Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America's Disastrous Relationship with France Book

Americans were shocked when French president Jacques Chirac played a leading role in opposing America’s position during the Iraq crisis. In OUR OLDEST ENEMY, the authors demonstrate that France has never been our friend, has always been our rival, and has often been our enemy. Miller and Molesky return to America’s earliest history, relating the little-known story of the Deerfield Massacre of 1704, when a group of French and Indians massacred settlers in northern Massachusetts. They show that the French came to America’s aid only at the end of the Revolution and then with the interest of harming the British; during the Civil War, they supported the Confederacy. In the twentieth century, French demands at the Versailles Peace Conference paved the way for the rise of fascism in Germany and eventually required America to rescue France during World War II. The postwar period was also rife with disastrous actions on the part of the French, including Charles de Gaulle’s decision to pull out of NATO and his obstruction of American efforts to turn back Soviet expansion. French imperialism left troubling legacies as well: America’s involvement in Vietnam followed decades of conflict between the French and the Vietnamese; the genocidal Cambodian dictator Pol Pot was a product of French higher education; even the Baathist regimes in Syria and Iraq can be traced to French influences. Candid and absorbing, OUR OLDEST ENEMY provides an authoritative explanation for the explosive anger toward France that has swept across America and continues to shape debates about our foreign policy and role in the world.Read More