Sarkozy's New French Foreign Policy
By DIANA JOHNSTONE
CounterPunch
"One of the best known fables by the 17th century French poet Jean de la Fontaine tells of a fly that buzzed around a horse pulling a heavy coach up a steep hill. When the horse made it to the top, the self-important fly gave himself, and his buzzing, credit for getting the coach to the top.
The new French foreign policy of Nicolas Sarkozy looks like that. Flies buzz around, looking for some event they can claim to influence......
Openly abandoning any notion of a European defense independent of NATO, Sarkozy called for what in Washington is called greater "burden sharing" by Europeans. There was no more talk of a "multipolarity" in world affairs as an alternative to "unipolarity" around a U.S. hyperpower. Rather, like the Bush administration itself, Sarkozy rejected "unilateralism" as a failure, calling instead for "an effective multilateralism"--starting with the Franco-U.S. alliance.
Sarkozy better watch out. The coach he thinks he's pushing up the hill may be about to go over the side of a cliff--taking the rest of us with it."
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