\n\nWe\u2019ve got you surrounded<\/div>\n <\/p><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n After Tony Blair\u2019s retirement as Washington\u2019s poodle and Gordon Brown\u2019s stodgy refusal to fill in the vacancy it appears that Nicolas Sarkozy, the new President of France has volunteered for the job. Given the opposition to US foreign policy, particular towards Iraq by former French President Jacque Chirac and former Foreign Minister Dominique le Villepin, one cannot blame Washington if it might have initially shown some hesitancy towards, Sarkozy\u2019s application.<\/p>\n But Sarkozy is a man capable of vision and initiative. He has seen a glorious future for himself as \u201cthe new poodle\u201d and has gone after the job with great enthusiasm. He has embarked on a mission to convince Washington DC that France has not only a new President, but a new moral conscience. He is sending loud signals that France\u2019s new ethical posture is ready to align and or subordinate France\u2019s foreign policy to the most neoconservative of Washington\u2019s many predilections.<\/p>\n As soon as Sarkozy became President, he sent his foreign minister Bernard Kouchner to Baghdad to express support for US presence there. This was a gesture that surprised both Americans and Europeans. This was his first confidence building measure. He has since upped the ante by banging on the war drums against Iran with abandon. He has described Iran\u2019s nuclear enrichment program as the crisis of our times and insists that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable. If Iran does not give up the bomb then it will be bombed he declared. <\/p>\n Washington is no doubt pleased with this unexpected bonanza. Now they have added leverage inside EU and can pressure it more easily to follow its lead. With France tamed it will become increasingly difficult for China and Russia to stand up to the US demands that the security council levy more sanctions against Iran. More importantly, if the poodle wannabe is willing to echo Washington\u2019s preference with vehemence in EU and other international fora, President Bush\u2019s problematic foreign ventures may gain more legitimacy.<\/p>\n But this is early days. Anti-Americanism runs deep in France and the American contempt for France is not hidden in Washington. Former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld had dismissed France\u2019s international relevance with an offhand comment about \u201cold Europe\u201d and I have heard many senior officials refer to it as a third world country with nuclear weapons. If Sarkozy, who is already being perceived as unpredictable and capricious, finds his overtures towards America affecting his approval ratings, he may suddenly decide to change his approach to world politics.<\/p>\n Tony Blair, the original poodle, subordinated Britain\u2019s interests and wisdom to Washington\u2019s ambitions and whims in the fond hope that someday he and Britain would have influence on American foreign policy. But the general consensus in Britain today is that he failed. He was used by Washington. He took Britain to war in Iraq which has neither made Britain safer nor Iraq a model democracy. By the time he resigned, one of Britain\u2019s most talented and charismatic Prime Minister had become one of its most despised of leaders. There is a lesson here for Sarkozy.<\/p>\n As far as Iran\u2019s nuclear ambition is concerned there are many issues here. First by all accounts, including the CIA\u2019s, it is many years away from nuclear weapons capability and the threat is not as imminent as Sarkozy makes it out to be. Second both former President Jacque Chirac of France and General Abizaid of the U.S. have argued that an Iran with two or three nuclear weapons is not a threat to the U.S. or Israel and can be deterred by the thousands of nuclear weapons stockpiled by the U.S. and hundreds possessed by Israel.<\/p>\n Most security experts argue that a nuclear Iran will not be a real threat. Yes, nuclear weapons may give it immunity from invasion and occupation such as that suffered by Iraq, but it will not give it decisive offensive capabilities. As far as threats to Israel are concerned, we must not forget that it is a state with a more powerful airforce than Britain and a secret nuclear arsenal estimated to be next only to the US and Russia. It is also about to receive $30 billion dollars of US armament.<\/p>\n I doubt if France alone is capable of bombing Iran. France has not won a war on its own in over 100 years. The French bravado and the war mongering of its new leaders, is premised on the assumption that while the French will shoot their mouths, the real shooting will be dome by the US. The French are actually risking the lives of thousands American soldiers stationed in Iraq and in the line of Iranian retaliatory fire, just to look tough. Fortunately Sarkozy and his foreign minister stand alone in their eagerness for another invasion by the West on a Muslim country. Even in America nobody except Senator Lieberman is eager to bomb Iran.<\/p>\n Finally France\u2019s own nuclear record is quite shameful. It is estimated that France has an estimated stockpile of 350 nuclear weapons. It has conducted over 200 nuclear tests, polluting and poisoning our planet, and has a very dubious history of nuclear proliferation. It is suspected of clandestinely proliferating nuclear weapons technology to Israel. France is also in violation of the nuclear non proliferation treaty\u2019s [NPT] article VI which requires France\u2019s to work in good faith towards complete nuclear disarmament.<\/p>\n Washington has a new poodle for sure; I just hope that we do not have a new war. <\/p>\n Dr. Muqtedar Khan is Associate Professor at the University of Delaware and a Senior Nonresident Fellow with the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. <\/i><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Is France’s Nicholas Sarkozy aiming to replace Britain’s Tony Blair as America’s foreign policy partner in Europe and will it accelerate a new war with Iran?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"yoast_head":"\n 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