29 the wrong side in Tunisia. But the president’s instinct to save Benghazi and to oust Ivory Coast’s usurper was right. Sarkozy has intuited three things. First, the democratization of the Arab world is the most important European strategic challenge of the decade. Second, it was time “to take the training wheels off,” in the words of Constanze Stelzenmiiller of the German Marshall Fund, and have Europe rather than an overextended America lead in Libya. Third, the U.N. cannot always be an umbrella that folds when it rains. If its “responsibility to protect” means anything, it must be when an Arab tyrant promises to slaughter his people. We stand at a high point in French postwar diplomacy and a nadir in German. There were strong arguments on either side of a Libyan intervention, but with a massacre looming in Benghazi, Germany had to stand with its allies. Angela Merkel has proved herself more a maneuverer than a leader. Germany often conveys the sense that it now resents the agents of its postwar rehabilitation — the European Union and NATO. I don’t think Germany believes its future lies with the BRIC countries, as the U.N. Libya vote suggested. I do think Germany has entered a new era of ambivalence and nationalist calculation. That means several things. European integration is on hold, and as long it’s on hold the future of the euro is at risk. The German-French alliance will remain under strain. Obama should look to Sarkozy, not Merkel, for strategic support. A last thought. This restless French leader is at his best with his back to the wall. He’s shown that. The same quality means it would be foolish to count him out next year. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023515