The United States and France have many good reasons to be exasperated with their difficult partnership. Over the years, each often found the other to be a predictable obstacle to the other's leadership or aspirations. During the Cold War, however, their bilateral crises never had serious or lasting consequences, and both countries repeatedly proved to be reliable and proactive partners whenever crises reached a danger point. But with the Cold War over, haunted by the daunting legacies of m September 2001, and in the midst of the uncertainties surrounding European institutions, the reciprocal visions that shape the US-French ambivalence ought to be adjusted. However French policies are (mis)represented in the United States, and whatever is thought of US policies in France, understanding them for what they are, and why - and what they do, and how - would be more constructive than the over-simplified, and occasionally offensive, caricatures that became commonplace during the harsh and flawed debate over Iraq.