MOSCOW -- When you are told that a person whom you don't know has won the lottery or lost a job, your feelings are pretty predictable and simple: Envy in the first case and empathy in the second. Yet if the person in question is somebody you know, your reactions get more complicated. You immediately start calculating whether the recent episode fits what you know about the person; if it does fit, you don't dwell on it much longer; if it doesn't, you become painfully perplexed.
It is the same with countries. When one you haven't been to gets into the news, you judge it momentarily, guided by your fixed set of values. If you have been to the country, you take your time and base your judgment on your experiences there.
I suspect that few people who have been to France were surprised by its performance throughout the Iraq crisis, when Paris loudly and deliberately defied Washington by opposing war in Iraq.