ABSTRACT
Justin Vaisse is not yet a household name but this young man may go far. Of North African background, he has taught at Sciences Po in Paris and been a speech-writer for the French Minister of Defense. Currently at Washington’s Brookings Institution, he is the leading French expert on—and the nemesis of—the neoconservatives. The fact that he is spending time in America may not necessarily affect his political prospects. After all, Georges Clemenceau did the same. Of late, he has discovered and given publicity to what he calls a new genre in American literature: Eurabia. Among the chief protagonists in this new genre he mentions above all Bernard Lewis, the greatest Orientalist of our time, and Bat Ye’or, who popularised the term “Eurabia” to warn against the Islamicization of Europe. In view of the Homeric struggle between the two sides—Lewis has been accused of appeasement if not worse by the other side—it seems somewhat far-fetched to find a common denominator for them, but Vaisse is a resourceful man.
