France has paved the way for its full reintegration in Nato's military command by securing the backing of the US administration for French officers to take two senior command positions in the alliance.

Forty-three years after General Charles de Gaulle pulled his country out of Nato's military command in a bold assertion of diplomatic and military autonomy, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, appears to have sealed his country's return to the heart of the alliance, ending a symbol of its foreign policy exceptionalism.