Franco-US relations will be tested to straining point this weekend, writes LARA MARLOWEin Paris
TRADE UNIONISTS from the electricity company have threatened to cut power in the prefecture building in Caen where presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama will talk before lunching together today.
Staff at the Westin Hotel in Paris, where US secretary of state Hillary Clinton will stay this weekend, are on strike.
Welcome to France, monsieur le president and madam secretary.
This afternoon Sarkozy and Obama will fly by helicopter to Omaha Beach, to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Normandy landings. There, director Steven Spielberg and actor Tom Hanks will relive the making of Saving Private Ryan, along with 7,000 guests, including US war veterans who experienced the real thing.
Any factotum at the Élysée or Quai d’Orsay will tell you that organising the Obama visit has been a minefield. Sarkozy desperately wanted the US president to bless the Élysée Palace with his presence, but the US leader was to spend last night with his wife and daughters at the US ambassador’s residence.
“Monsieur Obama could accept with better grace to be hosted by Nicolas Sarkozy,” said a snide opinion piece in Le Figaro, the mouthpiece of the Élysée, “even if it meant giving up a little of his precious time.”
L’entente cordiale took a beating because Sarkozy neglected to invite Queen Elizabeth, the only world leader who actually served in the second World War. The reason? It was widely reported in French media that “Sarko” wanted to bask alone in the glory of Obama. The White House intervened, publicly asking for the Queen to be invited.
As a result of this fussing, Prince Charles and the Canadian prime minister will be Sarkozy’s unwanted guests at the photo opportunity.
Sarkozy and Obama have two things in common, says Nicole Bacharan, a French historian who specialises in Franco-American relations. “Neither of them seemed destined to be where he is; Obama because he is a black man from a modest background, and Sarkozy as the son of an emigrant who didn’t attend the École Nationale d’Administration. Both are outsiders. The second thing is that both are extremely pragmatic. But I don’t think there’s any personal chemistry.”
Philip Golub, an American who is a contributing editor to the monthly Le Monde Diplomatique and a senior lecturer in international relations at the Université de Paris VIII, sees “fundamental differences” between the two leaders.
Through his “attempts to translate the Anglo-American conservative revolution in a French landscape” and to make Paris the pivot of US-European relations, Sarkozy “is at cross currents with contemporary history”, says Golub. By contrast, “Obama is both in tune with the times and the symbol of the transformation away from the conservative revolution”.
The French long regarded Americans with condescension. Americans were considered naive, easily impressed, overgrown children, compared to the French, who were sophisticated, cultured and wise.
Sarkozy and Obama personify a reversal of these stereotypes.
“Sarkozy’s foreign policy is nothing but PR,” says Roland Marchal, a senior research fellow at CNRS, the national research institute. “Sarkozy saves the world three times a week. With Barack Obama, he’s faced with someone who’s young, handsome, and not based in bling.” Two Sarkozy errors got him off to a bad start, says Golub. “Cozying up to George W Bush in the months before the US election didn’t go down well with the Democrats in the US. Then, Sarkozy tried to establish a personal rapport with Obama, to convey the image they were two new leaders of a new world. Obama simply does not accept that. There’s a certain frenzied character to Sarkozy’s desire to shine. And he’s outshone by Obama, totally, effortlessly.”
For example, Sarkozy portrays himself as a peacemaker. “If Georgia wasn’t wiped off the map [last August], if a ceasefire was reached in Gaza [in January], it’s because France, when she held the presidency of the EU, assumed her responsibilities,” Sarkozy said in Nîmes on May 5th.
But Washington believes the French president caved in to Russia in Georgia. And the Israeli onslaught on Gaza continued for two weeks after Sarkozy’s initiative. “He is trying to be there. He wants to be part of it, to be a player, as a French leader and a European,” Bacharan says of Sarkozy’s attempts at Middle East peacemaking. The problem, she adds, is that “nobody’s afraid of the Europeans and nobody trusts them. They don’t have any leverage.” And, adds Golub: “The way Nicolas Sarkozy has acted on the European stage has tended to irritate his partners . . . The general point is that the US does not require any specific relay in Europe.”
Iran, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Afghanistan, Russia and the economic crisis are on the agenda for today’s bilateral talks.
Le Figaro criticised Obama for not seeking Sarkozy’s advice on the first three. Sarkozy received the Iranian foreign minister on Wednesday, and will doubtless be eager to share his impressions.
But Sarkozy’s credibility on Iran is weakened by the hawkish position he and his foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, adopted during the Bush administration. In December 2007 the US national intelligence estimate said the nuclear threat from Iran was not imminent.
“Sarkozy and Kouchner were furious with US intelligence agencies, because it made them look foolish,” says Golub.
Now that Obama has made strong, symbolic gestures of opening to Iran, Sarkozy is worried. “Obama is trying a new approach – direct talks,” notes Bacharan.
“The Europeans worked for years [to stop the Iranian nuclear programme] and didn’t get anywhere. There’s a sense in Europe that Europeans should not be sidelined by US initiatives.”