So did George Bush really, really mean it when he promised Jacques Chirac that he would never forgive or forget French perfidy and France’s machinations at the UN during the run-up to the war for regime change in Iraq? The short answer is “yes”.

True, Colin Powell, his emollient Secretary of State, is performing his role as good cop by touring Europe and making soothing noises to the French and Germans. After all, that is what diplomats do. True, too, that the Germans are trying to return to America’s good graces by offering more support for Taleban-clearing efforts in Afghanistan.

Even the French, with the scent of new contracts in their nose, and urged on by a nervous foreign policy establishment, are suggesting that bygones are best treated as bygones, and that practical men of affairs must put past treacheries behind them. So yesterday Chirac directed his representative to support an American resolution ending sanctions against Iraq — although his ever-unctuous Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, made it clear that such support should not “for an instant” be taken as “legitimising” the coalition’s war against the Iraqi regime.

All very interesting, and all completely irrelevant to the future course of US foreign policy. Call it unilateralist, call it Wilsonian in its desire to make the wonders of democracy available to other nations, call it Rooseveltian (Theodore, not Franklin) in its robust willingness to use military power to defend what has come to be called the homeland, it boils down to one thing: an unwillingness ever again to cede the defence of America’s vital interests to any body in which the French — or anyone else, but especially the French — can interfere with that defence.

American policy once favoured European integration. After all, a United States of Europe would make Europeans more like us, give Henry Kissinger’s successors the one telephone number to dial in an emergency, eliminate the national rivalries that have brought the world so much grief and provide America with a strong ally.

That was then and this is now. The emerging European superstate is seen by France as a rival to the US, not an ally. The euro is seen less as a facilitator of intra-EU trade than as a rival to the dollar, which is why Europe’s politicians are chortling about its recent rise, despite the devastating effect that is having on the economies of euroland. And the new European Defence Force is clearly aimed by France at becoming a substitute for, rather than the supplement to, Nato that Tony Blair hoped it would be.

Most important in the emerging American view is the fact that the multinational institutions, in which power is distributed on the basis of the situation prevailing more than half-a-century ago, at best no longer serve American interests, and at worst can be used by France to thwart America’s defence of its interests. The French veto on the UN Security Council, a power granted to it at the request of Winston Churchill to offset the justifiable loss of French confidence consequent on their surrender to an outmanned German enemy, is an anachronism. It could be tolerated so long as it was wielded with discretion, but Chirac overplayed his hand when he used it to harass and humiliate the United States. Even Colin Powell now feels that enough is enough, and that American policy must be put beyond the reach of a France determined to restore la gloire by tweaking Uncle Sam’s nose at every opportunity.

This policy need not mean withdrawing from the UN, or having President Bush stay in Switzerland when the G8 heads of state gather in a few weeks’ in Evian, France, or even continuing what the French noisily claim is the Administration’s policy of leaking anti-French stories to the press. The UN can be treated with the benign neglect that will relegate it to a talking- shop-cum-emergency relief organisation, the President might just be able to muster enough Texan bonhomie to be cordial to Chirac and Gerhard Schröder at G8 meetings, and the Administration can leave French-bashing in the able hands of the American and British media.

But the new policy will mean relying on ad hoc coalitions of nations that share American values, rather than on a UN in which France holds a veto and nations predominate that see Libya and Cuba as worthy members of its human rights commission, and only recently slated Iraq to head its disarmament commission. It will mean working with individual members of the EU who see America as a defender of freedom, rather than with the Franco-German axis that sees America as a rival “pole”.

Powell’s spokesman says “there’s all kinds of reasons” for yesterday’s meeting between the Secretary of State in Paris and de Villepin and the other G8 foreign ministers. Permanent rapprochement with France is not one of them.

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