The editor of La Lettre du Continent Antoine Glaser said in a telephone interview that Sarkozy's policy towards Africa has always been about disengagement rather than "rupture". The early pro-democracy rhetoric was just a "game", he said, prepared by his now sacked spokesman David Martinon. According to Glaser, the Françafrique has been weakened by larger factors and Sarkozy's real interest is to limit the continent's "nuisance value", particularly as a source of illegal immigrants.

Nevertheless, Glaser said Bockel's sacking shows that Sarkozy has had difficulty managing pro-French African heads of state.

A sense of disorganisation and governmental disunity is apparent throughout Sarkozy's foreign policy. The Dakar speech was written by his special adviser, Henri Guaino, a nostalgic nationalist whose overt hostility to European integration is far out of step with official policy. Guaino was also responsible for opening an unprecedented breach in Franco-German relations with his proposal for a "Mediterranean Union", which he carelessly compared to the creation of the European Union itself without consulting Berlin. The scaled-down "Club Med" was launched amid much fanfare in July but no-one seems to know what the body will actually do -- aside from provide a platform where kleptocratic gangsters can look like statesmen. Indeed, there is no agreement on how it will be funded or where it will be headquartered.

Muammar Gaddafi may have (literally) pitched his tent across the road from the Elysée last year. But the most grotesque spectacle was reserved for July when Syrian President Bachar el Assad was invited to attend the annual Bastille Day parade down the Champs Elysées. Chirac had broken off high-level contacts with Assad in 2005 after the assassination of his friend, Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, accusing the Syrian president of involvement. Assad's father Hafez, who handed over power to his son eight years ago, was moreover suspected of being behind an attack on French soldiers in Lebanon in 1983 which killed 58.