Paris to Washington

Since Tony Blair left office, there have been few applicants for the vacant post of George W. Bush’s best friend. The Dalai Lama beamed his way through Washington recently, receiving a Congressional Gold Medal and a warm handshake at the White House. Liberia’s Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was proud to receive a Presidential Medal of Honour this week in recognition of her work as Africa’s first elected female head of state. Major actors on the world stage have not been beating a path to the door of the man responsible for the debacle in Iraq, with one exception.

This summer, within weeks of his election, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy was lunching, on hot dogs and hamburgers of all things, with the Bush clan at their Maine holiday home and boating, in sunglasses, with Dubya. The new Franco-American fraternité is now being not just cemented but gilded with a state visit of lavish proportions… Aged 52, Sarkozy is of a generation that doesn’t share the reflexive anti-Americanism of his predecessors. Comfortable with American culture, Mr Sarkozy — known back home as “Sarko l’Americain” — adores the US for its energy, optimism and weak trade unions… He will lay out the two countries’ common values and shared revolutionary history, and will probably repeat his desire to return France to Nato’s military command structure, after four decades of a semi-detached role. In doing so, he will display commendable courage in the face of a French public still suspicious of the American dream…

Where Mr Sarkozy has been most valuable to Mr Bush is the Middle East. He sent his socialist but pro-American foreign minister Bernard Kouchner to Iraq, and what’s more, has talked tough on the dangers of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon and pushed for EU sanctions as attempts at a more strident United Nations resolution flounder. By contrast, Britain is soft-pedalling on Teheran. This isn’t much good to a US president who has been ratcheting up his rhetoric and last month raised the prospect of World War Three were Iran to develop the bomb. As Mr Bush continues his reconfiguration of European friendships, he will receive German Chancellor Angela Merkel at his Texas ranch on Friday for two days of talks, with Iran again seen as the dominant topic.

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Two prominent visitors in the space of four days will be a much-needed tonic for Mr Bush, who, in the twilight of his presidency, now finds himself anxious for the support of European states he was happy to disdain in the march to war…

Excerpted from a piece by Alex Spillius in The Telegraph, UK