Drawing The French Battle Lines

Over the past year, Sarkozy has played diplomatic hardball while getting ready for a brawl, a strategy that buttresses the vision for France he is now presenting. France has taken the lead among the Europeans, for instance, in tough negotiations to impose sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt programs that could enable it to build nuclear weapons. In cultivating Olmert and Assad, the French also are playing a more active, public role in Middle East peacemaking than ever before, partly because Washington's initiatives have been getting nowhere.

But it hasn't taken long for the French military establishment to push back. Generals writing anonymously in the conservative daily Le Figaro charged Sarkozy with "a true downgrading of our country's military." They deemed his plan a strategy for communications more than defense. Even before the report came out, the British were skeptical, especially about French plans for a European defense college and a European operational command in Brussels. "This will end in tears," predicted retired Brig. Geoffrey Van Orden, a British Conservative member of the European Parliament. But then Sarkozy declared that the college and headquarters needed further study. "The French want everything!" says Valasek. "But on the most controversial points [with the British], they went soft." Indeed, Sarkozy's pragmatic view toward change had emerged again. After all, there's no need to wreck the party on Bastille Day even before it starts. France's revolution in defense and foreign policy has only just begun.

© 2008