FRANCE:France's pro-American president risks being seen as 'Bush's poodle', writes Lara Marlowein Paris
French president Nicolas Sarkozy smothered America with love on his first official visit to Washington this week. "I want to reconquer the heart of America in a lasting way," he told a black-tie dinner at the White House.
"Sarko l'Américain" was even more effusive in his address to both houses of Congress. The US (not France!) is "the greatest country in the world", he said.
"The strength of America is not only material; it is first of all a moral and spiritual strength."
There was not even a veiled reference to Guantánamo or US secret prisons. Nor did the French leader mention Iraq, unless one took his assertion that "each time an American soldiers falls, I think of what the US army did for France" as a reference to the war there.
"With friends, one can have differences, disagreements, arguments," Sarkozy said. "But in difficulty, in trials, one is with one's friends, at their side, one supports them, one helps them."
The schism over the invasion of Iraq in 2003 - when the audience which now rapturously applauds Sarkozy banned "French fries" from their canteen - was reduced to a mere family spat.
French presidents have long professed to be friends of the US, but one senses no underlying superiority complex in Sarkozy.
Dominique de Villepin, the former prime minister who led the charge against the Iraq war and lost the power struggle against Sarkozy, sounded like sour grapes on RTL radio yesterday: "You cannot be content with looking into each other's eyes and declaring you love one another. You must transform that into a vision and action for the world."
Comparisons with George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette were overdone. Their collusion in the revolutionary war was the founding act of Franco-American friendship, and US president George Bush and Sarkozy blatantly styled themselves as their modern incarnation.
Bush harked back to 1777, when "another George welcomed another Frenchman".
Dessert at the White House dinner was named "homage to Lafayette" and Sarkozy addressed Congress beneath portraits of Washington and Lafayette. The two men held their closing press conference at Washington's home at Mount Vernon.
Washington was said to be an adoptive father to the orphaned Lafayette. Bush has no sons, and his European "offspring", Tony Blair and José María Aznar, recently left power.
Sarkozy's father abandoned his wife and three sons when Sarkozy was a small boy. The impression of a solitary Sarkozy seeking comfort in America's affection was strengthened by his divorce last month, which interested the US public far more than this week's visit.
Sarkozy boasted that the ministers accompanying him represented his "new France": a socialist foreign minister, the country's first female finance minister, a female justice minister whose parents are Moroccan and Algerian, and a female African human rights minister who is only 30.
Sarkozy's speech to Congress was interrupted 25 times by applause, including 10 standing ovations. At a time when the US is hated in much of the world, the French president listed quality after quality, beginning each phrase with, "The America that I love . . .".
Not only is Sarkozy the most pro-American French president in history, he is also the most pro-Israeli.
In his speech to Congress, he erroneously referred to Iran as an Arab country.
Sarkozy also flip-flopped on Afghanistan. Last April, he told French television: "The long-term presence of French troops [ in Afghanistan] does not seem decisive to me."
This week, he told Congress: "I tell you solemnly: France will remain committed in Afghanistan as long as necessary, for what is at stake in that country is the future of our values and those of the Atlantic alliance."
Sarkozy again made French reintegration of Nato's command contingent on the EU establishing its own defence force and policy. Washington has always been skittish about the "two-pillar" theory.
Sarkozy has his eye on France's EU presidency next year, but he's playing an awkward balancing act. Bush expects him to "deliver" Europe on policy issues like sanctions against Iran, but the more he is perceived to have replaced Blair as "Bush's poodle", the less real influence Sarkozy will have in Europe.
Yesterday Sarkozy's love fest with the US ended with a jolt of French reality: protests by police officers, students, transport workers, court officials, civil servants, farmers and lorry drivers are growing, and will find expression in rolling strikes starting on November 13th. In Paris, the "new France" Sarkozy boasted of in Washington feels alarmingly like the old one.