The relationship that matters most for the transatlantic alliance is not the fabled partnership between the US and Britain. Much more important is that between Washington and Paris. Always suspicious, mostly fractious and often suffused with mutual contempt, the condition of Franco-American ties determines the cohesion or otherwise of the west.

Consider the hostilities of the past few years. The casus belli was Iraq. But the effects of the rupture between George W. Bush and the now departed, and much unlamented, Jacques Chirac were felt well beyond the Middle East. The Atlantic community was fractured and Europe divided.