The New France

By JAMES WALSH

If geography is destiny, the fate of France would assuredly seem blessed. A temperate climate and gentle, well-watered terrain have contrived down the ages to produce a civilization sans pareil. It is a culture abrim with connoisseurs of the good life and nature's bounty. Charles de Gaulle, father of the Fifth Republic, used to cite France's prodigious number of cheeses -- 265 by his reckoning -- as an example of the land's lavish variety. Some benighted souls across the Channel may still believe God is an Englishman, but the French have never doubted that heaven is their home.

So why all the buzz today about discontent, about social gloom and political drift, a crisis of faith in the future and a fading sense of national identity? An identity crisis -- in France? It sounds as unlikely as the notion of Cyrano de Bergerac fumbling his sword or groping for the mot juste. In his 1983 book The Europeans, the Italian journalist Luigi Barzini, a seasoned and mordant observer of the Continental scene, cites Edmond Rostand's fictional Cyrano as the quintessence of French character, at least as outsiders exaggerate it: the boastful, cocksure Gascon whose fellow provincials are defined in Rostand's play as "free fighters, free lovers, free spenders, defenders of old homes, old names and old splendors . . . bragging of crests , and pedigrees." Yet now it seems that the rooster, the national symbol, is crestfallen.

How can a people so certain of their birthright be disoriented? More to the point, how can the French feel lost when France has emerged as the master builder of modern Europe? Not since the mid-19th century, when Baron Haussmann thrust his boulevards through rancid slums, has Paris experienced such a fever of construction and renewal. With a Metro that works, streets kept remarkably clean by 5,000 green-uniformed sweepers, parks planted like Impressionist paintings and bakeries galore, Paris may well represent the apogee of civilized city living -- for those who can afford the rent. Yet not since Parisians finally ousted Haussmann for his arrogant, free-spending ways has there been such a struggle over progress versus preservation.

The French can look with pride at high-speed trains and modern aircraft, fashion and luxury goods better than most of the world's; yet the country is, more than ever before, obsessed with its ability to compete in a global marketplace. It sees the power-house of a united Germany bulking over a Europe destined to become the world's biggest single market in 1993. According to the authoritative World Competitiveness Report for 1991, France has dropped to its lowest ranking since 1986 and is listed 15th, behind most other members of the European Community. Industrial growth has lagged, and the trade gap with behemoths like Germany and Japan has grown severalfold. But the world's fourth largest economy, with a gross national product of $956 billion, is far from an also-ran. Under the steady hand of President Francois Mitterrand, France now stands to become a keystone of 21st century power -- so long as the French people manage to keep their cool.

At the moment, their aplomb seems to be deserting them. Judging by opinion surveys and diagnoses in the press, a country that long prided itself on being the lumiere du monde is awash in dark soul searching. The French are said to be fed up with politics and politicians. There is the hangover from the gulf war, an episode that deflated the vaunted image of French power and influence. Paris waffled about what to do almost to the last minute and ended up sheltering behind U.S. policy. In the harsh judgment of Jacques Julliard, a columnist for the progovernment weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, "The gulf crisis revealed the weak influence of our diplomacy, the modest competitiveness of our industrialists and above all the archaic state of our military equipment."

And there is a nagging anxiety over the nation's soul. French culture, so some worry, is in danger of turning into pasteurized processed cheese: wholesome, possibly edible, but lacking distinctive tang and texture. What the country managed to preserve despite humiliations over the centuries -- pride in a singular civilization -- it now risks losing under the impact of American pop culture and in the homogenizing vat of that mysterious entity called Europe. Chauvinists like the immigrant baiter Jean-Marie Le Pen say the greater threat comes from African Arabs and blacks who have had the inestimable privilege of settling in France but refuse to accept its folkways. Meanwhile, with Marx in the dustbin of history, leftists have no prophet, right-wingers no archfoe.

The French, in short, seem to be losing their bearings, their ideals and dreams. It is a bitter vintage, all the more so considering how high expectations were running. Just last year France looked well placed to become more than the center of gravity of a newly ascendant Europe. By some lights, it was emerging as the best of all possible worlds. Three centuries after the reign of the Sun King, Louis XIV, and nearly two after Napoleon bestrode the Continent, Paris was confidently pulling the strings of Europe, positioning itself to be the capital of a new political-economic imperium.

It may be yet, for France still enjoys copious advantages. Its standard of living is among the best in the world, and the quality of life, as many a visitor will attest, remains as invigorating as it is gracious. Modern arts and sciences flourish in a landscape adorned with Gothic cathedrals, tree- lined avenues and grand siecle chateaus. Philosophy is still as much in fashion as fashion is the ultimate philosophy. Together with modern farms, a medieval patchwork of agriculture still yields its plenty to cordon bleu tables in a country better prepared for the 21st century than most -- a land crisscrossed by bullet trains, a nuclear-electric power grid, Airbus jetliners and satellites borne aloft in Ariane rockets.

The jewel of French assets in recent years has been stability: a sureness about the nation's place and purpose in the world as well as its material prospects. Inflation was reined in, exports rose comfortably, and a Socialist President managed to guide France's fortunes, at home and abroad, with the confident generalship of a De Gaulle. A people famous for crossing swords over the slightest trespass or ideological difference settled into a harmonious political dispensation.

Now the country seems to be suffering an outbreak of that endemic French affliction called malaise. The symptoms: widespread public unease; a volatile mixture of boredom, anxiety and irritation, carrying the potential for triggering sudden acts of collective furor. Change is beginning to look overwhelming to many of the French, eroding the old certainties that once defined Frenchness for everyone. Traditional institutions are in decline, including the church, marriage, labor unions and even the leisurely lunch. In foreign affairs, defense, economic policy, even eating habits and consumer tastes, the French are becoming more like their neighbors -- and they're not sure they like it.

They are no longer strikingly different in the way they dispute power, practicing instead a pragmatism and consensus building that is unfamiliar, perhaps even unwanted. The disturbance involves what the French call the banalization of politics -- the end of ideology as the center of political life. Mitterrand's great achievement has been bringing the left into the political mainstream, giving it the respectability that was once a conservative preserve. But with the old partisan banners faded today, people sense a lack of choice in politics and are vaguely spoiling for a fight.

The President's May 15 selection of Edith Cresson as Prime Minister, to shake the nation out of its sullen mood, soured after little more than a month. With only a 38% public-approval rating, the bride of high office may be headed for divorce at a point when she has barely assembled her trousseau. French unemployment has reached 9.5%, and the record number of jobless looks as if it will go higher still. Meanwhile immigrant riots broke out in June, even as municipal policemen went on strike -- along with air-traffic controllers, railway workers and doctors.

Cresson's idea was to rally the nation behind a centralized industrial policy, marshaling economic forces in a war footing against competitors -- notably her designated No. 1 enemy, Japan. But her summons to arms has fallen flat at a time when the treasury is tight and Paris is striving to meet the conflicting imperative of a less subsidized, state-driven economy in advance of Europe's experiment with open market frontiers.

The undercurrent of these quarrels is a yearning for a new national myth, a sense of grandeur and destiny. As author Barzini points out, it was Francois Rene de Chateaubriand, the great Romantic writer, who said of his compatriots, "They must be led by dreams." De Gaulle, after founding the Fifth Republic in 1958 and establishing a presidential form of government verging on monarchy, set France apart from NATO, apart from "the Anglo-Saxons" -- conveniently lumping in superpower America with France's ancient enemy, England -- and even, in important ways, apart from Europe.

Though the general often talked up the idea of a like-minded, cooperative Europe, he viewed the infant Common Market circa 1960 largely as a device to control West Germany. From De Gaulle's day on, the E.C.'s chief purpose, as successive Elysee Palace incumbents saw it, was to bind French and Germans so tightly together economically that another war would become unthinkable. In exchange, Paris would champion West German interests in international councils where measures proposed by Bonn might sound Teutonically threatening.

That relationship remains as useful and vital as it was 30 years ago. The trouble is, the French today are no longer in league with West Germany. Their chief partner is now a larger, unified country, raising some worst-case nightmares of an old nemesis reborn. The two times in modern history when Germans ventured to consolidate -- under Bismarck and under Hitler -- France was eclipsed and conquered. Apprehensions today do not envisage anything so dire as a panzer plunge through the Ardennes, but many French wince at the prospect of an expanded Federal Republic overmastering them with its money, industry and technology.

Even France's famous "civilizing mission" to the rest of the world has come under question. French policy toward the Arab countries, supposedly an example of Paris' understanding approach to Third World aspirations, sank practically without a trace in the quicksand of the gulf crisis. Says Gilles Martinet, an ex-ambassador with close links to the Socialists: "For most of our statesmen, whether they belonged to the left or the right, France was always strong, feared, respected, admired and envied -- until the gulf war taught us otherwise."

Yet France's seat as one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council still gives the country a leverage in world affairs far beyond that of Germany, Japan or Italy. The seat explains why Mitterrand insists that any new security arrangements for the Middle East must gain the U.N.'s imprimatur. Moreover, France's nuclear arsenal continues to assure it a place at high table with the superpowers, while its economic clout provides membership in the exclusive Group of Seven. Political punch aside, French humanitarian efforts overseas, such as the war-defying missions of the volunteer doctors known as Medecins sans Frontieres, remain leading lights of compassion.

Even in the image department, the hand wringing in Paris before the gulf war measured up favorably, in the end, against Germany's self-paralyzing angst. Bonn's inability to weigh in for battle against Iraq except as a financier was greeted across the Rhine with relief. France's strengthened transatlantic relations have also reinforced the case for keeping U.S. troops in Europe, which Paris endorses as protection against any resurgent Soviet threat and a means of ensuring that Germany remains anchored in the West.

Though Mitterrand continues to exploit the French position in the middle, signaling his country's potential for mischief in dealings with difficult regimes, he can now justify his approaches to China or Iran as those of an eclaireur, or scout, for American diplomacy. France's ace in the hole remains its latitude for independence, especially in framing an autonomous "defense identity" and common foreign policy for Europe. Says a senior French military officer: "We will always stand with the U.S. in the great battles of the West. After that, we again become a difficult ally."

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.

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!

With reporting by J.F.O. McAllister/Washington and Frederick Ungeheuer/Paris, with other bureaus