Book Review – Sister Republics: Security Relations between America and France

By Jordan Becker

7.7.2024

H-Diplo

How should scholars understand the Franco-American relationship? Is it “special?” If so, what is special about it? David Haglund seeks to answer these questions in a wide-ranging monograph which tracks the Franco-American relationship from the seventeenth century to the present, leaning on a dizzying array of intellectual traditions. If there is a single conceptual focus to Haglund’s analysis, it is on the notion of “strategic culture.” After exhausting an array of hypotheses to explain what he refers to as a “suboptimal” Franco-American relationship” (loc. 511), he settles on strategic culture, citing André Siegfried’s explanation of American views of France as oscillating between admirative love and hate. The French side of the relationship might be considered similarly. Hermione’s confession to Cléone in Racine’s Andromaque sums up Franco-American intellectual relations neatly: “Je l’ai trop aimé pour ne le point haïr”.

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