Sarkozy’s Machiavellian path to power

Every so often French leaders emerge who believe their destiny is to rule Europe.

Napoleon might have succeeded had he not foolishly tried to add Russia to his European conquests. De Gaulle employed his own unique brand of diplomacy and used the fledgling European Economic Community as his vehicle, but an arrogant disregard for unrest at home and an untimely intervention into Canadian politics over the Quebec issue isolated him and eventually brought him down.

Now there is a new man on the scene.

At first sight French President Nicolas Sarkozy is an unlikely heir to the Little Corporal and Le General. The son of a Hungarian refugee who fled the 1956 uprising, he had been a Gaullist since childhood, but seemed destined to play out his political life in local government politics until then Prime Minister Edouard Balladur plucked him from obscurity to be his spokesman and Minister for the Budget in 1993.

Sarkozy’s natural charm earned him friends in high places. Jacques Chirac regarded him as a protégée until they fell out when he backed Balladur against Chirac in the 1995 presidential poll, and on the way up as Minister of the Interior and then Finance Minister, he took every opportunity to promote himself as the man most qualified to lead France.

Having achieved that target in May 2007, Sarkozy has shown no sign of letting up on the pace. His biographer, Anita Hausser, describes him as “hyperactive, ambitious, a workaholic who never rests”, but where to from here?

At the midpoint of his five-year term, there are clear signs he is losing interest in some of the minutia of domestic politics. The sweeping grand designs of the election campaign and early months of his presidency - he promised to revive the work ethic, promote innovation and fight intolerance - have largely come to nothing, and his popularity has declined as the French economy grinded into the teeth of the Global Financial Crisis.

Moreover, he has become impatient with the French and international media’s obsession with his private life - his divorce and then speedy third marriage to former model and singer Carla Bruni - and his taste for Rolex watches and luxury yacht holidays.

He has used colourful language in describing young vandals and petty criminals in outer Paris suburbs as scum and riff-raff and courted ridicule by using built-up heels to boost his 167cm height while trying to always get himself photographed beside people of equal or lesser stature.

But as Sarkozy’s love affair with France’s internal politics waned, his interest in the wider European and global stage has taken up more of his energies. The opportunity came with the six-month French Presidency of the European Union in the second half of 2008.

During a whirlwind of diplomacy he engineered a deal on energy and climate change, adopted a pact on immigration and asylum, reviewed the contentious Common Agricultural Policy and launched the Union of the Mediterranean, bringing countries mainly in North Africa, and the Middle East, into closer association with the EU. He faced up to the Irish “no” vote over the Lisbon Treaty, advocated an EU inquiry into the war in Georgia and was proactive as the economic crisis deepened.

Professor of International Affairs at the Paris Institute for Political Studies, Maxime Lefebvre, tellingly described Sarkozy’s style as “Bonapartist” in his eagerness to achieve his political aims, while admitting he was efficient “probably because he and his teams showed their ability to genuinely and relevantly define and implement European general interests”.

The momentum has been maintained into 2009 with the offer to host a Middle East peace conference and most importantly his visit to Germany for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall - his public relations department posted an internet photograph of a youthful Sarkozy chipping away at the wall with a pickaxe in 1989 - and persuading the newly re-elected Angela Merkel to become the first German Chancellor to attend Armistice Day celebrations in France.

Relations with Merkel have been frosty in the past - the Chancellor was suspicious of Sarkozy’s enthusiasm for the Union of the Mediterranean, with some commentators claiming she believed he was trying to carve out a new sphere of influence that excluded Germany - but the French President has evidently taken to heart the advice of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac.

“When we are in agreement, Europe works,” Chirac said during a meeting with then Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. “When we cannot reach an agreement, Europe grinds to a halt.”

The last thing Sarkozy needs at this time is an EU grinding to a halt.

But it is in the recent election of a new President of Europe that has shown him at his most Machiavellian. The early favourite for the job was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a man who Sarkozy has said he liked and admired. And so it seemed when he single-handedly made Blair the early favourite by declaring two years ago, when the Lisbon Treaty was first drawn up, that he was the man for the job.

But that was two years ago, giving Blair’s enemies plenty of opportunity to prepare their ammunition, so that by the time the actual decision was made this month the former Prime Minister had been hopelessly demonised - principally for his support for the Iraq War and his close ties with US President George W. Bush. As a result the little known Belgian Prime Minister, Herman Van Rompuy was selected as a compromise candidate.

Nothing suits Sarkozy’s purpose more. Had Blair become president, his high profile on the international stage would have overshadowed both France and Germany, while there would have been a grave danger of traditionally Eurosceptic Britain being drawn into the centre of EU affairs. That would not have been to Sarkozy’s liking. Germany he can handle; the prospect of Germany and Britain lining up against him was unthinkable.

While Van Rompuy is considered by his supporters to be no lightweight - he has achieved considerable success in bringing the French and Flemish sectors of his fractured nation closer together in the year since becoming Prime Minister - it is hard to see him in the same league as the leaders of the two EU continental giants.

Which means Sarkozy can perform the role of eminence grise to Van Rompuy, while at the same time assessing how this new position plays out on the international stage. It is interesting to note that the EU leader’s two-and-a-half-year term will roughly coincide with the end of Sarkozy’s five years as French President.

European officials have long advocated an EU President as a way of raising the Union’s global influence. The idea of a European super-state, on equal footing with the United States and as a way of ensuring Western influence is maintained in the face of the rise of China and India, is fondly held in many continental capitals.

And for a man like Sarkozy, the thought of assuming the leadership of a potential world superpower of almost 500 million people, must be irresistible.

Two hundred years after Napoleon failed, 40 years after de Gaulle’s hopes collapsed in ruins, France is on the march again. Maybe this is third time lucky.