Jacques Chirac, France's former president, was fond of condemning US hegemony and championing the creation of a European "puissance" in a multi-polar world. Much of this talk was just windy rhetoric resulting in little more than a few embarrassing photocalls with the diminishingly democratic Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Mr Chirac's successor, Nicolas Sarkozy, freely professes his admiration for the US but could, ironically, be far more effective in helping to turn Europe into a serious global force and ushering in amulti-polar world. His first important foreign policy speech this week may not have differed wildly in content from previous French pronouncements. But what was striking was Mr Sarkozy's sense of purpose and his timetabled proposals to turn wishful thinking into reality.