The exercise is not purely stylistic. Despite its formal framework and sometimes stilted tone, the conference that brings together the Ambassadors of France in Paris each year provides the head of state with the opportunity to indicate or clarify the nation’s major foreign policy choices. Therefore, Nicolas Sarkozy’s speech was awaited with a mix of curiosity and impatience.
Displaying his usual “unwavering determination,” intended to “achieve externally” results demanded internally, and dedicating Europe and Africa as “absolute priority” and “essential priority,” respectively—according to well-established tradition—the President of the Republic nonetheless punctuated his speech with numerous references to the “reality” of situations worldwide. Criticizing the “abstract or distant international debate,” Nicolas Sarkozy, noted for his repeated and more consensual phrase “I am one of those who think,” now emphasizes promoting “concrete solidarities” within a new Mediterranean Union. He also advocates for the necessary and gradual transformation of the “G8” into a “G13” to account for emerging powers like China, India, and Brazil. Finally, he attempts to preempt a confrontation, which he perceives as latent in its manifestations, between Islam and the West.
However, it is notably on Turkey, relations with NATO, and the Lebanon issue that the question arises of whether these changes reflect his strict intention or stem more from an evaluation imposed by the realities on the ground.
Hypothetically placing the French agreement to Ankara’s entry into the Union on the work of a “committee of wise men” and mentioning in a rather cryptic phrase the “two possible visions” of the relations between Turkey and Europe mainly aim to acknowledge the results of the Turkish presidential election. Realism also seems to prevail in the “renewed” position of France within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization: since its departure from the integrated military structures in 1966, Paris had quietly multiplied operational agreements with its partners. The presidential announcement thus merely ratifies a de facto situation obscured by what the Elysée tenant rightly calls an “ideological preconception.” The more thorny issue remains that of Lebanon. Inviting Syria to join efforts to rise out of the Lebanese crisis “upwards” fits poorly with the more firmly stated presidential claim, more adamant on Russia or Iran, of a scrupulous vigilance on human rights violations. “Flouted before our eyes,” as the head of state put it. It is known that the Western community is organizing, apparently with some success, to block international financial flows to Iran. But attempting to decouple Damascus from Tehran, by isolating the second and offering the first the European bounty, has systematically failed in the recent past. This strategy also returns to offer a reward for the blackmail suggested by the actions of Beirut’s great neighbor, discernible in the current debate on the Lebanese presidential election: Syrian influence or chaos. If convictions were to yield too much to realism, the “clear vision of the world” and “guided by our values” proposed by the President of the Republic might become slightly blurred.
