Sarkozy’s Recent Comments
I was intrigued by this article in the Times last month about Nicholas Sarkozy. At first glance, Sarkozy appears unbelievably arrogant, denigrating other leaders and feeding his own insatiable ego, saying France is fine but everyone else isn’t. However there’s much more to Sarkozy’s comments under the surface.
Sarkozy is the one leader in Europe who has said that if NATO is international, it needs to have international leadership—it can’t solely have a headquarters in the US, and there needs to be a separate headquarters for a European defence force.
Sarkozy has raised an issue that other leaders thus far have been too frightened to raise, and I think he will eventually push for European independence. He has clearly said that Europe’s agenda can’t be driven by the US’s.
Will this lead to more European leaders speaking out against the US’s financial hegemony? And could this mark the rift between the US and Europe gradually growing into a new War of Independence like the Americans had with the British 230 years ago?
It could eventually become a political movement with Europeans forced to take sides, but it would take time to build broad support. Before the War of Independence began in 1775, the whole American leadership didn’t one day decide to break from the British (in fact initially George Washington was forced to leave New York where British support was still strong). It took individual leaders to break from Britain and gain a groundswell of support from the common citizen upward.
If Sarkozy continues to denigrate other nations and leaders, there’s no way he’ll be able to build a willing coalition. Let’s have a closer look at his comments. He said that Germany’s economy is clinging on to France’s. Actually, Germany is exporting more per capita than any other country in the world, followed by China and the US. Further down the list is France, and even further behind them is Britain. Germany is keeping Europe afloat—it wasn’t smart for France to criticize everyone else.
Sarkozy also made a comment about Obama being indecisive. Particularly in light of the most recent British budget and the public reaction it elicited, Obama’s apparent indecisiveness might actually just be the result of the fact that he’s caught between conflicting agendas.
For one thing, he doesn’t have the support of the same constituents as Bush, namely the energy lobby, resources and commodities lobby, and military lobby. These groups do a lot to dictate the shape of the US economy. While Obama has a broad sweep constituent base and popularity among the general public, he needs to be careful about how he deals with these and similar lobbies, and he may just be acting politically and waiting for the right moment to make some important decisions.
Europe needs to have a positive relationship with the US; the relationship needs to be repositioned so that it actually is a relationship of equals (and it might take a united Europe for this to be the case). Creating an equal relationship will be difficult enough to do without Sarkozy calling the US president indecisive.
Sarkozy was brave in going out on a limb saying that Europe needs to be united and needs to make sure its defence capacity is under its own control. In fact, before the War of Independence George Washington was saying the same thing—though he wasn’t upsetting and berating allies, he was building relationships. Sarkozy needs to do the same thing.
The relationship between the US and Europe needs to be readjusted. Sarkzoy’s comments about Europe were clever and courageous, but his ego will need to remain in check and he’ll have to stop maligning potential allies if he wants to start building any serious political backing for this type of movement.
