FP: Mr. Miller, welcome to Frontpage Interview. It is a pleasure to have you here.

Miller: Thank you. I’m an admirer of your website.

FP: What motivated you to write this book?

Miller: The most immediate influence was the recent unpleasantness with France over Iraq, but a deeper motivation was a desire to look at the pervasive myth of Franco-American friendship. If you listen to the commentary about relations between the United States and France, a lot of it assumes that France is America’s oldest friend--and that our two countries share a 200-year history of sweetness and light that began with Lafayette and somehow ended when our unrefined, cowboy president came into office and made a mess of things. This is nonsense. Franco-American history is a 300-year story of friction and hostility. From the French and Indian Wars to the Quasi War of the 1790s to the U.S. Civil War to Versailles to the Vichy regime to de Gaulle in the Cold War--when you study the historical record, it becomes clear that the jousting over Iraq is really nothing new. People always wonder about the period of the American Revolution, but it was an anomaly, and even then it’s poorly understood--the French entered the war for entirely self-interested reasons and behaved treacherously toward the Americans during the peace talks. There’s a lot more to it than Yorktown.

FP: In your book, you discuss how the French look down on American culture, and yet it remains highly debatable – and mysterious -- what it is exactly that is supposed to be so superior about French culture. Could you take a bit about this?

Miller: If you’re talking about art and literature, there’s plenty to admire about French culture. Yet claims about cultural superiority are always dicey, and the French certainly have no business asserting their own against Anglo-American civilization. This of course hasn’t stopped them. From the days of Thomas Jefferson, the French have looked down on America and its New World vulgarities. One of the ironies here is that so much of French culture is in deep debt to discerning Americans. “The Impressionists,” wrote Renoir, “perhaps owe it to the Americans that we did not die of hunger.” Today, the French regret that so many of their masterpieces survive in American homes and museums.

FP: French anti-Americanism is ultimately rooted in France's resentment of American power and of its own decline as a great power, right?