" for immigrants, and Jacques Chirac, the conservative mayor of Paris and former Prime Minister, has weighed in to the debate with a vengeance. He voiced sympathy for French families who have to live with the "noise and smells" of tenements inhabited by the newcomers. Cresson proposed last week to charter aircraft to send unlawful immigrants home, but an outburst of protests from fellow Socialists in Parliament caused her to withdraw the idea.

Now the more pessimistic oracles are casting doubt on the nation's ability to absorb the shock of the new, of a more rough-and-ready economic atmosphere, as well as the unfamiliar idea of multiculturalism. While the mainstream political parties cast about for fresh directions, Le Pen's racist National Front can count on a basic 15% of the popular vote in any election.

A recipe for trouble? For a civilization that may be the fastest changing in Europe, France has shown remarkable resilience and political staying power. The existential debate has not deflected Mitterrand from his nouveau Gaullism, a policy of working with and through Germany to secure a decisive say over the Continent's future. In the E.C.'s halls of power France remains paramount, and relations with Washington, prickly at the best of times, are on a surer footing.

If in the past Americans and others in the West often saw Paris as a withered peacock, strutting grandiosely when it was not perversely kicking up dust, the firmness with which Mitterrand steered his nation after the gulf war's outbreak gave their old ally a taller stature. France is still a tough customer on many issues -- agricultural subsidies, for example, the big snag in the current troubled round of world-trade talks. Stubbornness is the Gallic style: a demonstrated readiness to scuttle agreements is Paris' way of showing that it means business.