Nash,
Believe it or not, it was a scottish tour bus driver that got me thinking along those lines. He is a decent source of information, pointing out this site and that, here's where this happened, that building was built by this or that king, oh yea this is where the british barracks were when they occupied the city, blah blah. The only time he talked about the city actually getting damaged though was an inadvertant bombing by a lone allied bomber during WWII that hit one or another historic landmark while the Germans occupied Paris. He talked about how the German General in charge of the Paris occupation refused to follow orders to burn the city to the ground and that General was never allowed back into Germany as he is still considered a traitor, even though there is no question it would have been immoral to level the city.
Sure there was a little good natured ribbing about how Paris is great and it's a shame the French are currently occupying it, but underneath that seemed to be great respect for what has been done in Paris. One of the newest building complexes in Paris is their new national library. Their goal and neverending task is to translate every word ever published into French. The enormous ego necessary to simply assume that documents ought to be archived in French boggles the mind, but that is to some degree the essence of the French national identity. France endures not only as a nation but as the rightful center of the world's culture. If you look at France's international policy from that point of view, a lot of what they do makes more sense. They do not seem to feel the need to "save the world", they aren't currently into nation building, and they're content to keep their cultural influences turned inward because all else is at best a pale imitation of the original French. They act out of national self interest and if that makes them look greedy, selfish, weak, or whatever, that's sort of ok as long as they survive and France flourishes.
It's nearly the middle point between absolute isolationism and empire, although that's a simplistic description because it's not a 2-dimensional scale of behavior.
