France's welcome return to Nato's military wing

France's decision to return to Nato's military command is an important step which will see it integrate fully back into the alliance. Forty-three years after Charles de Gaulle pulled France out to distance it from the US, President Nicolas Sarkozy said the time had come for France to resume a full role Nato.

"Our strategic thinking can't remain frozen when the world around us has completely changed. I don't think a big power like France should stand halfway between the rest of the world because that means it is nowhere," he said.

"France wants peace, France wants freedom and France also knows who our friends and enemies are. I'm not afraid to say it, our friends and allies are first and foremost the Western family."

Sarkozy is absolutely right and France's return is long overdue. What sense does it make for France, a founding member of Nato, a nuclear power and a leading global actor to have no say in the alliance's military strategy? Sarkozy's decision, which was no doubt influenced by the fact that the Cold War ended 20 years ago, will strengthen Nato as a whole but will also reinforce Europe's voice within the alliance.

France's return to Nato's military fold is certainly a historic, symbolic and political act that will help strengthen Franco-American relations as well as pave the way for better relations between the EU and Nato. French military officers are now expected to take charge of two Nato commands based in the US and Portugal, and the number of French personnel at Nato headquarters in Brussels will be increased from 100 to around 800.

While Europe and the US have welcomed France's re-entry into Nato's military structure, there have been protests at home, mainly from the opposition Socialist Party and a few dissidents within Sarkozy's own UMP party, who fear that France will lose its independence from the US and will be dragged into conflicts in which it does not want to be involved.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Germany, for example, is a full member of Nato, yet this did not stop it from strongly opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Furthermore, France is already a significant contributor to Nato operations in Afghanistan, where it has 3,000 troops, as well as in Bosnia and Kosovo.

In fact, France has been more active in Nato operations over the past years than many other full members of the alliance and is among the top five contributors to such ventures.

So to say that France's return to Nato's military structure will force it to send troops to participate in other conflicts is completely untrue. It already sends troops to various part of the world, and does so because it wants to. It is also important to note that France will be maintaining its independent nuclear deterrent as it integrates fully into Nato.

France's latest move could also contribute to the debate on how the EU's defence policy should evolve as well as the future of Nato as Europe's principal security pillar. An opportunity has now been created for Nato and the EU to define their respective defence and security roles, something that has been talked about for some time, but over which little action has been taken.

There has also been a suspicion in Washington that France's desire to boost an EU defence structure was aimed at undermining Nato. Sarkozy's decision to take France fully back into Nato should remove such misgivings and make the US more comfortable about how Europe develops its defence wing.

It will also be interesting to see how the neutral EU countries, namely Malta, Austria, Sweden, Finland and Ireland, will fit into the bloc's defence structure, as this grows, if at all. As usual, there will always be the distinction made between defence and security, and I don't think the EU's defence pillar will develop along lines similar to Nato. More than anything else, it will strengthen its role in peace-keeping, nation-building, humanitarian relief efforts and being able to respond to security crises, and there is nothing to be neutral about that.

The French Parliament has now backed Sarkozy's decision on Nato - opinion polls also show that the French public supports the President on this matter - and the official return to the military command is expected to take place at the alliance's 60th anniversary summit that will be jointly hosted by France and Germany next month.

France's return to Nato's military pillar will bring new energy and focus to an organisation that won the Cold War and which played such a crucial role in maintaining a record period of peace and security in Europe.