How the mighty have fallen.

Remember Jacques Chirac, the mighty president of France who was threatening to use anti-Americanism to weld the European Union into a titan that would be an equal or superior in power relative to the United States? He doesn't seem so mighty lately now that his rhetoric has shifted from "We are the leader of the great counterweight to the United States" to "We are still in much better shape the the United Kingdom".

The real question now is how low will Jacques Chirac ultimately be forced to go in order to find a competitor that makes France look good by comparison. Will he be admitting that "France still outperfoms the Netherlands in serveral respects" in six months? Will France decline in a year's time to the point where "France is still one of the more prosperous large Third-World nations"?

More evidence of President Chirac's decline comes from the recent G-8 conference which has turned out to be a major victory for President Bush. One of the stated goals of the conference's host, the United Kingdom, was to win over President Bush for support of the Kyoto Treaty. Wise observers should have warned Prime Minister Tony Blair in advance that getting President Bush to commit to wholehearted support of Kyoto would be about as easy as beating the Kobayashi Maru scenario. And predictably enough, President Bush not only refused to endorse Kyoto but won the G-8's approval of a statement on climate change that meets his requirements.