From the time I arrived in France, aged three, with an American passport and barely able to form a sentence in any language, right up to today, my growing up has been punctuated by visits to the American Embassy in Paris — and that has allowed me plenty of time to observe it in all its strangeness.
I remember little about my early visits, save the fact that my mom explained to me that as soon as you entered the embassy building, you were on United States soil.
Now, seated in the waiting room of the very same building to apply for my first passport as an adult, I reflect on the same paradox: How is it that the United States, a country not even 300 years old, can waltz onto a side avenue of Place de la Concorde, which is older than the nation itself? How can one describe this peculiar in-between space that one finds oneself in for the space of an hour (if lucky)?
Put simply, it is a sort of limbo, the sole advantage of which is being left to pursuits such as reading or writing in lieu of phone-scrolling (smartphones are confiscated by security at the entrance). After reading a few pages of Alexis de Tocqueville’s reflections on American democracy — an apt topic for the surroundings — I took out my notepad and began to scribble, starting with the basics.
The embassy’s inner layout is like an American bank, complete with standing booths and paperwork. Add to that the strains of disgruntled chatter, English-accented French or French-accented English, and the monotone chime on the PA speaker when each waiting ticket number is called to a particular desk. The embassy’s waiting room logic — if there is any — is beyond me; I find it even more indecipherable than that of the afterlife waiting room in Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice,” which at least followed a numerical order. In the embassy, however, the screen jumps from ticket number P400 to W901. Occasionally, you hear the embassy employee behind the booth utter the none-too-reassuring words “it’s going to take a while,” the “it” referring, in my mind, not only to the time to fill out and file your paperwork or for your request to be processed, but to the entire embassy experience itself.
Mr. Trump’s frown, full of unquestioning arrogance, casts its shadow over the room. His countenance resembles that of a spineless wrestler, more soldier-like than on my last visit five years ago when his Plasticine smile was more that of a game show host offered a four-year trip to the White House.
As I look around, my eyes fall on the presidential portrait hanging on the wall. Mr. Trump’s frown, full of unquestioning arrogance, casts its shadow over the room. His countenance resembles that of a spineless wrestler, more soldier-like than on my last visit five years ago when his Plasticine smile was more that of a game show host offered a four-year trip to the White House. In 2020, I had noticed the old portrait was hung crooked; now, alas, it is straight. I find this a good analogy for the turnaround in the perception of Trump prior to his reelection, as many who once called Trump a danger to society — a therefore crooked individual — are now part of his cabinet and recognize him as decent and “on the level”: curiouser and curiouser, as Lewis Carroll once wrote. A few of these such paradoxes are the Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; Trump’s Special Ambassador to Hollywood, Sylvester Stallone; and the current vice president, Mr. Vance, whose portrait is below Trump’s on the embassy wall in the unholy trio completed by Secretary of State Rubio.
Where’s Musk? I cannot help but wonder. He arguably holds more influence than any other elected official, bar Trump, in the country.
Slowly, my thoughts return to the room. More booths, more waiting, more odd accents, some yawns. When my number is finally called, I am tempted to break into a rendition of “Oh, Happy Day.” If waiting is a means to keep American citizens patriotic, then they certainly must have succeeded with me and countless others. I raise my right hand, swear that the information provided for my new passport is correct to the best of my knowledge. Yes, it is; thank you, Mr. Keppler. You are free to go.
Feeling ravenous but content to be back in France, I cross the Avenue Gabriel and walk over to a café nestled in the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli opposite the Tuileries gardens. I need to mark my return with a croissant and some hot chocolate. On my way over, I stop and photograph the plaque of one of the buildings I pass: the Hôtel de Talleyrand. I was familiar with the place — my grandmother mentioned it in her first novel, set in Paris — but I researched it some more over breakfast.
Built in the 1760s, this hôtel particulier, which denotes, in French, a luxurious private residence built in a city for one family and its servants, was designed under the administration of King Louis XV based on outlines by Ange-Jacques Gabriel (the architect after whom the nearby avenue is named). Acquired by the Talleyrand family in the nineteenth century, then by the Rothschilds in 1909, it was requisitioned by the German authorities during the Occupation, and ultimately became United States federal government property three years after Paris’ liberation. The histories of the Hôtel de Talleyrand and of the embassy were, as I later learned, linked: The former acted as an American consular center prior to the latter’s construction.
Until 1952, the Hôtel de Talleyrand was a nerve center for the United States’ European policy as it housed the George C. Marshall Center — the headquarters for the four-year postwar program that funded Western Europe’s reconstruction. Normandy, where I grew up, was one of the many bombed-out territories that benefited from the Marshall Plan, allowing it to rebuild cities such as Le Havre, Caen, and Saint-Lô (the last of which history books have nicknamed “the capital of ruins”).
This connection is one of a few Franco-American ties in this neighborhood, cemented quite literally since the beginning of United States history; indeed, although the American Embassy’s current building, the Chancery, was only inaugurated in 1933, it was Benjamin Franklin himself, an ardent Francophile, who led the first American overseas diplomatic mission to France and became the United States’ first ambassador to the country. In the Saint-Michel area closer to Paris’s center is a café, Le Procope, where, in the 1760s, Franklin signed a Franco-American alliance, an act that foreshadowed France’s financial support for the American Revolution in the ensuing decade.
I would even argue that American aid to France through the Marshall Plan prolonged the historical closeness between these two countries, as the plaque on the façade of the Talleyrand reminds us: “The Marshall Plan [was] administered here at the Hôtel Talleyrand, 1947–1952.” It then quotes the words of the founding text formulated by Marshall himself: “against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.”
Rifling through my history class memories, I recall that the Hôtel de Crillon, a luxury hotel (now owned by the Rosewood group) opened in 1909 in a 1758 building located next to the embassy, was where American president Woodrow Wilson organized several talks during the Paris Peace Conference — a series of diplomatic meetings that took place between 1919 and 1920 to formalize Europe’s peace treaties following the end of World War I. The highlight of this conference was the Treaty of Versailles, which, among other provisions, gave form to Wilson’s brainchild, the League of Nations. Wilson’s Hôtel de Crillon conferences were a turning point in postwar foreign affairs as they were delivered in English, ending a decades-long use of French as the European diplomatic language and subtly elevating the United States’ place in the geopolitical pecking order.
These talks took place during the day. Wilson did not stay at the hotel himself, but his adviser, Edward House, did. Theodore Roosevelt had been another guest there a few years prior, and, at some later date, Winston Churchill would come to stay. Safe to say the hotel’s guest roster has been far from shabby; Madonna and Taylor Swift have been some of its more recent visitors.
His recent decision to effectively dismantle USAID made me wonder what straits Western Europe might have been in had Trump been in power after World War II, or indeed, whether there would have been a Marshall Plan at all.
Crossing the great plain of la Concorde with the Champs-Elysées stretching out behind me, I enter the Tuileries and sit down on a bench near the fountain where ducks congregate and children push toy boats into the water.
How precarious these Franco-American ties have grown in recent years. How strong is the bond that was formed between the two nations back in the 1770s? Or was it ever that strong? What is left of the ideals the two countries held dear? On one side of the Atlantic, a convicted felon and aspiring dictator is in power for the second time; on another, a right-wing presidential hopeful has been arrested and barred from running in the 2027 election for financial malfeasance.
Granted, I prefer to be on the European side of the Atlantic over the American side. Granted, too, that the statesmen I have mentioned —Franklin, Wilson, Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall, and the Resistance leader and President Charles de Gaulle — were far from perfect. They were products of their time and their stances on many issues are debatable. Yet, they had a respect for diplomacy and for the common heritage shared by their different nations — in a nutshell, they cared about the importance of studying history and using it as a force for good.
This is an ideal that many politicians since the end of World War II have fallen short of. Nevertheless, with figures such as Ms. Le Pen comparing herself to Martin Luther King Jr. in a statement made after her arrest, Mr. Musk whose salute at the 2025 presidential inauguration was disturbingly familiar, and Mr. Trump who has encouraged civil insurrection and categorized entire nations as “shithole countries,” we have fallen even shorter. His recent decision to effectively dismantle USAID made me wonder what straits Western Europe might have been in had Trump been in power after World War II, or indeed, whether there would have been a Marshall Plan at all.
As one studies history, one realizes that historical revisionists are not new. But never has such blindness been promoted on so large a scale and at so fast a rate.
While watching the crows peck at the lawn, I think of the warning that my native country sends out, unwittingly, to the world. Perhaps in Central Park others are writing and thinking the same thing. But in this area of Paris’s eighth arrondissement, I feel as if I have traveled to and from the United States, and without having witnessed anything terrifying, I am happy to be back in France.
