As world leaders grapple with rival ideas for tackling the global financial crisis, keep an aghast eye on what the EU under France is up to in redefining European security.

President Sarkozy and President Medvedev have come up with a proposal to hold a major OSCE summit in mid-2009 aimed at discussing ‘European security architecture’.

RFE/RL described Sarkozy’s position:

At the postsummit press conference, its French host, President Nicolas Sarkozy, spent relatively little time criticizing Russian actions in Georgia. He appeared much keener to look ahead and speculate about ways in which the Russian-Georgian conflict could lead to changes in the existing pan-European security arrangements.

Unprompted, Sarkozy threw his weight behind Medvedev’s proposal for a new European "security architecture" and said the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) should convene a summit in mid-2009 to discuss the idea. In doing so, the French president came close to suggesting he is less worried about Moscow‘s designs than U.S. strategy and tactics in Europe.

"We could then lay the groundwork for what could be the basis of an agreement between us [all], as long as we don’t talk about missile shields that will not lead to security, that will complicate matters, and that will render [security] more remote," Sarkozy said.

Returning to the theme in a different context, Sarkozy spoke of "some of Georgia‘s friends" whose "military ships in a nearby sea" and its "missiles, shields, and soldiers" had not proven nearly as effective as the EU’s mediation and commitment to the peaceful resolution of conflicts.

It has been a central aim of Soviet/Russian foreign policy for decades to get the US security guarantee for Europe diluted – if the biggest defender of European Pluralism walks away, far easier to exert Soviet/Russian influence in rather less than pluralistic ‘Russian’ ways.

And it has long been the core aim of France to dilute ‘Anglo-Saxon’ influences in Europe.

Can it really be happening that these different but not unrelated malign ambitions are finally seeing a window of opportunity to join forces and redefine the institutional basis for our common defence – and therefore the very basis of European society?

The insouciance with which France is claiming to speak in the name of the EU about Russia’s dismemberment of Georgia – and the bravura rudeness of Sarkozy towards the Polish Government – are also remarkable by any standards of diplomacy as practised in living memory.

That said, there is also an economic dimension to French/Russian manoeuvring:

Sarkozy also revisited his idea of creating a fully shared "economic space" between Russia and the EU, first mooted in a speech in September.

"I remain convinced that we all — the Russian Federation and Europe — have an interest in working toward a common economic space, which would allow the creation of interdependencies, and would definitively rule out all forms of confrontation — because they would undermine common interests," Sarkozy said

What if Europe is offered a Deal? Disentangle ourselves from those cowboy Americans, and in return we get the Europeanisation of Russia and no more ‘conflict’ in Europe.

Would many weak collectivist-minded governments of Europe and the weak collectivist-minded Kremlin find that quite a tempting offer?

Maybe Moscow and Paris are counting on a distracted, cynically ‘progressive’ Obama Administration not to care too much, and a domestically weak British Prime Minister devoting all available energy to the global economy and seemingly disengaged on these strategic political questions?

Big Stuff.

Very Big Stuff.