President Obama’s flagship foreign policy of ‘leading from behind’ has had some surprising consequences. Not least among them is that France now appears to be leading the free world.
During the current set of negotiations in Geneva between Iran and the P5+1 countries, America, Russia, Britain, China and Germany seem eager to declare a breakthrough. Iran is seeking an alleviation of the tough international sanctions against it and the right to continue what it calls its ‘peaceful’ nuclear programme. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has warned of Iran benefiting from ‘the deal of the century’. Last weekend it took the government of François Hollande to call time on this. Laurent Fabius — the French foreign minister — described the talks as ‘a fool’s game’. He is right. The only disarmament on the table in Geneva appears to be the moral disarmament of the West. The western powers no longer seem to regard themselves as able to afford the principles they once extolled.
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, was reduced to assuring his countrymen, ‘We are not blind, and I don’t think we’re stupid.’
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