More brilliance from Hitch

Christopher Hitchens has a typically brilliant lede to a typically brilliant column on the new French foreign minister. ConClub has previously written about the election of Nicholas Sarkozy as president of France, and how pro-American and conservative he is. By naming  Bernard Kouchner as foreign minister, Sarkozy is making clear that his vision for France is one of moral leadership in the world, which necessarily means a close relationship with the United States.

Herewith, essential Hitch:

During the early debates over the Iraq war, one was constantly being challenged to contrast the “unilateralism” of the Bush administration with the more mature and “European” approach of Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder and Vladimir Putin, the gleesome threesome who (along with the Chinese dictatorship) protected Saddam Hussein at the United Nations. What a difference a couple of years has made. Tony Blair may be stepping down as prime minister of the United Kingdom, but for the first time in a very long time, the heads of state in Paris and Berlin are both “Atlanticist” in their outlook. One might add that Chirac quit the Élysée Palace looking and sounding like a stroke victim who had long ceased to have anything relevant to say and that Schröder disgraced the German Social Democrats by barely waiting to leave office before signing up as a lobbyist for a Russian-based energy cartel. And is it necessary to add that Putin has revived the worst traditions of Great Russian chauvinism, crushing all domestic opposition at home while bullying Ukraine, Georgia, and most recently Estonia, and flaunting his connection to the ultra-reactionary Russian Orthodox Church. What a crew they were and are! The fourth member of the anti-Bush coalition of the willful, the cold-eyed Chinese post-Stalinists, are still engaged in a blood-for-oil scandal whereby Beijing provides the sinews of war to the genocidal regime that cleanses Darfur, while paying to buy most of Sudan’s petroleum.

As the big boys say, read the whole thing!