United for Peace of Pierce County, WA - We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy.

A review on Wednesday in the Financial Times of the leadership of Nicolas Sarkozy in the first hours of France's presidency of the European Union makes the case that "there remains the possibility that this one-man political oxymoron may yet unscramble France and help the E.U. unscramble itself too."[1] -- John Thornhill, the editor of the Financial Times's European edition, described Sarkozy's ambition to "transform France’s value system. Mr. Sarkozy’s dominant theme is that the French people must assume more responsibility themselves, take greater risks and work harder. 'What is lacking in French society is the possibility to choose, the liberty to choose,' he says. -- Mr. Sarkozy’s mission has been to create that room for choice and reward action. There are signs that people are responding. . . . Moreover, France is shedding some of its corporatist and statist skins." -- COMMENT: John Thornhill calls Sarkozy a "one-man political oxymoron," but in fact he is proving to be a rather consistent "market state" leader, to borrow a term from Philip Bobbitt's two tomes. -- Bobbitt, presently on the faculty of Columbia Law School, is the author of two lengthy works arguing that Western society (which now includes Australia, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, South Africa, and India, in Bobbitt's view) is now undergoing a world-historical transformation of the State. -- UFPPC's Monday evening book discussion group, Digging Deeper, is currently examining the more recent volume, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008). -- (The earlier volume, also published by Knopf in 2002, is The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History.) -- Both of Bobbitt's books lay out the argument that under the pressure of the revolutionary forces of globalization, computing, nuclear proliferation, and telecommunications, the principle of state legitimation that characterized the 20th-century nation state ("The State will better the welfare of the nation") is morphing into that of the 21st-century market state ("The State will maximize the opportunity of its citizens") (The Shield of Achilles, p. 347; Terror and Consent, p. 191). -- In Bobbitt's view, this transition is ushering in a "new constitutional order" with far-reaching effects, especially on law and strategy....

The European Union is discovering what France has been experiencing for the past year: Nicolas Sarkozy is a politician in perpetual motion who combines radical promise with rash impulse. Declaring himself to be a convinced European, Mr. Sarkozy has spent the first hours of France’s presidency of the E.U. berating its institutions. The European Commission, he says, should protect people from globalization, not expose them to it. The E.U.’s excessively liberal trade policy must be reworked. The European Central Bank’s masochistic mandate should be rethought.

The French president is embracing the new-found object of his affection so tightly that he seems in danger of squeezing the breath out of it. Yet there remains the possibility that this one-man political oxymoron may yet unscramble France and help the E.U. unscramble itself too.

Three things stand out from his domestic record over the past year. Mr. Sarkozy is fearless in raising the right questions, even if his answers can be wildly contradictory. He is an instinctive dealmaker determined to get things done. And he conceals surprising method in his political “madness.”

In his first year in office, Mr. Sarkozy has been a whirr of activity, cutting taxes on overtime, modifying the pension regime for millions of public sector employees, granting more autonomy to universities, and stiffening France’s immigration regime.

Like all politicians, he has had to improvise, retreat, and trim. Still, the Institut Thomas More, a Brussels-based think-tank that is monitoring implementation of his 490 electoral pledges, reckons Mr. Sarkozy has started delivering on 60 per cent of his main promises. Only 17 per cent of his proposals have been modified or abandoned.

Yet behind this frenetic activity lurks a bigger ambition: to transform France’s value system. Mr. Sarkozy’s dominant theme is that the French people must assume more responsibility themselves, take greater risks, and work harder. “What is lacking in French society is the possibility to choose, the liberty to choose,” he says.

Mr. Sarkozy’s mission has been to create that room for choice and reward action. There are signs that people are responding. According to the finance ministry, millions of employees have seized the chance to work more lucrative overtime -- even if millions more have decided they still prefer leisure to money.

Moreover, France is shedding some of its corporatist and statist skins. In spite of his neo-protectionist talk at a European level, Mr. Sarkozy has been trumpeting competition at home. The French state, for so long the producers’ champion, is now aiming to empower the consumer. The Council of Economic Analysis, the government’s in-house think-tank, has been militating for more private equity investment in France. It wants to boost the number of independent business angels, who can sponsor small and medium-sized enterprises, from 5,000 to 100,000. Such initiatives are startling in a country long wedded to state-directed capitalism.

Mr. Sarkozy’s brash self-confidence also seems to be fuelling the ambitions of others. Grabbing the freedoms thrown up by university reform, the Toulouse School of Economics has declared its intention to challenge the likes of Harvard and the London School of Economics for leadership in its discipline. It has raised €47m ($74m, £37m), mostly from private sources, to recruit the world’s best academic talent.

Mr. Sarkozy appears torn between his political reflexes to intervene and his instinct to allow independent actors to shape their own destiny. No French president is ever going to stop meddling in the commanding heights of the economy. But as the first occupant of the Élysée in a long time who did not attend the élite École Nationale d’Administration, he seems readier to acknowledge that the technocrat from ENA does not always know best.

François Fillon, the prime minister, says the government’s aim is to stimulate a “cultural mutation.” Reform is a bet that the values that can transform France are more powerful than the interests that sustain its immobility. “We cannot fundamentally change France without the French people themselves assuming responsibility and associating themselves with this transformation,” he says.

Much the same could be said about the E.U. After three referendum defeats, Mr. Sarkozy has reason to shout that something is not right with the E.U. and its institutions. It is up to the union’s other 26 leaders -- as well as its parliaments and peoples -- to be as forthright as Mr. Sarkozy in debating the answers.