Oh, Wait, BHO; All Countries — Even Our Closest Allies — Do Not Think They Are All Equal and Alike

Who will be the new Europe’s countries-in-chief? asks John Vinocur. Nicolas

Sarkozy’s aides could hardly be more direct: France and Germany. The two nations, it is said, “will constitute the heart” of a new phase of European history.

The phrasing is smooth, rubbed free of asperities, but the message unequivocal. As Pierre Lellouche, secretary of state for European affairs, put it in an article this month, “It’s up to us today to put into Europe’s service the unity achieved between France and Germany” since the outbreak of the global economic crisis last year.

To make the point to the world, France is preparing special ceremonies on Nov. 11, marking the end of World War I, and on Nov. 9, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Beyond commemorating the end of centuries of wars and hatreds across the Rhine, the events will project a French notion of joint leadership.

At the same time, the idea’s presumptions and acceptance require both a suspension of judgment and a leap of faith by the rest of Europe, not to mention many of the French and Germans themselves.

Mr. Lellouche, in a conversation, argued that “the crisis forced the two nations closer. The other European nations won’t be afraid of France and Germany leaguing together against them. No one fears that anymore.”

In fact, a sophisticated concern among their neighbors and their own citizens might well be about the unity of France’s and Germany’s political and economic goals and methods.

…But Mr. Sarkozy seems to see a European political constellation at hand where Conservative euro-skeptics are in office in Britain, Italy and Spain’s leaderships are weakened into insignificance and the United States is bored into indifference.

…Up until now, the parties of [Germany's] new coalition haven’t fully shown their hand on who leads Europe. It might not mean much in January, but last May, the likely Free Democrat foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, made a first attempt at stating his international convictions.

“In European policy,” he said, “Luxembourg is as big as France.”