Now that Jacques Chirac announced that he will no longer stand for the French Presidency, this blog endorses the second-best candidate for Lebanon: Nicolas Sarkozy.
 

 
The fact that Nicolas Sarkozy bothered to announce a Lebanon policy is in itself comforting. The fact that those policies are sensible is even more re-assuring. Here are Sarko’s “three major priorities” for Lebanon:
 
1- To follow-up on the UN probe into Hariri’s assassination and “penalize the perpetrators.”
 
2- To “convince Syria that Lebanon is an independent country” and to fight with all his powers to preserve Lebanon’s independence
 
3- To convince Hizbullah into “transforming into a purely political organization by laying its weapons, and being less influenced by Iran”
 
Notice his choice of words: “convince Hizbullah” and “less influenced by Iran”, which shows a deep understanding of the Lebanese situation and its shades of gray.
 
Although a Sarkozy presidency will not be good news for the Hariris, it will be good for Lebanon:

“While President Jacques Chirac succeeded in building excellent ties with Lebanon,” he said, “those ties ought to be further deepened and freed from a personal outlook on things.”
 
He said that bilateral ties between any two countries ought to be based on “clear-cut political strategies and ideologies,”

That implies a threat: If Lebanon stops being liberal and progressive, France could no longer be our best friend.
 
The other reason I like Sarkozy is because I don’t think Segolene Royal has what it takes. Sure she’s good-looking (for a change) but that’s about it. She’s a foreign policy lightweight, a real socialist, and she seems to hold fossilized ideas. France needs a shake-up, not a step backwards…