France's valentine to Russia

ON ONE LEVEL, maybe it's not surprising that France would sell an ultramodern helicopter carrier to Russia's navy, even as Russia continues to occupy illegally a sovereign nation that enjoys, at least in theory, good relations with France. After all, times are tough. Three-quarters of a billion dollars is three-quarters of a billion dollars. And France has never hidden its inclination to submerge principle when it comes to maintaining a profitable commercial relationship with the nation that supplies so much of Europe's oil and gas.

Still, we do find it surprising -- maybe because we remember French President Nicolas Sarkozy's role in brokering an end to the August 2008 conflict in which Russia invaded Georgia, its tiny neighbor to the south. Russia promised Mr. Sarkozy a number of things, among them that it would retreat to prewar lines and force levels. Mr. Sarkozy trumpeted these promises as a great success of French diplomacy -- more accurately, of Sarkozy diplomacy. Then Russia promptly broke those promises, and it remains, to this day, in gross violation of the cease-fire agreement as it occupies swaths of Georgian territory.

So, yes, we find it surprising that Mr. Sarkozy's response to this Russian violation is to furnish the Russian navy with a vessel that, if deployed to the Black Sea, would make Russia far more capable of inflicting damage on Georgia the next time around, or on any other neighbor that has a coastline and happens to offend Vladimir Putin's sense of imperial entitlement. In fact, last year the chief of Russia's navy boasted that with a Mistral class destroyer in his fleet, he could have subdued Georgia in 40 minutes instead of the 26 hours it took.

Some French officials have attempted to soften the blow by pointing out that the French navy has used this class of ships -- bristling with formidable weaponry of a technological caliber not available in Russia today -- for humanitarian missions.

The rationalization is so ludicrous that even those proffering it must be embarrassed. We hope so; Mr. Sarkozy himself seems to be immune to embarrassment.