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Woot! I'd love to get a chance to go to a base in France. lol
France and NATO
Back to the fold?
Feb 12th 2009 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition
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 s ched 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 compe ion 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 su ions 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 su ions 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 ins ution-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 iden y”, 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.
Woot! I'd love to get a chance to go to a base in France. lol
Paris in springtime, baby.
As much as France can sometimes be a tad, um, self-centered, they are still one of the world's largest economies, and a better friend to the US than most people think.
wat are these poofters going to do? besides being passive during talks and blocking any deals USA/alliance puts forward to NATO.
No military that wears THOSE ing hats should be allowed in NATO
They look like the STA-PUFFED Marshmallow Marines.
france hates us and we hate france.
they are changing strategies, from being openly anti-USA to "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer" and undermine us.
yup, that's what my paranoid side tells me.
nice, they got more nukes to play with.
This can be a good thing.
France left Nato's military command structure because it wanted complete control to avoid a war, and a guarantee that a Soviet nuclear threat could be checked by deterrence. That's why France had to do what it did and get its own nukes. On top of that, France has always wanted a prime role in NATO, a rebirth of its global influence, so to speak.
Now the appointment in Virginia falls into place.
But what is so funny, and makes this all for naught, is that I'm willing to bet US is more than ready to give some responsibility to France, if it meant they would get off their fromage eating asses and throw down with some real man power for Afghanistan. But we all know what the answer to THAT will be . . .
It should work that way, but it wont.
Last edited by Cant_Be_Faded; 02-13-2009 at 09:29 PM. Reason: my bad
lol france
they are a joke ass country, when was the last time they actually won a war or done some for mankind? fukn jack
france hates us and we hate france.
totally false, but wallow in your xenophobic and other American myths created by the hate radio and other right wing less assholes.
I wonder if boutons has ever been to france...
I am sure the french want more NATO and UN troops in Africa.. I can see this move...
The only good thing that France produced is Tony Parker and Noemie Lenoir (well we could add Marion Cotillard).
Anyhow, speaking seriously, I assume France coming back to NATO is a way to show the rest of the world that Europe is a Community.
I'd rather France not join NATO. Why invite a troubled North African Muslim country into NATO?
But seriously, France offers very little to NATO. Cooperating with France on the modern battlefield is far more difficult than working with the Brits or the Canadians. "Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion."
lol NATO
french troops on the mexican border?
...errrrrr..........France came to the aid of the colonialists, Gen. Washington and his minutemen during their bleakest moments....The only good thing that France produced is Tony Parker and Noemie Lenoir (well we could add Marion Cotillard).
Not really. France joined after our victory at Saratoga, when they realized we were going to win. The French monarchy wanted to capitalize on an opportunity to the British.
.. Boom....Washington wins the Battle of Saratoga....four months later the French recognize the U.S. in the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and with the Treaty of Alliance, they become able to sell arms to Washington's Army...but there still was a lot of fighting to go on...
werent they the same s who jumped on different sides of the war in ww2?
Dude! These are some of the more basic facts about ww2.werent they the same s who jumped on different sides of the war in ww2?
The ww2 turn coat was Italy.
France after being occupied did have a collaboration government (the Vichy state), but that was a puppet regime tolerated by the invading country (although they did try to regain their sovereign status from the German - but those were weak political/diplomatic efforts).
There were a lot of French people either joining the "exhiled" force based in UK and noth Africa or the local resistance... and also a lot of people collaborating with the Germans :/
Without France, we would not have won our Revolution. Look it up.
We have Frenchmen to thank for the following:
X-ray machines
genization
Pasteurization
etc.
etc.
etc.
you also forgot the gay guys they made north of your borderif that aint pansy enough......sugar coating, thats what they do best
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