How they see us: France reaffirms its alliance with the U.S.

From the magazine:

It’s official: France and the United States have made up, said the Perpignan Independent in an editorial. A mere four months after his election, President Nicolas Sarkozy has aligned French policy with that of George W. Bush on “multiple international issues.” Sarkozy has all but dropped his opposition to the notion of Turkey, a key U.S. ally, joining the European Union. He has redeployed French forces in Afghanistan to hot spots, where they can better assist U.S. troops. And his foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, practically sounded like Dick Cheney in his recent warning that France would do whatever it took, including “war,” to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.

The most significant change, said Laurent Zecchini in Paris’ Le Monde, may be France’s new willingness to play nice with NATO. France has been a member of NATO since the alliance’s founding after World War II, but it pulled its forces out of NATO’s integrated military command in 1966 under the independent-minded President Charles de Gaulle. Since then, no non-French forces have been stationed on French soil, and France has been excluded from key NATO decision-making bodies. Sarkozy wants to change that. He told The

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New York Times this week that he would consider bringing France back to NATO’s military command if the U.S. dropped its opposition to a separate European Union common defense force. Such a move, he said, would allow France to “regain her rightful place” at the heart of the Atlantic Alliance.

The Americans have yet to appreciate this turnaround in French policy, said Philippe Boulet-Gercourt in Paris’ Le Nouvel Observateur. Hardly anyone in the U.S. has noticed the “new rapprochement” that is the talk of France. It could well be that nobody in the U.S. “seriously believes that the French government would be so stupid as to waste its political capital cozying up to a lame-duck U.S. administration that is more unpopular than ever.” It certainly would make more sense for Sarkozy to bide his time and forge a strong relationship with whomever is elected president in 2008.

It will probably take at least that long for the Franco-American relationship to find its new groove, said Dominique Moisi in Rennes’ Ouest-France. For now, “America’s image in France, as in the rest of Europe, remains very negative. And America itself oscillates between a negative view of France and Europe and a complete indifference and ignorance of them.” Only after working together productively—on Iran, Afghanistan, and other issues—can we trust each other in a truly “renewed alliance.”