It is shameful when the White House is accused of betrayal by close allies in eastern and central Europe, but utterly humiliating when even the Elysee Palace thinks the United States has been transformed from a lion to a lamb in the face of mounting global threats. As The Wall Street Journal reported this morning, French president Nicolas Sarkozy was less than impressed with Barack Obama's performance last week in the face of the Iranian nuclear crisis.

According to the paper, Washington urged Paris to delete key sections of Sarkozy's UN speech that were critical of Iran and supposedly threatened to undermine Obama's attempt to project himself as a global peacemaker: