The ‘Novelty’ of Sarkozy's Foreign Policy Towards NATO and the US: The Long View

Abstract

Nicolas Sarkozy's reintegration of NATO's military command in 2009 has been presented as radical, given the traditional Gaullist stance of an arm's length relationship with NATO and the US. This article argues first, the difficulty for any French political leader to alter radically the course of French foreign and defence policy; second, that Sarkozy' policy is merely conforming to a longer-term trend of negotiating between European and Atlantic positions dating from the beginning of the twentieth century.