No. 5 Nicolas Sarkozy
At this time last year, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was embroiled in a domestic battle with France's powerful labor unions and public workers associations over France's extensive welfare state policies. Strikes brought Paris to a grinding halt, and President Sarkozy received praise for so shrewdly taking on the entrenched nanny-state interests in his country.
This wasn't the first time the often unconventional Sarkozy would surprise us. Upon his election in 2007, Sarkozy made diplomatic ripples with his overtures to the United States. Coupled with his platform of domestic reforms, some believed Sarkozy would lead France in a new direction; one in total juxtaposition with the foreign policy vision of his predecessor Jacques Chriac.
But such an assumption would be too easy, and the Nicolas Sarkozy of 2008 sung a far different tune from the one of 2007. With a summertime clash in the Caucasus and the global financial crisis looming over Europe, Sarkozy (currently serving in the rotating EU presidential seat) saw an opportunity in 2008 to exert himself as a player on the global landscape.
In the heat of Russia's August engagement with Georgia, Sarkozy played unlikely entourage between Moscow and the western world. Sarkozy - understanding Europe's present dependence on Russia for its energy needs - used the recent economic crisis as a way to repudiate free market capitalism and American interventionism on the continent.
Speaking as the host at an economic recovery summit in Nice, France, Sarkozy lambasted the United States for its proposed missile defense systems in eastern Europe, and repeatedly dismissed what he considers a "business as usual" economic system traditionally enforced by the United States.
A new economic leadership, argues Sarkozy, is in order, and he knows just the guy for the job: Nicolas Sarkozy. The French president recently made waves when he proposed a "new" economic union on the European continent, with him at the helm. This riled the EU's Czech Republic representatives, who stand in line to take the rotating presidency post in January. The move was viewed by some as direct assault upon German influence over European financial planning, and a backdoor effort by Sarkozy to assume indefinite control of a presently ambiguous EU presidency.
"Laissez-faire is finished," Sarkozy remarked recently. This, from the same man who fought government protectionism and entitlement in his own homeland just a year ago. The Nicolas Sarkozy of 2008 is quite different from the one of 2007. What might the world see from the wily French leader in the coming year?
