What Sarko told Condi

Have we entered a post-American age in Europe? That’s the argument of this Adam Gopnik piece in the New Yorker. It argues that what Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy all have in common is a desire not to be defined by their relationship with the United States. So, Brown is cooling things so as not to be seen as a poodle and Sarkozy is being friendlier to avoid the French president being seen as an anti-American above all else. Gopik goes on to say that, “The Sarkozy-Gordon Brown-Merkel generation is not unsympathetic to America, but America is not so much the primary issue for them, as it was for Blair and Chirac, in the nineties, when America was powerful beyond words.”
Yet, when you look at Brown and Sarkozy’s policies the influence of America is clear. Brown’s talk on citizenship and the constitution could have been lifted straight from a US civics textbook.