The Washington Post is a “right wing netherworld”? Who knew? Here’s Fareed Zakaria, published in the Washington Post this morning:

At his United Nations debut, Barack Obama urged global cooperation to combat nuclear proliferation, climate change and other problems that go beyond the borders of any one country. The speech was well received around the world, except in one place — America’s right-wing netherworld, which quickly began whipping people into a frenzy.

And here’s Michael Gerson, published in the Washington Post on Saturday:

I can recall no other major American speech in which the narcissism of a leader has been quite so pronounced. It might be compared to Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s “I shall return” — which made it sound like MacArthur intended to reconquer the Philippines single-handedly. But MacArthur, at least, imagined himself as embodying his country, not transcending it. He did not assert that while the Japanese invasion was certainly excessive, America had been guilty of provocations of its own — and now, in the MacArthur era, things would be finally different.

Twice in his United Nations speech, Obama dares to quote Franklin Roosevelt. I have read quite a bit of Roosevelt’s rhetoric. It is impossible to imagine him, under any circumstances, unfairly criticizing his own country in an international forum in order to make himself look better in comparison. He would have considered such a rhetorical strategy shameful — as indeed it is.

It’s a netherworld that apparently extends to the Champs-Élysées:

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, came close to mocking his American counterpart for the good intentions, which Mr Obama had heralded as an “historic” step towards nuclear abolition, even though it set no specific targets or fresh mandates.

“We live in a real world not a virtual world,” the Frenchman told the 15-member council. “And the real world expects us to take decisions.

“President Obama dreams of a world without weapons … but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite.

“Iran since 2005 has flouted five security council resolutions. North Korea has been defying council resolutions since 1993.

“I support the extended hand of the Americans, but what good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community? More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe a UN member state off the map,” he continued, referring to Israel.

The sharp-tongued French leader even implied that Mr Obama’s resolution 1887 had used up valuable diplomatic energy.

“If we have courage to impose sanctions together it will lend viability to our commitment to reduce our own weapons and to making a world without nuke weapons,” he said.

Mr Sarkozy has previously called the US president’s disarmament crusade “naïve”.

Now, I believe that there is a time for words and a time for deeds and right now is as good a time for words as we’re likely to get. Consequently, I wasn’t as outraged about President Obama’s remarks at the United Nations as some apparently were. Unless we’re extraordinarily lucky or President Obama is significantly more skilled than his detractors fear he is, the time for deeds may come all too soon.

However, hasty generalization leading to poisoning the well will not improve the level of discourse. Principled disagreement with President Obama is possible and it need not be politically motivated.

UPDATE

Howard Fineman and Newsweek have apparently entered the netherworld:

The president’s problem isn’t that he is too visible; it’s the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words “I” and “my.” (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.) Obama is a historic figure, but that is the beginning, not the end, of the story.

There is only so much political mileage that can still be had by his reminding the world that he is not George W. Bush. It was the winning theme of the 2008 campaign, but that race ended nearly a year ago. The ex-president is now more ex than ever, yet the current president, who vowed to look forward, is still reaching back to Bush as bogeyman.

He did it again in that U.N. speech. The delegates wanted to know what the president was going to do about Israel and the Palestinian territories. He answered by telling them what his predecessor had failed to do. This was effective for his first month or two. Now it is starting to sound more like an excuse than an explanation.

Fresh off the heels of snubbing Gordon Brown by not holding a joint press conference with him and giving him a gift that could have been purchased at Wal-Mart, Barack Obama has annoyed Nicolas Sarkozy by sending a mash note to former French president Jacques Chirac asserting that, “I am certain that we will be able to work together, in the coming four years, in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world.”

A minor furor has broken out over this in the American blogosphere.  As I note in my New Atlanticist piece, “Obama Reaches Out to Chirac – Another Snub?,” the administration hasn’t explained the letter.  I’m sure the intent was benign but it’s not at all clear how Obama plans to work with a 76-year-old out-of-power politician.

You’ve probably never heard of Jaap de Hoop Scheffer but he’s my new hero. He’s secretary general of NATO and he’s got a message: Europe Must ‘Share the Heavy Lifting’ in Afghanistan.

He says it’s great that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy want a greater voice in Alliance decision-making.  But he says that comes with a price:  Taking an equal risk. He is, of course, absolutely right.

Much more at the link, which is to a piece I wrote for New Atlanticist.

French and EU President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a call from the floor of the UN yesterday to expand the Security Council and G8. Declaring that, “The 21st century world cannot be governed with the institutions of the 20th century,” he argued that inclusion of today’s emerging powers is not just “a matter fairness” but a necessary condition for “being able to act effectively.” “We cannot wait any longer to enlarge the Security Council. We cannot wait any longer to turn the G8 into the G13 or G14 and to bring in China, India, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil,” said Sarkozy.

In “Expand the Security Council? Non. The G8? Qui,” I explain why that proposal is only half bad.

Charles Krauthammer has a scathing column this morning excoriating NATO for its weak response to the Georgia crisis.  He observes that NATO’s recent statement on the matter is “almost comically evenhanded.”

It’s not until paragraph six that NATO, a 26-nation alliance with 900 million people and nearly half of world GDP, unsheathes its mighty sword, boldly declaring “Russian military action” — not aggression, not invasion, not even incursion, but “action” — to be “inconsistent with its peacekeeping role.”

Having launched a fearsome tautology Moscow’s way, what further action does the Greatest Alliance of All Time take? Cancels the next NATO-Russia Council meeting.

That’s it. No dissolution of the G-8 (group of industrial democracies). No blocking of Russian entry to the World Trade Organization. No suspension of participation in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics (15 miles from the Georgian border). No statement of support for the Saakashvili government.

Look, I would have preferred that NATO had been much bolder here.  They announced at Bucharest that Georgia and Ukraine will eventually become members of the Alliance.  That position has been reiterated in recent days by both Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, who blocked Georgia’s admission to a Membership Action Plan at Bucharest. NATO membership, by definition, means that we would consider an attack on Georgian territory — which decidedly occurred here — to be an attack on all members.  It’s a very bad signal, then, that we’ve done so little in immediate response to Russia’s attack on a country we’ve made that declaration about.

That said, NATO is a consensus organization comprised of 26 members with decidedly varying national interests.  Krauthammer is quite right the New Europe has been much stronger here than Old Europe and about the reason for that: “Eastern Europe understands the stakes in Georgia. It is the ultimate target.” Contrariwise, Western Europe has little at stake in Georgia — let alone South Ossetia and Abkhazia — and much at stake with Russia.

Krauthammer is simply wrong when he says that the above measures would be “painless for the West.” Most of our European allies have much more to lose from further alienating Russia than we do because of their geographic proximity and greater economic ties. Most obviously, Russia is a huge energy supplier to the region.

The measures Krauthammer outlines should indeed be on the table. But lesser measures and a game of diplomatic kabuki is going to have to play out before we can achieve consensus on what are rather major steps.

Alliance politics are incredibly frustrating.  That was true in the midst of World War II, when the need for consensus was even more urgent.  Getting agreement from 26 parties on complex problems with significant risks and a decided lack of good options is next to impossible.  Even American experts are far from agreement on what approach is best here, so it’s not surprising that Western and Eastern Europeans don’t see eye to eye.  That means we muddle through and hope to get agreement as events play out.

Two articles cited in today’s Small Wars Journal roundup have almost nothing to do with wars, small or otherwise, but are nonetheless interesting in showing the state of flux of some key international institutions.

Steven Erlanger reports on a bold attempt to forge a “Union of the Mediterranean” which would be something of a minor league for the European Union.

Perhaps the grandest new idea of France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, looking to give his presidency of the European Union a lasting stamp, is the Union of the Mediterranean. An effort to bind the 17 nations bordering the Mediterranean Sea with the European Union around regional projects, the new union will be inaugurated next week at a Paris summit meeting.

But as with some of Mr. Sarkozy’s other ideas, the execution has been haphazard. The Union of the Mediterranean has created resistance among vital allies, like the Germans and the Spanish, and confusion within his own government. The result may be more show than substance.

Peter Alford reports on the emergence of what would be a radical transformation of the G8.

The largest, most expensive gathering of world leaders under the G8 banner convenes today confronted by an awesome array of problems, from runaway oil prices and scarce food to flaring inflation and global warming, but with little prospect of real breakthroughs on any front. Failure this year could call seriously into question the viability of the Group of Eight industrialised nations, a 33-year-old gathering originally of the top Western powers, struggling now for relevance against huge shifts in the world’s political and economic geography.

That shift will be underlined when the “Plus 5″ developing nations issue for the first time their own communique after meeting the G8 leaders on Wednesday at the Windsor Hotel, the luxurious and now heavily-secured summit site on Lake Toya, in Toyako, near here.

Since the 2005 Gleneagles summit, China, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa have met annually as the “G8 plus 5″ with the chief summiteers, the leaders of the US, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Russia. But because of their rising economic power, their huge hunger for energy and food and their critical role in deciding a new climate change regime – or not – after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, the Plus 5 communique will carry as much weight as G8 statements.

The summit situation also gives force to calls from France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain’s Gordon Brown, lately joined by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, for the eight to be expanded to a G13 with the emerging powers as full partners. This idea is strongly resisted by Washington and Tokyo, the Japanese apparently fearing further dilution of their claims to Asian leadership if China gains a seat.

The addition of Russia, a major regional actor but an economic lightweight, to the group in the 1990s opened a Pandora’s box that may be impossible to close. Certainly, China, Brazil and India have stronger claims to membership in the elite economic club than Russia although, I must confess, what Mexico and South Africa are doing on the list eludes me.

Both of these developments — potential breakthroughs in long emerging trends — point to the continual reshuffling of the world order. Attempting to confine major international institutions to its charter members excludes those who now merit membership and who could contribute the the organization’s goals. Opening the window for new members, however, threatens the interests of existing powers in the institution whose ability to steer policy would be diluted.

It’s received precious little notice here in the States but Irish voters have rejected the Treaty of Lisbon, the EU’s latest move towards reform and greater consolidation of power in Brussels:

DUBLIN, Ireland – Ireland’s voters have rejected the European Union reform treaty, a blueprint for modernizing the 27-nation bloc that cannot become law without Irish approval, electoral officials said Friday.

In a major blow to the EU, 53.4 percent of Irish voters said no to the treaty. Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen now will join other EU leaders at a summit next week to try to negotiate a new way forward.

Anti-treaty groups from the far left and right mobilized “no” voters by claiming that the treaty would empower EU chiefs in Brussels, Belgium, to force Ireland to change core policies — including its low business tax rates, its military neutrality and its ban on abortion.

“This is a very clear and loud voice that has been sent yet again by citizens of Europe rejecting the anti-democratic nature of Brussels governance,” said Declan Ganley, leader of Libertas, the most prominent anti-treaty campaign group in Ireland.

The euro common currency fell to a one-month low on the news.

Ireland, one of the greatest beneficiaries of EU largesse, is hardly hostile to the EU. With generous EU grants Ireland has been transformed from one of Europe’s poorest countries to one of the most prosperous countries in the world. Rejection of the treaty was probably due to some combination of a reassertion of Ireland’s pride in its own distinctive institutions and the failure of proponents of the treaty to produce a convincing plain language explanation of the benefits of approving the treaty. The opaque bureaucratese of the treaty certainly made it impossible for the treaty’s text to speak for itself.

I’ve put additional thoughts on the implications of the rejection at The Glittering Eye.

UPDATE (James Joyner): Given that I’m now professionally an Atlanticist, I’m a bit torn on this. I am, however, unreservedly amused at David Kopel’s headline, “How the Irish Saved Civilization, Again.” And I agree with him on this point:

Treaty proponents lamented that Ireland, with only 1% of the EU population, could derail a 27-nation treaty. But the very fact that only 1% of the EU’s population was allowed to vote on a treaty which would massively reduce national sovereignty and democratic accountability was itself an illustration of the enormous “democratic deficit” of the EU in general, and the Lisbon Treaty in particular. According to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the Lisbon Treaty would be defeated in every EU nation if referenda were allowed.

I never liked the heavy-handed workaround of the Lisbon model, thinking that if the EU member states are going to cede significant sovereignty they ought at least do it in an open, transparent process.

The EU continues its eastward expansion, which I believe mostly good, partly by holding out the economic carrots of membership but partly, at least, by touting its “shared Western values.” It requires would-be members to jump through substantial hoops in order to get in accord. It’s only fitting, then, that it should abide by those same shared values in such an important process.

UPDATE (Dave Schuler)

I’ve found the complaints about how un-democratic the treaty being defeated by the Irish is being floated by supporters of the treaty enormously amusing. The reason that Ireland was the only country to vote the treaty down was that Ireland was the only country to hold a popular vote on the matter. The probability that a direct popular vote in all 27 EU countries would have resulted in the treaty being approved is, was, and always has been zero. Indeed, the only way the measure proceeded as far as it did was that the other EU countries’ governments avoided a popular vote.

Despite — or perhaps partly because of — backing from the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has denied membership to Macedonia and rejected a bid to grant Membership Action Plans to put Georgia and Ukraine on a one-year path to membership in the Alliance. BBC:

Nato has confirmed it will not yet offer membership to Georgia or Ukraine after the 26-member alliance was split amid strong objections from Russia. Moscow said Nato’s promise that the ex-Soviet republics would join one day was a “huge strategic mistake”. At a summit in Romania, Macedonia was also denied Nato entry but Albania and Croatia were given the green light.

US and Czech officials agreed to base a missile defence radar on Czech soil, a plan that has also angered Russia. And President Nicolas Sarkozy indicated France would return next year to the Nato military command it left in 1966 in protest at the dominance of US commanders. He also said hundreds of extra French troops would be deployed to Afghanistan, easing fears of a crisis within the Western coalition there.

[...]

US President George W Bush had called for Georgia and Ukraine to be allowed to join. But the move was opposed by Germany and France, amid concerns voiced by Russia over Nato’s eastward expansion.

Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference Georgia and Ukraine would become members eventually. The alliance decided not to offer Ukraine and Georgia a membership action plan – a gateway to membership – but agreed on Thursday to review this in December. Georgian diplomats said they were “not happy” with the delay but welcomed the promise of eventual membership.

Macedonian officials said their rejection was a “huge disappointment” that would undermine stability in the Balkans. The US had also called for Macedonia to join but this was strongly opposed by Greece, which has a northern province that is also called Macedonia. It argued that the former Yugoslav republic’s insistence on being known as Macedonia implied a territorial claim.

As the Alliance grows further outside its traditional sphere, accession of new members gets more complicated. There are legitimate concerns over the readiness of all of these prospective members to contribute to the security goals of the Alliance. At the same time, allowing Russia to dictate demands as to the ability of sovereign states to enter into treaties is quite problematic.
And, as Steven Taylor notes, the “Macedonia” situation almost defies logical discourse.

Ultimately, though, this is bad news. I’ll explain why in a longer post later today.

“French President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed Wednesday that rioters who shot at police during a flare-up of Paris suburban unrest would be severely punished,” AFP reports.

Strikes me as a good idea.

Via OTB News.

Rudy Giuliani says electing a Democrat in 2008 would put the United States to the left of France.

Rudy Giuliani’s speech Wednesday afternoon at Drake University had a general election feel as the contender for the Republican presidential nomination drew significant contrasts between himself and Democratic Oval Office hopefuls. “If we are not careful and you don’t elect me, this country will be to the left of France,” Giuliani said of a potential presidential win by New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama or former Sen. John Edwards. “That is why I am running.”

[...]

On Wednesday, Giuliani pointed out there was much more at stake in this race for the presidency. The former New York City mayor reiterated his message of staying on offense in the war on terror as well as warning the Des Moines crowd that following past policies of France when it comes to health care and other issues — as he said Democrats are suggesting — are the wrong direction for the United States.

Giuliani drew a laugh when he discussed a dream he has had about the strides France has made in moving toward the policies similar to America. In the analogy from his dream, he said French President Nicolas Sarkozy was traveling in a plane to the U.S. when he met another plane, carrying Democratic presidential candidates Clinton, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and John Edwards, flying to France. “They (are trying) to figure out to get all these failed policies from France and let’s see if we can inflict them on the American people,” Giuliani said. “Higher taxes, more government control of health, more government control of education and more government control of who knows what — the air that you breathe. The whole world is going in the other direction of bigger free markets, more free trade, lower taxes, small essential government. And we have three candidates for president going in exactly the opposite direction.”

Giuliani’s speechwriters continue to sound the right tone for the primary season. The France line is brilliant and the follow-on argument plays into his strengths as a fiscal conservative.

Rhetoric and reality are often at odds and this is no exception. As Dave Schuler and others have regularly pointed out on OTB Radio, both of the major American parties would fit comfortably within the British Conservative Party and, indeed, occupy its right wing. The French parties are more polarized for institutional reasons but, certainly, even Barrack Obama is to the right of Sarkozy on tax policy and health care. Moreover, we have a system of checks and balances which ensure that whomever gets elected president will have only moderate impact on the direction of domestic policy absent a Great Depression-like national crisis.

Campaigns, though, have to over-emphasize differences and the consequences of voting for one candidate or party over another. And having a debate on the relative direction of trade, taxes, and governmental incursion into the economy is always welcome.

The Bush Administration is distancing itself from the UK and sidling up to the new governments of Old Europe powers France and Germany, Toby Harnden reports for the Daily Telegraph.

The White House no longer views Britain as its most loyal ally in Europe since Gordon Brown took office and is instead increasingly turning towards France and Germany, according to Bush administration sources. “There’s concern about Brown,” a senior White House foreign policy official told The Daily Telegraph. “But this is compensated by the fact that Paris and Berlin are much less of a headache. The need to hinge everything on London as the guarantor of European security has gone.”

With Tony Blair departed, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, is seen by many as the man George W Bush can best do business with in Europe. Although Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has not lived up to initial expectations in Washington, she is still seen as far preferable to her predecessor Gerhard Schröder.

The White House official added that Britain would always be “the cornerstone” of US policy towards Europe but there was “a lot of unhappiness” about how British forces had performed in Basra and an acceptance that Mr Brown would pull the remaining 4,500 troops out of Iraq next year. “Operationally, British forces have performed poorly in Basra,” said the official. “Maybe it’s best that they leave. Now we will have a clear field in southern Iraq.” Another White House official described Mr Brown as “challenging” and far less close to the US than Mr Blair.

I certainly hope that this is sensationalistic reporting or the out-of-context rantings of one not-so-senior official. Dishonoring the service of our must trustworthy NATO ally would be sheer madness. As Andrew Sullivan observes, it sends exactly the wrong message to those who have stood by us.

Unfortunately, I find this report quite believable. Bush has some paranoid tendencies and occasionally takes his glib “you’re either with us or you’re against us” line way too seriously. Except, oddly, when dealing with those who are actually against us rather than allies with disagreements in how to achieve mutual aims.

All signs point to France rejoining NATO’s military structure more than forty years after declaring its independence and kicking the alliance headquarters out of Paris. Norman Polmar provides some background:

France is expected to soon rejoin NATO’s military command after a 40-year absence. The French government withdrew from the NATO military structure in 1966 (although remaining a member of NATO’s political-policy structure). France’s new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has placed strong emphasis on France’s relationship with the United States. And, he recently declared that he would soon undertake “very strong” initiatives on European defense and give France “its full place” in NATO. Subsequently, Defense Minister Herve Morin said that he was “convinced that European defense will make no progress unless France changes its political behavior within NATO.”

It’s important to recall that, despite notable differences, France has remained a NATO ally:

Despite having withdrawn from the NATO military structure, French naval forces conducted bilateral exercises with other NATO navies, including the U.S. Navy. And, certain U.S.-French weapon agreements were undertaken, especially for upgrading American-built tanker aircraft and ship-launched missiles. The French joined other NATO forces in the Bosnia conflict as well as the 1991 assault on Iraq to free Kuwait, which Iraqi forces had taken over the previous summer.

Although the previous French government was not supportive of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the French did send forces to Afghanistan. However, earlier this year France withdrew its 200-strong special forces from Afghanistan; those ground troops were participating in the U.S anti-terror operation code-named Enduring Freedom. The then-Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said, “There is a general reorganization of our [troops].” However, the 1,100 French troops engaged in the separate, NATO-led International Security Assistance Force remain in Afghanistan.

U.S. forces have also worked with French forces in Djibouti in northeast Africa. (Djibouti is a small, impoverished republic just north of the Horn of Africa on the strait of Bab el-Mandeb. It is bordered by Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea, an area of great political and economic turmoil.) The United States has used the French military-air base in Djibouti for several combat and support operations in the region. Indeed, the case can be made that—despite its public stance—the French have been most helpful to several U.S. military activities.

Still, full integration is not only a positive step for Transatlantic relations but significant militarily. And it serves French interests, too, as Denis MacShane explains:

[I]t is hard to see how a sovereign, French-alone geopolitics has helped advance French national interests or made the world safer.

Mitterrand was unable to shape an effective Balkans politics despite huge public pressure in France to stop the Serb siege of Sarajevo and killings of Catholic and Muslim opponents. In the end it was American air power and the ruthless application of Nato military-political diplomacy that stabilised the Balkans.

Jacques Chirac believed he had the magic touch with Arab leaders, whom he endlessly courted. But French soldiers are now bogged down in Lebanon and Afghanistan, unable to move and unwilling to fight. Despite the grand noise of sending French troops to Lebanon after the 2006 conflict with Hezbollah, France has been unable to prevent the flow of arms from Iran and Syria into Lebanon as Islamist forces prepare for another assault on Jews living in Israel.

While the rest of Europe, starting with socialist Spain in the 1980s and followed by post-communist Europe a decade later, scrambled to join the organisation, France maintained its Gaullist indifference to a Nato that was searching for a new role.

Russian officers now work at Nato headquarters in Brussels and Russian MPs outnumber French politicians at the important Nato parliamentary assembly meetings, where top US generals explain their thinking to and take hard questions from European and North American policy-makers.

In the 1960s, America was the supreme military power outside the communist bloc. Today, America is a wounded beast. Its soldiers are surrounded by a growing Islamist enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan. America’s leaders are looked upon with dismay by pro-Americans and with open contempt by much of the political class in Europe.

While many Europeans hanker after the pleasure of soft power, the enemies of democracy have no compunction about using hard power.

Germany is the strongest defender of soft power and refuses to allow her soldiers to do any fighting in Afghanistan. Yet the arrest of German citizens trained by al-Qa’eda in Pakistan and ready to kill fellow Germans en masse shows that for jihadists, Frankfurt is as much a target as London or Madrid. The lack of success of the occupation policies in Iraq is not appeasing Islamist armed violence. The former German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, called fundamentalist jihadi politics “the new totalitarianism”.

The democracies failed in the 1930s to arm themselves against fascism. After 1945, the lessons were learnt. Nato sent an unmistakable message to Stalinist ideology that on the armed front democracy would defend itself.

De Gaulle had the luxury of pulling France out of Nato because the alliance had already stabilised Europe. Is the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, prepared to be as bold as de Gaulle and say the time has come for France to re-enter Nato? It would send the clearest signal possible to the enemies of democracy that the new totalitarianism, to use Fischer’s words, will not pass.

The Cabinet minister Ed Balls has rightly argued in a report just published that Palestinians need economic development. So does every part of the Arab and Muslim world from Morocco to Pakistan.
But economic development will not take place without a defeat of jihadi terrorism. That needs harder power. Nato with France reintegrated can shape a European dimension to a new security policy aimed at helping the elected governments of Afghanistan, Lebanon, and in due course, Pakistan – even Iraq – to defeat their external enemies.

France outside Nato makes the concept of a common European defence policy difficult – if not impossible. France in Nato can take the lead, with Britain, in the long overdue rationalisation of Europe’s military policy, profile and procurement.

[...]

No European nation can alone exercise effective military puissance. A new Nato and a new integrated military unity in Europe would send the enemies of democracy a clear message that they will not win.

While the United Nations Security Council remains the preferred vehicle for collective security, for a whole host of reasons, the requirement for unanimity among its Permanent Members, including authoritarian Russia and China, almost always takes that option off the table. Despite its divisions — especially given its rapid membership expansion — NATO is a far more wieldable tool. The full participation of France would make it a more viable one.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy caused quite a stir by raising the specter of bombing Iran to prevent it becoming a nuclear weapon state.

The biggest challenge to the world was the avoidance of conflict between Islam and the West, President Sarkozy told the annual gathering of French ambassadors. Iran was the crossroads of the Middle East’s troubles and its nuclear aims “are without doubt the most serious crisis that weighs today on the international scene”, he said. A nuclear-armed Iran would be unacceptable and the world must continue to tighten sanctions while offering incentives to Tehran to halt weapons development, he said. “This initiative is the only one that can enable us to escape an alternative that I say is catastrophic: the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran,” he said. He did not say who would carry out such an attack, which has been suggested by policy experts in Israel and the US.

This rhetoric strikes me as a means of increasing the urgency of the diplomatic process rather touting a preference for military action. I would note, too, that most “policy experts” think bombing Iran would have disastrous consequences; the only question is whether they would be more catastrophic than a nuclear Iran.

The rest of the speech was interesting, too, signaling substantive changes in French foreign policy.

President Sarkozy, the most pro-American French leader for decades, condemned the US invasion of Iraq, but also distanced himself from Mr Chirac’s doctrine of a “multipolar world”, a formula that Washington saw as code for a refusal of European partnership. Where Mr Chirac was careful not to criticise President Putin’s Russia, President Sarkozy said: “Russia is imposing its return on the world scene by using its assets, notably oil and gas, with a certain brutality.”

This is welcome news on several fronts. It simultaneously demonstrates an understanding that cooperation with the United States is essential to solving most of the problems Europe faces while highlighting France’s sovereignty. Sarkozy is not going to be America’s adversary; nor is he our “poodle.” That’s healthy.

And his shot across the bow of the increasingly authoritarian Putin regime is good to see. Getting Russia back on the path to following international norms is vital to head off major problems with a floundering great power.

On Europe, the President seemed to soften his outright hostility to eventual Turkish entry to the Union. He said that France would not block negotiations provided that a high-level “wise men’s group” was appointed to sketch the form that the Union should take. He also demanded that other European nations should contribute more to the Union’s defence to ease the burden on France and Britain.

This is mostly self-interest talking but that’s the nature of international politics. Still, figuring out what to do about widening Europe’s institutions and about the longstanding issues of burden sharing are important. Anything that gets those issues on the table is helpful.

Nicolas Sarkozy’s government has pledged to take a lead role in brokering a peace deal among Iraq’s warring groups.

After years of shunning involvement in a war it said was wrong, France now believes it may hold the key to peace in Iraq, proposing itself as an “honest broker” between the Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions.

The shift was one of the most concrete consequences yet of the thaw in French-American relations following the election in May of President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose administration no longer feels bound by the adamant refusal to take a role in Iraq that characterized the reign of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac.

During a three-day visit to Baghdad that ended Tuesday, the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said that the time had come for France, and Europe, to play a greater role in Iraq. “I believe this is the moment. Everyone knows the Americans will not be able to get this country out of difficulty alone,” Kouchner told the French radio station RTL on Tuesday before returning to Paris. “I really believe that depending on what happens here it will change the world.”

It would be ironic, indeed, if France were able to come in and save the day. As Laura Rozen notes, Bob Ney, the man who changed the name of French fried potatoes in the House cafeteria to “Freedom Fries,” is now in jail while France is suddenly (with apologies to J. Michael Straczynski) our last, best hope for peace.

While I’m skeptical that they — or any outside power — can solve anything quickly, their change of course here is welcome news. One would think that they would have more chance of being seen as an honest broker than we do at this stage.

Former UN Ambassador John Bolton writes an open letter to the Brits telling them, essentially, that they must choose between the United States and the European Union.

[S]aying that the UK’s “single most important bilateral relationship” is with America, but is not comparable with UK membership of the EU, is a clever but ultimately meaningless dodge. Drop the word “bilateral”. What is Britain’s most important “relationship”? Does Mr Brown regard the EU as a “state under construction”, as some EU supporters proclaim, or not?

The answers to these questions are what Washington really needs to know. What London needs to know is that its answer will have consequences.

For example, why does a “union” with a common foreign and security policy, and with the prospect of a real “foreign minister” have two permanent seats on the UN Security Council and often as many as three non-permanent seats out of a total of 15 council members? France and Britain may not relish the prospect of giving up their unique status, but what is it that makes them different – as members of the “Union” – from Luxembourg or Malta? One Union, one seat.

Mr Brown cannot have it both ways (nor will President Nicolas Sarkozy), in part because many other EU members will not let the matter rest. Of course, the Security Council permanent seat itself is not the real issue – it is the question of whether Britain still has sovereignty over its foreign policy or whether it has simply taken its assigned place in the EU food chain.

Consider also the US-UK intelligence relationship. Fundamental to that relationship is that pooled intelligence is not shared with others without mutual consent. Tension immediately arises in EU circles, however, when Britain advocates policies based on intelligence that other EU members do not have. How tempting it must already be for British diplomats to “very privately” reveal what they know to European colleagues. How does Mr Brown feel about sharing US intelligence with other Europeans?

States have multiple alliances and overlapping interests. To the extent the EU is a free trade zone, the UK’s membership no more impinges on its “special relationship” with the US than our membership in NAFTA harms the UK. But, yes, if the EU becomes something like “The United States of Europe,” with the UK a mere semi-autonomous region within a federal collective, Bolton’s concerns are justified.

There are some on the Continent who would like to see that happen. The UK, historically, has been perhaps the most sovereignty conscious state in Europe. Indeed, it was very late addition to the predecessor European Economic Community and has been dragged kicking and screaming to most expansions. It still hasn’t adopted the Euro, preferring control over its own currency. One can scarcely imagine, then, that they will suddenly let their foreign policy be dominated by Europe to the detriment of their relationship with the US.