Libertarian Leanings

America's Image Restored! Or not.

According to the TimesOnline French President Nicolas Sarkozy is monumentally unimpressed with American President Barack Obama.  Meek is the word that was used to describe Obama's dealings with Turkey at the G20 economic summit in London.  Sarkozy was also dismissive of Obama's call for nuclear disarmament.

Mr Sarkozy is pouring cold water on President Obama's efforts to recast American leadership on the world stage, depicting them as unoriginal, unsubstantial and overrated. Behind leaks and briefings from the Elysée Palace lies Mr Sarkozy's irritation at the rock-star welcome that Europe gave Mr Obama on his Europan tour earlier this month.

The American President's call "to free the world of the menace of a nuclear nightmare" was hot air, Mr Sarkozy's diplomatic staff told him in a report. "It was rhetoric – not a speech on American security policy but an export model aimed at improving the image of the United States," they said. Most of Mr Obama's proposals had already been made by the Bush administration and Washington was dragging its feet on disarmament and treaties against nuclear proliferation, the leaked report said.

Personal pique and French politics are also behind the souring of Mr Sarkozy's self-promoted honeymoon with the United States. On the personal side, the French President is needled by the adulation for an unproven US leader whose stardom has eclipsed what he sees as his established record as a world troubleshooter. "The President is annoyed by what he sees as the naivety and the herd mentality of the media," said a journalist who is privy to Elysée thinking.

The French president is not alone in his doubts about Obama's leadership credentials.  A natural Obama ally, Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, wonders if The One has any backbone at all.

Significant shifts

The recent regime change in France, replacement of Jacques Chirac by President Nicolas Sarkozy, has created a shift in the balance of forces in Europe, according to Charles Krauthammer.  Sarkozy is ready to work in conjunction with the United States, a turnabout from France's tradition of "permanent anti-Americanism."

On the largest possible stage -- the U.N. General Assembly -- President Nicolas Sarkozy put Iran on notice. His predecessor, Jacques Chirac, had said that France could live with an Iranian nuclear bomb. Sarkozy said that France cannot. He declared Iran's nuclear ambitions "an unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world."

His foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, had earlier said that the world faces two choices -- successful diplomacy to stop Iran's nuclear program or war. And Sarkozy himself has no great hopes for the Security Council, where China and Russia are blocking any effective action against Iran. He does hope to get the European Union to join the U.S. in imposing serious sanctions.

"Weakness and renunciation do not lead to peace," he warned. "They lead to war."

America's tarnished image?

Today's Wall Street Journal uses its lead editorial to praise French President Nicolas Sarkozy for setting a new tone in French foreign policy -- one in which anti Americanism is not its most prominent feature.

That's worth applauding at a time when the conventional wisdom says the next U.S. President will have to burnish America's supposedly tarnished reputation by making various policy amends. In Germany, under the conservative leadership of Angela Merkel, foreign policy views have been moving closer to the Bush Administration's, not further away, while new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has made clear he will not depart significantly from the pro-American course set by Tony Blair.

But it is Mr. Sarkozy who, true to his reputation, has been the boldest in stepping up to his global responsibilities. On Afghanistan, he told the assembled diplomats, "the duty of the Atlantic Alliance as well as that of France," is to "increase efforts." He then announced he would be sending additional trainers to assist the Afghan Army. On Israel, he said he "would never budge" on its security. He warned about Russia, which "imposes its return on the world scene by playing its assets with a certain brutality," and he cautioned against China, which pursues "its insatiable search for raw materials as a strategy of control, particularly in Africa."

Cleaning up after Chirac

According to Amir Taheri, France's recently elected President Nicolas Sarkozy has set about correcting the foreign policy mistakes of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac.

Chief among these was Chirac's desperate efforts to prevent the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussain's regime of terror.
Chirac failed to save his friend's regime but managed to do serious damage to relations with the US, Great Britain and more than 40 other nations that joined the coalition of the willing to liberate Iraq in 2003.

Sarkozy's moves to correct the mistake started even before his election when he met President George W. Bush at the White House in 2006 and described Chirac's policy as "arrogant".

The surprise visit paid to Iraq by France's new Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner this week is another move by Sarkozy to shed Chirac's disastrous legacy.

Among the benefits of Sarkozy's reversal of Chirac's foreign policy is that it undermines one of the arguments that was and is still used against the liberation of Iraq.

The French change of attitude in Iraq destroys one of the key arguments of all those in the US who opposed the liberation of Iraq. The argument is that by toppling Saddam, the US alienated some of its key allies, notably France.

John Kerry, the Democrat presidential nominee in 2004, used the argument as a key campaign theme, echoing the views of other leading figures of the American left such as Michael Moore, Jane Fonda and Noam Chomsky, not to mention the financier George Soros.

This ought to make for an entertaining presidential campaign season in the coming year, what with Democratic aspirants wringing their hands in despair over America's supposed loss of standing in the world.  In reality the world is moving to the right in spite of the ongoing media attack against anything conservative, and in spite of the Daily Kos, MoveOn.org, George Soros funding for everything leftist. 

America's good standing in the world is assured as long as America stands by her promise to the Iraqis.  The Democrats' failure to force America to renege on that promise and to abandon them will be the true source of their despair.