NATO has New Supreme Allied Commander...

...and he is French!

Air Force General Stéphane Abrial is now one of NATO's two Supreme Allied Commanders. Given France's long and difficult history with NATO and its gradual re-integration into the organization since the end of the Cold War (which Sarkozy more or less finished), there is no absence of symbolism in having the first non-American Supreme Commander of NATO be a Frenchman.

I have to say I don't entirely understand the new post. Technically, Abrial is Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT), based in Norfolk, Virginia. He is replacing an American Marine General, James Mattis. The SACT is charged with adapting NATO to the future at a time when the Alliance's role is in doubt as European and American publics turn against the war in Afghanistan. More symbolism for you! This is the first time France has been at the head of a major alliance since Marshal Ferdinand Foch was Commander in Chief of the Western Front in the Great War (1918).

France's reintegration into the Alliance has been long overdue. During the Cold War, it would have been natural for France, as the most presitigious continental European state (divided Germany was marked "atomic battlefield"), to have a central role in the coalition against the Soviet Union. France's costly and doomed wars of decolonization in Southeast Asia and North Africa meant the country was partly absent during NATO's formative years. In the 1960s, Charle de Gaulle decided on a new strategy of semi-membership of NATO that hoped to make France escape nuclear annihilation in a potential U.S.-Soviet War (possibly started over some nonsense in Asia). Since the end of the Cold War, the Gaullist position has lost many of its merits. It is laudable that France looks to be becoming a fully fledged partner as the Alliance at it attempts to adapt to the needs of a rapidly changing world.