An odd-couple alliance

For President Obama,too,Sarkozy has been an enabler. By thrusting France so far out front,he has allowed Obama to claim credibly that Libya is now a model of multilateral cooperation,not merely the third Muslim country the US has gone to war with in the last decade. Pulled reluctantly into the conflict by European and Arab leaders,Obama has managed to sound almost European.

It is an unlikely geopolitical alliance,which augurs well for a world in which the US,militarily stretched and fiscally depleted,can no longer afford to play global policeman alone.

It would be tempting to say Sarkozy the American is encountering Obama the European,but it would be wrong, said Dominique Moïsi,the founder of the French Institute for International Relations,who helped popularise the nickname Sarko lAméricain. For these two very different leaders,this is a marriage of convenience.

When Obama introduced himself to Europeans at Berlin in July 2008,he described himself as a citizen of the world. He said that no country,including the US,was powerful enough to tackle them alone. It was a rejection of the unilateral policies of the Bush administration,and a challenge to Europe. If were honest with each other, he said,we know that sometimes,on both sides of the Atlantic,we have drifted apart,and forgotten our shared destiny.

Sarkozy has long professed admiration of the US. In 2009,he reintegrated France into the command structure of NATO which made it easier for him to push for a NATO-led operation in Libya. Sarkozy was the one to issue a call for a swift military response to prevent a slaughter in Benghazi,Libya. Obama resisted,worried of an anti-American backlash in the Muslim world. With a budget battle looming and the US trying to extricate its fighting forces from Iraq and Afghanistan,he was loath to commit troops and treasure to a country not considered of vital interest to the US.

It was Sarkozys willingness,along with that of British PM David Cameron,to play a lead role in enforcing a no-fly zone that helped change the equation for Obama. That allowed him to announce a military intervention coupled with a promise that the US would pull back within days and leave operations to a NATO-led coalition.

The Europeans keep saying,Were ready to lead,were ready to lead,were ready to lead, said Anne-Marie Slaughter,a former policy planning director at the State Department who now teaches at Princeton. Finally,weve found a Frenchman willing to step into the role.

Sarkozy has his own reasons for seizing the initiative. He is trailing in the polls and faces the prospect of being a one-term president. His government was late in reacting to the revolt in Tunisia,a former French colony,and his government was derided as being too cozy with that countrys ousted despot,Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

For Sarkozy,there are huge risks to all these adventures. Libya could slip into a stalemate between the rebels and Colonel Qaddafis forces. Having recognised the rebels early as legitimate rulers of Libya could boomerang,given how little the West knows about them. Sarkozy could face the wrath of voters if the US is viewed as having shifted too much of the burden to France.

There are dangers for Obama,too. Critics in Congress say he has thrown the US into a mission with an ill-defined goal. For all his talk about partners and burden-sharing,the American military still constitutes the bulk of NATOs fighting force. Without Obama as his wingman,Sarkozy would lose much of his swagger.

Above all,these two men are a contrarians delight: Europeans marvel at an American president who needs to be dragged into a foreign conflict; Americans with vivid memories of Iraq do not know what to make of a French warrior. Could it be,then,that French fries deserve to be called freedom fries after all?