Vive la France!

By Kevin D. Williamson

Friday, July 3, 2026

 

When I was 19 years old, I was drinking Shiner Bock in Austin, writing newspaper editorials, and going to see punk shows at Liberty Lunch—a full schedule, but somewhat short of the ambitions of Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, the young French aristocrat who, being inspired by the ideals of the American Revolution, bought a ship and sailed to the New World in order to present himself to the Continental Congress and offer his services. Congress was in Philadelphia, and Lafayette landed in South Carolina—he was an idealist, not a geographer.

 

But with a letter of recommendation from Ben Franklin in his hand, he made his way up to Philadelphia, where Congress, grateful for the services of an enthusiastic young aristocrat who had the good taste to bring along his own money, commissioned the 19-year-old as a major general. Contrary to what probably was Congress’ intent, Lafayette took his commission seriously—not merely as an honorary title. The revolution was to be a grand adventure, to be sure, but also a hard one: Lafayette was wounded at Brandywine, endured the hardships of Valley Forge, and was one of the key players when the tide was turned at Yorktown. Lafayette also provided a critical channel between the upstart Americans and the French monarchy, whose financial and naval power were simply indispensable to the project of American independence.

 

No Lafayette, no United States of America.

 

Spit hot contempt at foreign aid all you like: No foreign aid from France, no United States of America.

 

The French have contributed a heck of a lot more to the great American project than that magnificent statue in New York Harbor. Of course, we saved France’s bacon in a big way—twice—in the world wars. But if you think that makes us even, that we have paid France back, then I would say only that you do not know how friendship works: Friendship is a sediment, not a ledger. Lord Palmerston and Henry Kissinger et al. of course are correct that allies and friends are different things, but the French have always been both. Who else can say that they were there with us from the beginning? Ed Burke was right about the American cause, and he was right about the character of the French Revolution, too, but Ed Burke wasn’t freezing his dangly bits off at Valley Forge—Lafayette was. A nation that cannot remember these things and continue to feel their relevance—not as a historical curiosity but as a real and living and entirely relevant thing—is a nation that does not understand itself. The people of such a nation may find themselves swayed by supposed “realists” who speak coldly about the “national interest,” but if there is anything we know about those “realists,” it is precisely that they do not understand the national interest.

 

This is a time for thinking about the things we like and love best about these United States but there is a national shortcoming weighing on me that I feel compelled to mention: Of all the many regrettable political developments of the past dozen years, the most regrettable is the fact that the United States has become such a poor friend and a shabby ally, and not only to the French. Americans sneer at NATO, an alliance organized around a collective-defense provision that has been invoked precisely once in its history: rallying to the defense of the United States after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Americans lament—not without reason—the expense of what seems to many to have been a pointless war in Afghanistan, and we mourn the loss of American lives there. We are less likely to mention the 457 British soldiers who gave their lives in that conflict, the 159 Canadians, the 90 French, the 62 Germans, the 53 Italians, the 44 Poles, the 44 Danes, and the Australians, Spanish, Georgians, Romanians, Dutch, Turks, Czechs, New Zealanders, and Norwegians. When the United States under Joe Biden decided to suddenly quit Afghanistan, our government did so with hardly any consultation with the allies who had fought and died beside us there. It was a blunder and an insult. The same administration blindsided the French with the AUKUS agreement that, among other things, torpedoed a French-Australian submarine project–another blunder, another insult. The succeeding administration, it goes without saying, has done everything within its considerable power to make things worse with its childish displays of incompetence, ingratitude, and resentment. There is a certain horrifying symmetry at work: Donald Trump, a man without friends, presides over a nation without allies–or one that will be without allies if we continue on our current course.

 

Americans sometimes talk like we are the only people in the free world who will fight, forgetting—if we ever knew—that (to take one example of many) Canada’s losses proportional to its population were about nine times those of the United States in World War I, and that Canada was in it before we were. The Canadians were there in World War II, they fought alongside Americans in Korea, stood with us in the Gulf War in 1991, flew missions alongside Americans over Kosovo. The British have been just as steadfast if not more so—when much of the rest of the world was walking sideways away from the United States on the eve of the Iraq invasion, the British stepped up: 45,000 personnel in all, including 26,000 ground troops. The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards may sound quaint to the American ear, but they showed up in tanks and fought the biggest armored battle U.K. forces had seen since World War II. Please do go lecture those brave soldiers about being “freeloaders” on U.S. power.

 

We didn’t get to 250 by ourselves. There have been times when the United States has carried the world on its back—and times when the United States has been borne up by our friends and allies. We never forget when it’s been us doing the heavy lifting—but we are, at times, shamefully forgetful of what others have done for us.

 

I have not gone to many semiquincentennial parties this year, though I am looking forward to Independence Day—I do love fireworks. (The best fireworks show I ever saw was from the porch of Lucianne Goldberg, whose New Jersey home was a great reminder that the people in Weehawken have a view of Manhattan while the people in Manhattan have a view of … Weehawken.) But I did recently go to a party hosted by the Lafayette Company, a Washington-based communications firm founded by my friend Ellen Carmichael, whose French ancestry makes her more mindful of the Franco-American alliance than most. (And perhaps she is inclined to be history-minded: Her great-great-great-great-grandfather, Robert Mills, designed the Washington Monument.) As you might expect, the Lafayette Company celebrated with a French theme, hosting Consul-General Caroline Monvoisin and entertaining guests with a presentation by Benjamin Goldman, an actor who performs as Lafayette. As the fictitious Lafayette recounted his role in the American Revolution and his triumphant return to the United States in 1824, accompanied by his son, Georges Washington de Lafayette, I felt a little bit ashamed of my country but also sad for it—that we have lost touch with something important and that we are denying ourselves the benefits and the pleasures of these centuries-spanning friendships and alliances.

 

I sometimes find hope for our country hard to come by. But maybe the recent nadir is only part of the usual ups and downs. The centennial year 1876 wasn’t the greatest year in American history, either—a disputed presidential election took months to sort out. For that matter, the country wasn’t in great shape when Lafayette returned in ’24 to have a look around and, among other observations, lament the persistence of slavery. Lafayette was not blind to the sins and shortcomings of the new republic, and many of those persist. Americans can be a stiff-necked and bumptious people. Let us not be an ungrateful people.

 

 “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” That’s life. This too shall pass. Nothing new under the sun. All that.

 

God bless America, yes. We will need His blessing.

 

But, also: God bless the friends and allies who have invested their own blood and treasure in the extraordinary project of liberty that we took up 250 years ago. Vive la France!