DECLINISM IN FRANCE:

PARIS A growing sense of France’s decline as a force in Europe has developed here.

The idea’s novelty is not the issue itself. Rather it is that for the first time in a half century that the notion of a rapid descent in France’s influence is receiving wide acknowledgment within the French establishment.

At its most hurtful and remarkable, and yet perhaps its most honest, there is the start of acceptance by segments of the French intellectual community that French leadership, as it is constituted now, is not something Europe wants – or France merits.

Read the whole thing, which is fascinating.