French president Jacques Chirac is fond of certain things American: junk food, his summer-school days at Harvard, the South Carolina belle he almost married, Bill Clinton. Campaigning in the spring of 1995, Chirac enthused about the prospect of working with his U.S. counterpart; the two men, both gregarious, backslapping extroverts, had hit it off from their first meeting in Paris a year earlier. But how, a reporter asked, would sensitive Franco-American relations fare? "They will be excellent," Chirac predicted. Pause. "And contentious."
Right on both counts. The first six months following Chirac's election were a lovefest. When France's leader touched off...
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