Embracing a dictator

ENAR

Thinking back to early December, we’re still not sure whether the visit to France by the Libyan dictator, Moammar Gadhafi, was good or bad. Good, because even members of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government openly expressed their discontent with receiving a chronic human rights abuser in Paris; or bad, because they all had to backtrack and accept that France is now in the business of “engaging” thugs for financial gain. The contradiction between making money and defending human rights has long been at the center of international affairs. More often than not the imperatives of the first have overridden those of the second. For a moment after his election, Sarkozy looked like he might buck the trend. His appointment of Bernard Kouchner as foreign minister, like that of Rama Yade as secretary of state for human rights, suggested he would favor policies focused on the protection of individual liberties. Instead,