Prodigal Son

Editorial of The New York Sun
November 20, 2007

Only six months into the job, President Sarkozy has already confounded his critics by transforming France from Europe's most anti-American country to its most Atlanticist, by confronting at home a host of entrenched interests (ranging from train drivers to the Banque de France), and by setting an example of leadership that has cost him his marriage but gained him the respect of at home and abroad.

Yet Mr. Sarkozy would not be the Gaullist that he is did he not quest for la gloire that has captivated the French imagination since Napoleon. It was this quest which led his predecessors Jacques Chirac, François Mitterrand, Giscard d'Estaing, Georges Pompidou, and even De Gaulle himself to throw down the gauntlet to America with their misguided vision of a protectionist, dirigiste European superpower.

It is not yet clear whether Mr. Sarkozy's conception of glory differs so completely from that of every other president of the Fifth Republic that he is ready not only to abandon traditional Gallic rivalry with les Anglo-Saxons, but to rethink what Europe's place in the world ought to be. His visit to Washington suggested that he is prepared to forge new alliances that would once again give real substance to the concept of "the West."

No sooner was Mr. Sarkozy home than he gave to the European Parliament a speech so protectionist that it might have made De Gaulle blush. With much of France on strike and threats of civil disobedience by state employees, he is in danger of committing the fatal mistake of "Order, counter-order, disorder." Between the generosity of Tony Blair and the perversity of Jacques Chirac, Mr. Sarkozy risks confusing friend and foe alike.

On the war Mr. Sarkozy and his foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, as well as his justice minister, Rachida Dati, a Muslim, speak a different language from Mr. Chirac. The only surrender monkeys in France now are the socialists and the fascists, and the Quai D'Orsay sounds, at least on Iran, more robust than Foggy Bottom. President Bush might like from his new French friend more practical support in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the prize that now dangles within his grasp is the reintegration of France into NATO's command structure.

Mr. Sarkozy's resistance to Turkish membership in the European Union reflects the platform on which he ran. But if Mr. Bush can welcome France, the prodigal son, back into the Alliance, then he will be able to claim that he and Mr. Sarkozy have healed a rift that has endured since 1966, when both men were children. That would tower over the problem of Turkey, important though it is.