Or course, whoever has written this (there are speculations it could be Bruno Le Maire, Minister of Agriculture in the Sarkozy government) doesn't know jack about domestic German politics. But hey, let's not that get in the way of a good story.

The interesting point here is what this story is telling about the French intelligentsia current state of mind and their obsession about Germany's purported isolationism (that would leave France behind).

IM:

As of now Merkel is in no position to do this. I won't speculate how much weaker she will be in Spring 2012.

And I'm not going to speculate on how much weaker Sarkozy will be in the spring of 2012  :-)

Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.