(Pierre Garello speaks at CATO Institute) (920) By Jim Fisher-Thompson Washington File Staff Writer Washington -- How great or real is the rift between America and France from the French perspective? And is it based on diametrically opposed approaches to the Iraq crisis or on more deeply rooted economic and political differences? According to French economist and professor Pierre Garello, who explored these topics with foreign affairs specialists and French and American journalists at an April 28 luncheon at the CATO Institute, a free-market oriented think tank, much of the current tension between the two old allies is media-driven "silly talk." It should have no lasting effect so long as "we keep debate focused on differing political and economic viewpoints" and stay away from emotional thinking "because it's almost impossible to argue with an obsessed mind." While it is true that many of the French people do not admire President Bush, "mistrusting" his foreign policy as too "imperialistic," the Frenchman pointed out that a majority of his fellow citizens consistently say they have a "good opinion" of the American people and are "personally attached to a French-U.S. alliance." Garello, who lived in America for five years while studying at New York University, teaches economics at the University of Aix-en-Province where he heads the Centre d'Analyse Economique. He is also director of the Paris-based Institute of Economic Studies - Europe, a foundation, like CATO, that espouses the principles of classical liberalism, emphasizing individual freedom and responsibility over state control of the political and economic lives of citizens. He said the first step in reducing the tensions that were inflamed recently by the French Government's refusal to support the U.S.-led war in Iraq must be to confront some of the core beliefs that have influenced French thinking about America for a number of years. Central to that is a fundamental disdain by French intellectuals of America's open-market, entrepreneurial economy, which Garello said is the thesis of Francois Revel's recently published "L'obsession anti-americaine: Son fonctionnement, ses causes, ses inconsequences," in which he shows that "anti-Americanism has much to do with anti-capitalism." This idea, he asserts, has historically been a unifying force behind much French animosity toward America. Garello explained this is an attitude that has filtered down to the French public who live in a "largely socialist country" where it is believed "the market system will lead to results worse" than an economy controlled by the central government. "It has become a widespread dialectic in France," he said, that capitalism brings misery and inequality rather than prosperity. And the message, mainly from the political left, is that the United States, the main proponent of open-market economic reforms, "is terrible" in protecting job security and the type of social safety net that many fear is threatened in France by globalization. Garello said Revel argues that "all those clichés are unfounded and that a single drop of intellectual honesty would be enough to show that the truth often lies at the opposite [extreme] -- You get less poverty in the U.S.; less inequality and they care more about the environment than many other countries around the world." Speaking anecdotally, Garello declared France has "little entrepreneurial spirit and is more a country of engineers and bureaucrats." He said it was rare for one of his own students to express an interest in starting a business, adding that even French CEOs of large companies tended to come from prestigious academic institutions rather than up through the ranks of private business. Another important thing to remember, the economist said, is that "socialism in France goes beyond" political party affiliations. "The French are socialists in the sense that they naturally support and call for the intervention of the central government in many spheres of economic and social life," which leads to another difference between the French and Americans -- their attitudes toward political freedom. "The prevailing political philosophy in France is quite different from the one prevailing here," Garello emphasized. While Americans believe limited government is best, "that has never been the case in France" where the concept of freedom involves governmental power that is "virtually unlimited." In France, Garello said, "We don't tie freedom to less government, so when something goes wrong [economically], we naturally turn toward the state to try to solve the problem for us." Because France relies on governmental remedies, the economist said, economic reforms are slow to take shape. The result is a lack of international competitiveness leading to greater unemployment. "Our leaders are not trying to open our eyes" and are just interested in mouthing the socialist rhetoric that makes them popular in the polls, he added. On the war in Iraq, which French President Jacques Chirac criticized the United States for undertaking, Garello quoted a poll showing only 14% of French respondents believed Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation of evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at the United Nations justified intervention. A lot of that anti-Americanism was promoted by French media coverage of the Iraq crisis, which Garello said was largely one-sided. "If you call covering the American side and then criticizing it two-sided, then I guess it was balanced," he said facetiously. "Actually, anyone who gets their [Iraq crisis] news from French TV or newspapers is going to be, by necessity, misled."