After all there are great personal advantages to be had from aligning oneself and one's nation (whether they like it or not) with the last great empire. There is the sense of being on the "winning side" (who now can stand up to the US juggernaut?). There is immediate access to the massive resources, influence and intelligence assets of the empire through which previously impossible goals become not just possible but a matter of policy.
Up until Sarkozy's nomination as President last year, France had a 40 year long history of staunch opposition to the type of US diplomacy that has brought us the ludicrous yet deadly "war on terror". As long as there was a major world power that was still relatively independent, there was still a third option - that if small yet strategically important nations weren't "with the US" they weren't by definition "with the terrorists". They could be "with France".
Comment: The above link contained within the text "those that so deftly shunted him into the Elysee Palace" has been removed from the original Quatar Penninsula site, but is still available on archive.org. In case it ever disappears completely from the web, here are two screen-shots of the article for a more secure archive experience: