The Cold War can be seen as a turning point for French anti-Americanism for both quantitative and qualitative reasons : larger segments of the opinion got involved in anti-American rhetoric than before the war, while the political center of gravity of that rhetoric shifted from (extreme) right to (extreme) left. But in terms of intellectual schemes and rhetorical patterns, Cold War anti-Americanism in France can be read as the unfolding of an almost century-long intellectual tradition. At the core of the French reluctant admission or outright rejection of the now undeniable American hegemony was this dilemma : to be, or not to be part of the Western “bloc”. Taking sides with the US in the looming political, ideological and military confrontation between East and West was unacceptable to French Communists and other sympathizers of the socialist States of Eastern and Central Europe; but the Alliance Atlantique also met with hostility in much wider circles of opinion, inasmuch as it appeared as the fulfillment of an old French prophecy : the menacing mutation of the American Sister Republic into a formidable, hostile Empire.

While the first intuitions of America’s imperial destiny among French observers can be traced back to Volney, a geographer who had been awed by the magnitude of the continent and deeply shocked by Adams’ French-bashing, the notion really settled in French minds on the occasion of the American Civil War. Instead of the expected division of the Federation into two, three or four independent States, the French witnessed with growing uneasiness the formidable concentration of power, economic and military, in the hands of the “Anglo-Saxon” victors. In this first stage of development, the French notion of an American Empire is construed as a mirror image of France’s own imperial ambitions, and at the same time, as part of a global analysis of world conflicts in terms of competition between large ethno-cultural entities (Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Slavic). The “imperialist” direction taken by American foreign policy at the end of the 19th century would only confirm and reinforce an already deeply rooted suspicion about the devouring nature of the US, that “realistic ogre”, as it was called by a French columnist at the turn of the century.

The next development in the French (pre)vision of American imperialism stemmed from the difficulty to make it fit into the European mold of a colonial Empire : hence the early appearance and success of another paradigm to take into account the particular form of Empire specific to 20th century America —a virtual, abstract, immaterial empire, where domination does not require conquest, where policing does not imply civilizing, where exploitation is achieved without annexation. Within that frame, even returning to an isolationist policy (as was done by the Republican administrations after Wilson’s demise) could be interpreted and denounced as a fig-leaf strategy, American ostensible withdrawal from world affairs becoming the very proof that the world was already in their invisible hands. In the fiercely anti-American rhetoric of the late 20s and 30s, the “benevolent Empire” is the paternal, well-meaning French colonial empire, while American imperialism assumes the devastating aspect of a faceless, anonymous but omnipresent and omnipotent domination, exerting its boundless influence on the entire planet without having to flex its muscles, except by proxy.

French anti-American discourse during the Cold War can thus be read as an exercise in exacerbation, all those anticipated scripts being reshuffled, rephrased and melted together in the new context of a dependent economy, a collapsing empire and a deep moral despondency.