RandomGuy
02-12-2009, 05:36 PM
France and NATO
Back to the fold?
Feb 12th 2009 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition
http://media.economist.com/images/20090214/0709EU2.jpg
Nicolas Sarkozy faces domestic opposition to his decision to return France to NATO’s integrated military command in April
AFP
IT WAS in a short but scrupulously polite letter to Lyndon Johnson 43 years ago that Charles de Gaulle announced his decision to pull France out of NATO’s integrated military command. His country, the French president wrote to his American counterpart, needed “to recover the full exercise of her sovereignty across her entire territory.” He shut down NATO’s headquarters in Paris and expelled American military bases from France. Ever since, the French have seen their semi-detached status in NATO as a guarantor of their strategic autonomy and a totem of their refusal to accept American supremacy.
President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to reverse de Gaulle’s decision and reintegrate France fully into NATO’s military command is, therefore, both bold and unsettling. On April 3rd and 4th Mr Sarkozy and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel will jointly host a summit to mark NATO’s 60th anniversary. Mr Sarkozy is expected to use the occasion officially to announce France’s full return. But he needs to prepare the ground at home for a decision that is contested both by the opposition and by many in his own party. Next week he is expected to make the case in a speech in Paris. The French parliament plans to debate the issue shortly.
For decades, in school textbooks and diplomatic lecture halls, the French have learnt that de Gaulle’s decision and the creation of the nuclear force de frappe form the cornerstone of France’s independent defence policy. NATO came to be regarded with instinctive distrust, as a place in which America and Britain stitched up deals. For their part, the Americans saw France’s plans to build an independent European defence capacity as an effort to undermine NATO and create a rival to what the French have termed American “hyperpower”. Such mutual mistrust reached its zenith under President Jacques Chirac, who repeatedly called for Europe to be a counterweight to America.
Mr Sarkozy, himself from the Gaullist family but keen to improve France’s ties with America, is trying to turn this logic on its head. In his first big foreign-policy speech, he argued that “progress on European defence is in no way part of a competition with NATO.” He has repeatedly stressed that the two can be complementary. There are European security concerns, such as in Africa, that NATO would not want to touch. He adds that east Europeans, keen on NATO’s security umbrella, will never trust joint European defence as long as they have lingering suspicions that it is a French scheme to weaken NATO.
Mr Sarkozy set three conditions for rejoining NATO’s integrated military command: America should drop its suspicions of joint European defence; progress must be made on this (ie, the British have to get more involved); and France must be given a decent role within NATO. On the first point, he got most of what he needed at the recent Munich Security Conference. Vice-President Joe Biden declared that America would “warmly welcome” a full French return to NATO. He added that “we also support the further strengthening of European defence.”
The second point is trickier. Mr Sarkozy will have trouble pointing to a tangible European defence capacity to show he has got his side of the bargain. Under one symbolic new agreement, a battalion of German soldiers will be based in eastern France. Officials also point to nearly 10,000 soldiers under the European Union flag who are on operations from Kosovo to Congo. But these are ad hoc arrangements. There is no autonomous operational European command headquarters, because the British do not want one, and no money for extravagant institution-building. In the medium term, NATO offers the only serious supranational security structure.
That the French have won a fair deal on the third condition may, however, help to fend off charges that the country is gaining too little in return for rejoining NATO’s integrated command. France seems to have secured two senior NATO posts: one at the allied command in Norfolk, Virginia, and another at the regional command in Lisbon. Mr Sarkozy will stress that France has already commanded NATO missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Even when fully within NATO’s military structure, France will still retain its independent nuclear capability and defence autonomy. “My conviction”, Mr Sarkozy said at the Munich conference, “is that France can renovate its relations with NATO while remaining an independent ally, a free partner of the United States.”
All the same, the French president faces broad political resistance. François Bayrou, a centrist, has accused Mr Sarkozy of “abandoning an element of our identity”, and called for a referendum. Dominique de Villepin, a centre-right former prime minister, claims that France will “find itself shrunk on the diplomatic scene”. The Socialist Party has demanded a parliamentary vote as well as a debate, and insists that by fully returning to NATO, France “will lose joint European defence”. Public opinion, however, may be less hostile than the political elite. NATO seems to be little known and little understood. Asked in a poll last year whether France should fully rejoin, 38% said yes, 34% said no and 28% said they were not sure.
In the months ahead, Mr Sarkozy’s greatest political difficulty may be not so much persuading the French of the case of a full return to NATO as dealing with American requests for more help in Afghanistan. The Americans want to double their own presence there, and at the NATO summit President Barack Obama will ask the Europeans to do more too.
France sent an extra 700 soldiers last year. Hervé Morin, the defence minister, says he has no plans to do more. In the past, the French have argued that they are overstretched by commitments elsewhere, notably in Africa. Yet last month they announced that 1,000 French soldiers from Chad and the Central African Republic, and 1,100 from Côte d’Ivoire, would be recalled to France. “We may have put ourselves in a difficult situation because we do actually have some room for manoeuvre now,” comments François Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research. The first test of France’s new commitment to NATO may come quite soon.
Back to the fold?
Feb 12th 2009 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition
http://media.economist.com/images/20090214/0709EU2.jpg
Nicolas Sarkozy faces domestic opposition to his decision to return France to NATO’s integrated military command in April
AFP
IT WAS in a short but scrupulously polite letter to Lyndon Johnson 43 years ago that Charles de Gaulle announced his decision to pull France out of NATO’s integrated military command. His country, the French president wrote to his American counterpart, needed “to recover the full exercise of her sovereignty across her entire territory.” He shut down NATO’s headquarters in Paris and expelled American military bases from France. Ever since, the French have seen their semi-detached status in NATO as a guarantor of their strategic autonomy and a totem of their refusal to accept American supremacy.
President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to reverse de Gaulle’s decision and reintegrate France fully into NATO’s military command is, therefore, both bold and unsettling. On April 3rd and 4th Mr Sarkozy and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel will jointly host a summit to mark NATO’s 60th anniversary. Mr Sarkozy is expected to use the occasion officially to announce France’s full return. But he needs to prepare the ground at home for a decision that is contested both by the opposition and by many in his own party. Next week he is expected to make the case in a speech in Paris. The French parliament plans to debate the issue shortly.
For decades, in school textbooks and diplomatic lecture halls, the French have learnt that de Gaulle’s decision and the creation of the nuclear force de frappe form the cornerstone of France’s independent defence policy. NATO came to be regarded with instinctive distrust, as a place in which America and Britain stitched up deals. For their part, the Americans saw France’s plans to build an independent European defence capacity as an effort to undermine NATO and create a rival to what the French have termed American “hyperpower”. Such mutual mistrust reached its zenith under President Jacques Chirac, who repeatedly called for Europe to be a counterweight to America.
Mr Sarkozy, himself from the Gaullist family but keen to improve France’s ties with America, is trying to turn this logic on its head. In his first big foreign-policy speech, he argued that “progress on European defence is in no way part of a competition with NATO.” He has repeatedly stressed that the two can be complementary. There are European security concerns, such as in Africa, that NATO would not want to touch. He adds that east Europeans, keen on NATO’s security umbrella, will never trust joint European defence as long as they have lingering suspicions that it is a French scheme to weaken NATO.
Mr Sarkozy set three conditions for rejoining NATO’s integrated military command: America should drop its suspicions of joint European defence; progress must be made on this (ie, the British have to get more involved); and France must be given a decent role within NATO. On the first point, he got most of what he needed at the recent Munich Security Conference. Vice-President Joe Biden declared that America would “warmly welcome” a full French return to NATO. He added that “we also support the further strengthening of European defence.”
The second point is trickier. Mr Sarkozy will have trouble pointing to a tangible European defence capacity to show he has got his side of the bargain. Under one symbolic new agreement, a battalion of German soldiers will be based in eastern France. Officials also point to nearly 10,000 soldiers under the European Union flag who are on operations from Kosovo to Congo. But these are ad hoc arrangements. There is no autonomous operational European command headquarters, because the British do not want one, and no money for extravagant institution-building. In the medium term, NATO offers the only serious supranational security structure.
That the French have won a fair deal on the third condition may, however, help to fend off charges that the country is gaining too little in return for rejoining NATO’s integrated command. France seems to have secured two senior NATO posts: one at the allied command in Norfolk, Virginia, and another at the regional command in Lisbon. Mr Sarkozy will stress that France has already commanded NATO missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Even when fully within NATO’s military structure, France will still retain its independent nuclear capability and defence autonomy. “My conviction”, Mr Sarkozy said at the Munich conference, “is that France can renovate its relations with NATO while remaining an independent ally, a free partner of the United States.”
All the same, the French president faces broad political resistance. François Bayrou, a centrist, has accused Mr Sarkozy of “abandoning an element of our identity”, and called for a referendum. Dominique de Villepin, a centre-right former prime minister, claims that France will “find itself shrunk on the diplomatic scene”. The Socialist Party has demanded a parliamentary vote as well as a debate, and insists that by fully returning to NATO, France “will lose joint European defence”. Public opinion, however, may be less hostile than the political elite. NATO seems to be little known and little understood. Asked in a poll last year whether France should fully rejoin, 38% said yes, 34% said no and 28% said they were not sure.
In the months ahead, Mr Sarkozy’s greatest political difficulty may be not so much persuading the French of the case of a full return to NATO as dealing with American requests for more help in Afghanistan. The Americans want to double their own presence there, and at the NATO summit President Barack Obama will ask the Europeans to do more too.
France sent an extra 700 soldiers last year. Hervé Morin, the defence minister, says he has no plans to do more. In the past, the French have argued that they are overstretched by commitments elsewhere, notably in Africa. Yet last month they announced that 1,000 French soldiers from Chad and the Central African Republic, and 1,100 from Côte d’Ivoire, would be recalled to France. “We may have put ourselves in a difficult situation because we do actually have some room for manoeuvre now,” comments François Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research. The first test of France’s new commitment to NATO may come quite soon.