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Sunday, May 23, 2004
Michael Kinsley, Bore The uncharacteristically too-serious Michael Kinsley wonders whether David Brooks is a sociologist and whether he is really a conservative. (Actually Kinsley's over-seriousness is somewhat redeemed in the end by his calling Brooks French.) Since people in the "red" states whom Brooks mostly seeks to defend don't trust sociology anyway (although Brooks says they read just as much as blue-staters), what matters is whether the newest New York Times op-ed regular is a conservative. Kinsely answers no, and he seizes upon Brooks's criticisms of capitalism as his proof. But anyone of Kinsley's vintage knows that Brooks emerged from a school or clique that only ever gave capitalism "two cheers." So what's all the fuss about? Michael Kinsely is upset that Brooks, clearly a conservative, is flat-out wittier and funnier than he is. That Brooks can critique and, nevertheless, embrace suburbia drives liberals like Kinsely crazy. It leaves them without the tiresome "shtick" Kinsely wants to attribute to Brooks. David Brooks may not be Tocqueville, but he understands America better than Michael Kinsely does. Saturday, May 22, 2004
Canada and Europe Vote On Sunday, May 23, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin will call a federal election scheduled for June 28. I'll be commenting on events as they unfold. There will also be Europe-wide elections in June for the European Parliament (not that many Europeans seem to care) and I'll be keeping an eye on those as well. Also, the latest story is that Britain and Poland are supporting Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to take over the European Commission presidency from the very leftist Romano Prodi. This is a fairly predictable move. Rasumussen is a conservative by Danish standards and an ally of Britain and Poland in the EU. Even without the conservatives in power in Spain, Britain still has its allies in the EU. Not surprisingly, France is expected to oppose Rasmussen. For one thing, Denmark does not use the Euro and is seen by France as unwilling to take part fully in the European Union. Of course, that essentially means that the Danes aren't willing to be pushed around by France, which is why the Brits like Rasmussen so much. Also, when the Danes held the EU rotating presidency last year, Rasmussen was considered to have done an excellent job. He has a number of supporters, but France and Germany will be keen to scuttle his chances. If Rasmussen gets the job, it will be a major victory for those Europeans seeking to but a roadblock in the way of French and German tyranny. Tax (and Drill) Charles Krauthammer argues for taxing gas and (more mildly) for drilling for more oil to solve the problem of OPEC having us, well, over a barrel. Krauthammer argues for taxing gas so that the rational response we had to the crisis in the '80s -- building smaller cars -- doesn't reverse itself when gas becomes cheap. A tax on gas after the crisis of the '70s would have kept it expensive, thereby reducing the desire to shop for groceries in vehicles "built for hunting elephants." Additionally, Krauthammer briefly makes a softer case for drilling. With demand up (thanks to China) and supply down, this is a way to decrease potentially our dependence on OPEC, though it conflicts with our "eco-sensitivity." Krauthammer's proposal entails establishing some "floor" for the price of gas -- say, $3 per gallon. If oil gets more expensive, the tax is off. If oil gets cheaper, the tax kicks in to make the price $3. The income or payroll taxes will be reduced accordingly. Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Irwin Stelzer warns us of the economic consequences of cutting and running from Iraq. Without making the economic tail wag the political dog, Stelzer shows us how oil is a weapon that the Saudis can use to our further detriment if we fail militarily. Monday, May 10, 2004
Victor Davis Hanson reviews an art show about childhood in ancient Greece in the New Criterion. It's nice to see someone who thinks we can learn from the ancients. However, Hanson, a classical scholar and political conservative, sometimes loses sight of what is important about the ancient world or what about the ancient world should matter to us -- namely philosophy. One might say that the greatest ancient Greek "conservative" was Aristophanes. But Aristophanes was obsessed with Socrates in a way that Hanson isn't, and he didn't take Socrates to be a part of Greek "culture" (whatever that is). Friday, May 07, 2004
Canada's Wretched Health Care Canadians are prone to brag about their universal health care system that ensures access to all Canadians regardless of income. And in large part, we do this as a slight to our southern neighbors who we like to chastize for their mean-spirited capitalist approach to medical care. But before Canadians get too uppity, they may want to look at a recent report from the Fraser Institute comparing Canada, not to the US, but to other countries that provide universal health care. The results show that Canada is one of the worst providers of health care among OECD countries. The study looked at twelve benchmarks and found that the Canadian system delivers lower quality but at a higher cost. Just as importantly, the study notes that many of the these countries, including "socialist" Sweden, allow for some form of private insurance, along with charging user fees. Only Canada seems determined to hold fast to its moribund government-run system while refusing to accept even the most basic reforms. Here again we find ourselves in the realm of "Canadian values." Canadians have become so used to hearing the Liberal government in Ottawa tell us that universal health care is a Canadian value that we are unable to think reasonably about the issue. And of course, the Liberals use the spectre of a two-tiered, user-pay system as one of their primary means of scaring voters away from the Conservative Party. Rather than deal with the problem of declining health care, the Liberals prefer to leverage the issue in order to demonize the Conservatives, and most notably the province of Alberta which often leads the charge to reform health care along a more privatized model. With a federal election coming soon, look for more scare tactics on this issue. Health care, like so many "Canadian values" is little more than a manifestation of Canadian immaturity, especially when we engage in constant comparisons between ourselves and the United States. Sadly enough, it's a state of immaturity the Liberals promote in order to win elections. But then it seems to work for them so maybe the Liberals are onto something after all. Thursday, May 06, 2004
IMD Competitiveness Report The annual Competitiveness Report put out by Swiss business school IMD has been published and it doesn't look good for the EU. While the US continues to top the survey, no EU country made the top five this year. Instead, countries such as Canada, Australia, Singapore and Iceland headed the list. The most competitive EU country, Denmark, fell from fifth place last year to seventh this year. Of the big EU countries, the region of Bavaria ranks closest to the top in twentieth spot, followed by Germany as a whole at twenty-one and then the UK coming in at twnety-second spot. It is interesting that smaller EU countries such as Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands actually rank higher than the bigger EU nations, especially since some of these countries are fairly socialist. The difference is that nations like Denmark and the Netherlands, while maintaining vast social assistance networks, have also brought in quite liberal labor and finance legislation. The point being, if you want to go into business in Europe, head to Copenhagen or Amsterdam and skip Paris, Berlin or Rome. Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Letters on The Shield of Achilles Jake, I’ve only begun reading Bobbit’s book, but already I think it has all the merits you ascribe to it, and most importantly, it serves as a corrective to both Fukuyama and Huntington, at least in their popular reception. Though Fukuyama and Huntington have rather different views on the current state of international relations and the future of political life, they also strike me as being rather similar. I mean that neither really takes the political as a starting point, and subsequently, neither sees the enduring significance of war as a political act. If we start with Fukuyama, we see the notion that history has more or less resolved itself in the modern democratic dispensation. Even those nations that can make no practical claim to the democratic mantle will still give lip-service to democratic principles. And in this regard, nothing is more indicative than the United Nations where patently undemocratic nations repeatedly, and often acting as a bloc, use the forms of democracy to attack such real democracies as Israel, the US or the nations of Western Europe. So, in this respect, I believe Fukuyama is correct – he has identified the dominant intellectual and moral presumptions that rule our age. Moreover, I think he is correct to see this as something of an inexorable movement. I suspect that a return to the age of absolutism, empire on the Roman model or even the democratic Greek city-states, is impossible. And yet, this can’t be the end of the story because history does seem to continue, and we can see this in one of the most important contrasts we’ve drawn often on this site: that between the US and Europe. The United States today is certainly the most powerful nation on the planet. Not only that, but it’s significantly more powerful than even the 25-member European Union. But just as importantly, in intellectual and spiritual terms, the United States see itself as the bulwark of democracy in the world, and it acts to enforce that position. The EU increasingly wants to see itself as even more democratic than the United States, and it believes that democratic nations don’t make war. The Europeans have taken the democratic ideology to extremes to the point where they are literally unable to distinguish between those times when diplomacy is required and those when force must be used. In other words, the EU believes democracy incompatible with force, while the US believes it has brought the two together, though has not necessarily resolved their differences. And, if we consider that the US is the great power today, we find ourselves having to admit that democracy, at least for now, is allied with force. The absolute end of history has not arrived. If we turn to Huntington for advice, we find the notion of conflict based on cultural regions. Thus, Huntington thinks that cultural cleavages better explain the reality we face and that the future may well be dominated by conflicts between these groups. Here again, I think there is a great deal of truth. The democratic view of the world, despite the universal praise it tends to receive, is a particularly western cultural heritage. It’s quite conceivable that it will not ultimately dominate the globe, but will be threatened in many corners. Indeed, I’m often pessimistic regarding the extent to which many continental European nations have come truly to incarnate democracy – I sometimes think with Tocqueville that democracy is still in America. Today, many want to see the battle between Islam and the West as a manifestation of Huntington’s thesis. That may well be, but that tends to suggest then that our future is not too bright, and that ultimately the cultural divisions are equally legitimate. However, it’s not at all clear that the cultural lines Huntington draws really explain the reality we face. Rather, they seem to serve as a description, but not a real explanation precisely because cultural differences are simply that – merely cultural. These differences alone can’t explain the attractiveness of the western life to many, nor can they tell us why the West came to dominate the planet. In other words, I think there is something true about both Fukuyama and Huntington, but also something lacking. Neither can explain the situation we face today. Fukuyama too quickly loses the fact of real conflict in the world, while Huntington seems to make epidemic conflict unavoidable. It’s as though Fukuyama’s democratic world hovers like a perfect sphere above Huntington’s brutal crashing elements of chaos. And none of this does much good for those statesmen who must guide the world. But on this point, I think Bobbit shines. What Bobbit seems to do is take seriously the actual political form, which means he connects international relations and strategy to the domestic constitutional structures of the participants. As a result, he attempts to trace the historical origins of the modern state in order to identify exactly how the modern state results in a certain kind of war. Just as Greek cities and the Roman Empire had their specific approaches to war, it seems that the modern state is closely related to a certain kind of warfare. In addition, that state, with its rather Machiavellian need for innovation, is itself changing as technology in warfare changes. Now this point I think is central. More than other political forms, the modern state seems in a constant state of change. To Fukuyama, this is the continual push towards democratization, though Fukuyama seems not to notice that this advance is connected to a particular political form that came to be in the West. From what I’ve read so far, it looks as though Bobbit will weave the political and the technological together specifically in the modern state, thereby understanding the type of war proper to the modern nation, as well as its penchant for innovation. I’d say that Bobbit keeps much closer to the ground than do Fukuyama or Huntington. He follows events closely and keeps to a political analysis that accounts both for conflict and the advance towards democracy. The great merit, it seems to me, is that by doing this he sees that war is commensurate with political life, but that it need not become total war if we understand the political form that looks set to take the place of the nation-state. According to what I’ve read, that new form will be the market-state, which is more global in reach, but still retains something of the political element as a separate nation (though not a nation in the ethnic sense so common in the nineteenth century). I find this sort of analysis both exciting and useful, because it gives us a more probable sense of what is around the corner, or at least a number of probable scenarios. It keeps to some eternal political truths, but also makes the effort to account for changes we are experiencing without leaving us devoid of analytical tools. This is definitely a book that deserves a lot of attention, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts as I read over it. Cheers, Collin Options, Take Two I received a very thoughtful letter about my piece on stock options. The writer argued that the proposition that stock values are based on future cash flow is correct but has nothing to do with options which, if expensed, would appear on the income statement and not the cash flow statement. Options are a non-cash expense, and, therefore, do not affect the fundamental value of the enterprise if one is using a discounted cash flow analysis to determine the intrinsic value. The writer also argued that the purpose of financial statements is to track corporate performance and not shareholder expense which is what options amount to. Golbitz, incidentally, also keeps telling me that although he prefers restricted stock, he hasn't come up against a good argument for expensing options. He simply doesn't know how it would be done as a practical matter if they were out of the money. Golbitz also comes close to saying that options are not a corporate expense -- at least not an easily quantifiable one. First of all, I am happy to get such thoughtful criticism. Although I'm interested in these things, I am really just starting to learn about them. I have replied to the writer that although options do not affect the value of the enterprise (because they are not a cash expense), they potentially diminish the value of the shares which represent less of a claim on the future cash flows as more shares get issued. Options, when exercised, dilute the stock, taking real wealth out of shareholders' pockets. The writer replied to this that it is not the purpose of financial statements to account for shareholder expenses, only "corporate performance." This argument, in my opinion, separates things that ought to be kept together. A corporation, as I understand it, takes in capital from shareholders (and creditors or note-holders) and tries to produce a return on it. Therefore, it makes no sense to speak of "corporate performance" without accounting for the return produced for the shareholders. Options do not destroy the value of a company, it is true; but they take money out of shareholders' pockets and put it into the pockets of managers. The fact that there is no loss of value to the company does not mean that the company is working well for its shareholders. Whether the company is unhealthy "organically" and has to burn through cash to keep itself going or whether it "redistributes" the cash it produces away from the shareholders and into the managers' pockets through dilution, it is not functioning well from the shareholders' or owners' perspective which is really the crucial perspective. At a certain point there is no difference between a company that is bleeding cash or one that is robbing its shareholders of it; those with the latter malady often contract the former. Sunday, May 02, 2004
The New EU: An American Success? On May 1, ten new member states joined the European Union. This occurred with much fanfare and self-congratulation on the part of Europeans. Of course, none of this would have been possible without Britain and the United States. It was these nations, more than any others, that saw off the fascist threat, that worked to secure liberal democracy and market-based economics and that stood up to the encroaching Red Army. Certainly the nations of Europe, especially France and the German Republic had a hand in this, but ultimately, the victory of the liberal version of democracy over its socialist and fascist rivals could not have occurred without the two preeminent English democracies, and without this victory, the EU would have been nothing more than a French bureaucrats pipedream. Therefore, it would seem that a great deal of thanks is due the UK and US on this auspicious occasion. And having said that, we can’t help but wonder, even now, if all the nay-saying about Iraq is a bit premature and misguided judging by past successes when Britain and America have taken the field together. But this suggests a problem for us. After all, the great obstructionists when it came to Iraq were precisely France, Germany and Russia – one nation the home of the most barbaric form of fascism, one the cradle of Soviet tyranny and the other the rhetorical home of the “rights of man” which in reality has often been or befriended tyrants. The difficulty here is obvious: two of the nations at the center of the EU success story in continental Europe are the same ones that turned on the US and its British allies in Iraq. Moreover, they turned on these countries in the name of international law, the United Nations and democratic dialogue with Arab states and, most specifically, with the Palestinians. Simply put, these nations, once the home of Hitler and the Terror, are now trying to outdo the Americans on their most valued claim: to be the great defender of democracy in the world. The background to all this can get a bit muddled. France is rather unique in Europe, and is similar to the US, in that it was the first to initiate a democratic revolution which it then sought to export to the rest of Europe. France is different from the US in that the revolution was hardly a ringing success. It brought about widespread violence within France itself and it launched the French nation on a seesaw ride that would take it through an ever-changing array of restorations, empires, constitutional monarchies and republics. The problem for France was complex, but in some ways also quite simple. This was a proud and ostentatious nation ruled by absolute monarchs who made a show of their position unequalled among European royalty. This was a country of deep Catholic sympathy, but also one that had had its share of civil strife over the religious issue. The revolution sought to overthrow all that had come before, but in doing so it became a model for extreme democracy run riot. If anything, it showed how difficult it can be to install practically functioning liberal democracy in a pre-democratic nation. Most often, the theories of democracy (and this would include French democracy, fascism – which is also a version of democracy – and all forms of modern communism) would take on a life of their own and lead to horrendous violence and repression while reasoned and functioning democratic institutions would go by the wayside. Today, continental Europe is relatively democratic, but it came at a price, and even then, it can certainly be argued that Europe’s democracy is still highly prone to the failings of democratic theory as present in the bloated welfare states and obsession with human rights that currently dominates so much of the talk coming from Eurocrats. From the historical perspective, the twentieth century was largely a battle fought between liberal democracy on one side and totalitarianism in its two modern forms of fascism and communism on the other. Once again though, we must note that the great representatives of liberal democracy – the British and the Americans – were then, and remain today, the democratic nations least likely to be swayed by the temptations and arguments of totalitarian ideology. It says a great deal that a Labor Prime Minister would be George W. Bush’s greatest ally in Iraq, while a French right-of-centre President would become his greatest opponent. The conclusion one must draw is that perhaps liberal democracy hasn’t really won the day, at least not to the extent that we would like to think. Rather, it appears that in the heart of Europe, the battle goes on to some extent, and even if fascism and communism as such will not likely return, the fanaticism of democracy – key to both fascism and communism – still wield great influence in Europe and they are finding their way into international law and international organizations enamored of this law. And this brings me to a final point. It has often been said that if the US had not turned to isolationism following World War I, the events that led to World War II could have been stopped. In fact, it probably would have made little difference what the US would have done. The seeds of fascism and communism run deep in continental Europe, and when World War I ended, there were still some powerful arguments in favor of these ideologies in opposition to the “imperialist” liberal democracies. Of course, the underlying contention of the argument about the failure of the US to open itself to the world after the Great War is itself an argument for globalism and radical democracy since the US is specifically criticized for failing to join an international organization – the League of Nations. It probably was the case that the US could have used its considerable might to attempt to stop fascism and communism, but would it not also have been the case that, had it done so, it would have faced exactly the rhetorical broadsides heard over Iraq today? In fact, it took World War II and its attendant horrors to defeat fascism in the minds of Europeans. Communism took even longer to fall, and when it did so it still had numerous fellow-travelers in the West. Today, many in Europe use a radical form of democracy against the democratic claims made by the US. And yet, America goes forth in the world with the claim that it seeks to bring democracy to yet another part of the globe. It would seem that her record has been laudable in this regard, but there are doubts precisely because those to whom she has brought that democracy are not always the most reliable allies in the democratic cause. More importantly, they are themselves claiming democracy is on their side. And all this suggests that democracy, like so many political regimes, carries with it the possibility of its own destruction. This isn’t to suggest that I’m opposed to what the US has done in Iraq – I still fully support the war. What it does say though, as we reflect on the successes of modern Europe, is that there are always dangers, always failures, and democratization has some very peculiar and ominous ones. Letters on The Shield of Achilles The following is the first in a series of posts more or less related to Phillip Bobbitt'sThe Shield of Achilles, to be contributed by myself and Collin May. We have no idea at present how many posts this will eventually result in, but we hope to make it worth your while. Collin, I think your idea of corresponding on Bobbitt’s The Shield of Achilles and publishing the entries as posts on Innocents Abroad as we go along is particularly apropos given the vision we shared from the beginning regarding what this blog would be about. Not everything we’ve written over the last couple of years explicitly treats the fate of liberalism and/or the nation state, but those concerns have framed the context within which I believe every substantial piece that you, John and I have posted on IA neatly fits. You’ll remember that the largest part of the very first post on IA [scroll down] was a criticism of the “End of History” and “Clash of Civilizations” theories explicated by Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington. My primary criticism of those theories was that they both rest on assumptions that are harmful to liberalism. One could respond that that’s merely a political critique – after all, there’s no reason to assume that what’s harmful to liberalism is necessarily untrue. [As a teacher of ours once said, “a wish is not a fact.”] But politics isn’t physics – men are not particles reacting to the forces acting upon them according to universal, pre-determined laws over which they have no influence. There are consequences to treating the claims of liberalism as cultural artifacts – as Huntington does – rather than as fundamental political truths. I’ve read in reviews of Huntington’s latest book, Who Are We?, that he predicts the dissolution of the United States in the relatively near future. I have no doubt this prediction will come true – once a majority of Americans think about liberalism like he does. Unfortunately this is not an unlikely outcome because the opinions of educated Americans are now more likely to be informed by ideas similar to those held by Huntington than by the ideas held by, say, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. Getting back to Bobbitt: the respective paradigms of Fukuyama and Huntington are deserving of more than just political opprobrium – they suffer from that defect common to the ideas of men who get caught up in the strength of their own insights: the theories have been expanded by their advocates beyond the realm of their legitimate explanatory power to become popular dogma. Bobbitt strikes me as quite possibly being a more subtle or thorough thinker than either Fukuyama or Huntington, though I admit part of what feeds this impression is the workman-like scholarship of his book (whereas Fukuyama and Huntington, scholars though they are, present their respective theses in books that are more revelatory than scholarly in tone, despite copious footnotes and, at least in Fukuyama’s case, an impressive bibliography). The Shield of Achilles might be thought of legitimately as a “third way” that profits from some of the insights of Fukuyama and Huntington. In some ways he is closer to Fukuyama (convergence towards the “market state”) and in some ways closer to Huntington (the market state replaces the more or less egalitarian nation state, and Bobbitt does not seem sanguine about its universal acceptance). On the other hand, it’s far from clear that Bobbitt does not also suffer from an attachment to his perspective that may blind him to factors it doesn’t account for. I’m not yet in a position to make a judgment on that, but my default position is a general skepticism towards theories that attempt to explain or predict a great deal (a position with which I know you are highly sympathetic). That said, there is no question The Shield of Achilles is worth discussing on the blog. I don't think the book has received its due attention (certainly compared to Fukuyama’s and Huntington’s respective books), probably because it's so long, and in parts, rather scholarly and dry. But this book treats the fate of politics, particularly bourgeois or market-oriented politics, and does so in a manner that seems to me at least less dogmatic than other similarly ambitious analyses. This strikes to the core of what we always thought IA should be (and in fact has been) about. There’s a lot of meat on those bones Collin. I look forward to hearing from you. Cheers, Jake Tuesday, April 27, 2004
The Two Huntingtons James Ceaser discusses the two Sam Huntingtons and finds them both deficient. The first Huntington characterizes America by "the basic principles of individual rights and government by consent of the governed as these are drawn from universal arguments, such as can be found 'most notably in the Declaration of Independence.' The Creed claims to make its appeal to rational precept (to 'nature'), which is in principle available to all people. (It is curious that Huntington selects the term 'creed' to refer to this dimension, as the word evokes powerful connotations of acceptance on the basis of faith.)" The second Huntington is enamored of culture. Ceaser remarks, "Culture, as any social scientist knows, is a most useful concept until one is confronted with the task of having to say exactly what it means. Huntington does his best, defining it at one point as "a people's language, religious beliefs, social and political values, assumptions as to what is right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, and to the objective institutions and behavioral patterns that reflect these subjective elements"--in brief, nearly everything. But Huntington boils the concept down, as he must, and culture comes to refer to language (English), to religion (sometimes "dissenting Protestantism," sometimes, more broadly, "the Christian religion"), and to a few basic English ideas of liberty. America's culture, in Huntington's shorthand, is "Anglo-Protestantism." The question for Ceaser is whether political science is or can devise "a higher regulative principle that might somehow subsume these two in a more rational account." Update, 4/28/2004 -- Rich Lowry's more unqualified praise of Huntington betrays his lack of understanding of the issues at stake, for Huntington grows increasingly disatisfied with the "Creed." But can one defend or even recognize America without Huntington's "Creed" (government by consent, separation of powers, the protection of minority rights)? Sunday, April 25, 2004
Hamilton's Different Categories David Brooks writes this in today's review of Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton:  "He started a political tradition, dormant in our own day, in which energetic government doesn't oppose market dynamism but is organized to enhance it. Today our liberal/conservative debates tend to pit the advocates of government against the advocates of the market. Today our politics is dominated by rival strands of populism: the anticorporate populism of the Democrats and the anti-Washington populism of the Republicans. But Hamilton thought in entirely different categories. He argued that 'liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power.' He wanted a limited but energetic government that would open fields of enterprise and give new directions to popular passions." What Will Happen to Aventis? The recent takeover battle for French drug-maker, Aventis SA (AVE), betrays the existence of nationalism in France and resistance to the forces uniting Europe into a single marketplace. Aventis has been trying simultaneously to fend off a hostile takeover bid from French rival, Sanofi-Synthelabo SA (SNY) and court Swiss drug giant, Novartis AG (NVS). The problem is that France has warned Novartis to back off, citing national interest as a reason to encourage an Aventis-Sanofi merger. More specifically, France has argued that Aventis's vaccines are crucial to France's defense against bioterrorism -- an argument that most investors do not take seriously. On Thursday, Novartis, defying the Chirac government, entered formally into talks with Aventis which has courted Novartis as a "white knight." A Novartis-Aventis merger would create the second-largest drug company in the world behind Pfizer (PFE). Novartis entered talks after EU officials and Germany put pressure on France to avoid protectionism (Aventis has significant operations in Germany and was itself created from the merger of French and German companies). At least in this instance, the protectionist nation-state is apparently alive in France. Update 4/25/ 2004, 9:30PM -- Looks like French nationalists got what they wanted. |
