France's suggestion of superpower arrogance comes days after Rumsfeld revisited the scene of recent bickering over French opposition to the Iraq war by distinguishing between "old" and "new" Europe - language which infuriated Paris in January.

CNN: France accuses U.S of 'economic war'

Most countries with big histories have to wrench themselves into gazing into the darker chasms of their past: Americans about slavery and the near-genocide of their country's indigenous peoples, Britons about the racial arrogance and cruel excesses of empire, Spaniards and Italians about fratricidal war and fascism, the French about collaboration and cowardice, and Germans most acutely of all about the Holocaust and the slaughter of the second world war.

ECONOMIST: Sorry isn��t enough

The preference of the characters for the foreign (Italian food and French cigarettes) over the national, and the arrogance and egoism which success brings them, are all embarrassingly recognisable.

ECONOMIST: New German films