"Pro-American"

Oliver Kamm and Andrew Sullivan both detect a certain lack of quality in speculation as to the nature of Gordon Brown's foreign policy views that puts a lot of emphasis on his admiration for Cape Cod as a source of the belief that he'll pursue a "pro-American" line.

All true, but also all tending to indicate a certain blinkered quality to the "anti-Americanism" frame. Francophilia is, I think, something we all understand as being distinct from admiration for French foreign policy and a desire to see France' hand strengthened abroad. The Francophile loves Paris, or the countryside in the South; admires French literature and painting; is charmed by the way French women throw their scarves so stylishly and with seemingly so little effort. As to whether or not you think France's heavyhandedly neocolonial approach to Francophone Africa has been a good thing, this is neither here nor there.

The reason is that one's feelings about French national power have, at the end of the day, almost nothing to do with one's feelings about France. Similarly, it's not a dislike of America that leads many people to be uncomfortable with exercises of unilateral American military might. Having a foreign country deploy so much lethal force so cavalierly and with so little regard to world opinion or international institutions is, simply put, frightening and it's this frightening quality that drives negative views of the US; not negative views of the US that make unilateral militarism scary.