President Chirac walked out last night out of the European Summit when Ernest-Antoine Seillière, head of the Unice employers organization (a European Business group) and a Frenchman, decided to speak in English. Chirac’s advisors said that he did it to defend the French language. My reaction to that is that it is just pure theater and that the French language does not need to be defended by meaningless acts that only fuel ridicule. Chirac is obsessed with what he considers to be the domination of the Anglo-Saxon culture which is shown by the fact that English is spoken everywhere (including in France) and by the fact that some of the biggest companies are American (i.e.,Google). In his speech yesterday, he defended the recent actions of his Prime Minister Villepin, which have embraced economic patriotism because he said that French companies needed to be protected from companies which sole motive is to make money. I am increasingly irritated and discouraged by Chirac’s vision of the world because it seems to put too much emphasis on language and culture and to believe that globalization is bad because it isn’t such Americanization, but Anglo-Saxonization. Such a narrow vision of the world isolates France and takes the focus out of what matter most in the world of today, skill, competence, and the ability to sell a product, a product, and a country. Chirac is placing too much emphasis on language. He is making a mistake by insisting that France and Europe need to create European champions to not allowing companies such as Google and Microsoft to dominate the global economy. With his pedantic views, Chirac is showing that he still lives in the pre-globalization era when nationality and geography were everything and when it was believed that the state could create industries. If France is to succeed in having its own Google and Microsoft, it will do so because it will place the focus where it should on talent, entrepreneurship and on competition. The world isn’t going to become multipolar because French speaking people are going to stop using Google, but because they would have been enable to offer alternative products, services, and culture that will be more attractive not because they are not Anglo-Saxon, but because they are better.
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