The New France

• Share

(6 of 6)

Yet the country views its new challenges as especially dicey. Its postwar identity depended on the postwar system, which has come unglued. Mitterrand's ambitions for E.C. political union and a joint defense policy are central to his design of preserving France's status as the Continent's anchor. Washington-based analyst Jenonne Walker notes, "De Gaulle was never willing to meld France into a Europe able to act as a unit. Mitterrand is willing to do that." Trickier is the question of whether the French people, fearing for their national soul, will go along.

Mitterrand himself has adjusted to the idea of France as a middling power. Under him, says economist Peter Ludlow, director of the Brussels-based Center for European Policy Studies, "France came to terms with the fact that it was the end of the era of medium-size states with protectionist policies." Germany continues to rely on its partner in a relationship that is more a symbiosis than an axis. "Paris and Bonn," says German policy analyst Ingo Kolboom, "are condemned to act in concert." Jean-Pierre Cot, the French chairman of the European Parliament's Socialist bloc, sees a bright future for his homeland. He says, "I am struck by the fact that France seen from the E.C. today looks a lot better than France seen from within France. We are now in the best position to do the job of European integration."

So has the lumiere du monde lost its way? Not yet, certainly. If the home of the Rights of Man could absorb one-third of its population growth by way of immigration between 1946 and 1982, its cherished identity seems rather safe. After all, 30 years ago, at the Fifth Republic's outset, the living embodiments of sophisticated Frenchness to much of the world were the film stars Yves Montand and Simone Signoret -- the former a native Italian from a town near Florence, the latter born in Germany to an Austrian-Polish-Jew ish father. As Cyrano himself might have crowed, in a slightly different context, Vive la difference!