Chanson d'amour
(this week's newsletter)
I trust you鈥檝e been feeling well-loved this week 鈥 because President Sarkozy of France loves all of us. He adores us, admires us and wants to move in with us. (Apologies to my non-British readers: in this context 鈥渦s鈥 means 鈥渦s Brits鈥.)
He has smothered us in love, he has ladled love upon us in such quantities that it has been difficult to breathe. He has flattered and flirted so outrageously that his new wife, the delectable former model Mme Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, must have been left wondering if his affections have already moved on.
So how should we react? Well, it鈥檚 always nice to be loved and admired 鈥 and Gallic charm can go a long way. But we鈥檙e grown-ups, aren鈥檛 we, and we know that a flatterer鈥檚 intentions are not, shall we say, always strictly honourable.
鈥淣ations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.鈥 Lord Palmerston, 19th century prime minister and foreign secretary, knew a thing or two about foreign relations -- and I suspect he would not have succumbed to M Sarkozy鈥檚 blandishments. Nor, I fancy, will Gordon Brown.
Yet we did learn something important during the French president鈥檚 visit. He is unusually pro-Anglo Saxon in his outlook; he thinks the UK has shown France the way forward. True, he may be a lot more showy than Mr Brown, but the two men do share a deep admiration for Margaret Thatcher.
For the best part of 30 years, France and Germany have been the motor that drives what is now the European Union. (When it started life as the EEC, its main purpose was to prevent those two countries going to war again.) But M Sarkozy is not a huge admirer of the current German chancellor, Angela Merkel, nor she of him. It has long been a British dream to come between France and Germany, and now, maybe, the dream has come true.
Or maybe not. Lord Palmerston was right about national interests 鈥 and it may well be in France鈥檚 interests to cosy up to Britain, but it is certainly not in its interests to cold shoulder Germany. M Sarkozy isn鈥檛 changing friends; rather he wants some new friends while keeping all his old ones.
What it means is closer cooperation between Paris and London when it suits both parties 鈥 but only then. As for relations between Paris and Washington, the 71-year-old Republican presidential hopeful John McCain likes to joke: 鈥淔rance now has a pro-American president, which just goes to show you that if you live long enough, you'll see everything."
A close aide of M Sarkozy鈥檚 told me at the time of his election last year that the President got on famously with Tony Blair, but found Gordon Brown a lot harder to read. Like Mr Blair, he has a way with words, is a great charmer, and delivers a great speech. None of which can be said of Mr Brown.
Yet I fancy the prime minister would agree that the Royal Gallery in the Palace of Westminster has rarely witnessed a tour de force such as that delivered by the French president on Wednesday. Together, he said, France and Britain can rule the world. 鈥淚f the United Kingdom and France together want more justice, the world will be more just. If the United Kingdom and France fight together for peace, the world will be more peaceful. If the United Kingdom and France unite to brave the rising economic storm and jointly propose the necessary reforms, the world will be less uncertain and more prosperous.鈥
We shall see. Back home, French voters are none too impressed with their flamboyant President鈥檚 performance so far 鈥 and yesterday the French newspaper commented acidly that M Sarkozy had seemed just as British in London as he had seemed American in Washington.
A final word about Mme Sarkozy: some of my colleagues say she reminds them of Audrey Hepburn. I agree she鈥檚 elegant and charming, but for me, La Hepburn will always be, as they say, nonpareil.
Before you feel too flattered, remember that shortly after they came into office about a year ago, the three stooges Sarkozy, Merkel, and Brown came to pay homage to the Emperor George Bush II even though he was already a lame duck President at the time. All three bowed before his lordship and paid tribute. Sarkozy came first and was especially cordial licking not only the tops but the soles of the King's boots. When Merkel arrived, she "invited" the US to join the EU while the schemeing Sarkozy was back in France telling the Turks they could never join the EU because they are not part of Europe. We saw Sarko interviewed by Charlie Rose in January 2007 just before the election. "you are a great people, France is a great people, we have never had any reason for conflict and have always been allies. You came to our aid in World War II, we came to yours in the Revolution" (and they've never let us forget it for a second but tried to get us to keep paying for it. Just how much does it take to repay a debt?) We also saw De Villepin blow the same horn at the Harvard School of Business or International Studies or something or other on C-Span. "There is much we can learn from America, and America can learn from France too." The only thing a winner can learn from a loser is what not to do. The whole thing is as thin and transparent as window glass.
These people are scared and they want something from America and from each other. They think something terrible is heading their way and they are looking for shelter from someone somehow. When it comes to their gloomy prognostication for their nations, they are proabably right but there is nothing the US could do about it even if it were inclined to, their troubles are largely of their own making. Their luxuriously expensive socials safety nets and inescapable web of domestic labor protections they wave about are unsustainable in the existing world economics while the prospect of giving them up to compete with the rest of the world is politically unacceptable. These were built largely on an economic model the US artificially created at its own cost to prevent them from defecting by falling prey to communism in the cold war against the USSR and now that that war has been won, that game is over even if the Europeans don't know it or want to accept it. Only Britain under Thatcher took any steps to deal with the inevitable disappearance of one way US trade and investment favors and that is why they didn't suffer earlier in this decade the way the rest of Western Europe did. Coming here to the US, they came to the wrong place wasting their time and words. As short as the memory of Americans have proven to be, most of us haven't forgotten that the French and Germans cynically kicked us in the teeth or tried to, to protect their corrupt governments' friends who were making money circumventing the UN sanctions by selling arms to Saddam Hussein as they whipped up anti America sentiment all over Europe BEFORE the invasion of Iraq.
They blew up their bridge not only to the American government but to the American people and it will be a long long time before it will be rebuilt if that ever happens. Europe wanted to be America's adversary, that is what Chirac said and now he's got it and it will find that it is a formidable one. The weak US dollar is proving a very effective economic weapon against Europe, so is America's huge investment in industry in China. About the only interests the US and Europe have in common now is the war on terror and Europe is seen by many in the US as an unreliable and ambivalent ally in that war. So Britain, France, and Germany can play each off against the other in their endless political triangle but who cares, it won't do them a bit of good in the end. Europe will be forced to live just like everyone else, that is within the means it earns through its actual productivity...or lack of it.
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