Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 2, April–May 2009, pp. 77–90
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The new French White Paper on defence and national security, released in June 2008 after months of internal debate, jettisons a number of precepts and policies that have dominated French defence thinking since the mid 1960s. The most controversial change announced is President Nicolas Sarkozy’s initiative to return France to NATO’s integrated military command, from which General Charles de Gaulle withdrew the country in 1966. Sarkozy’s decision should bring significant security benefits both forFrance and NATO. It not only removes an important irritant that has hindered good relations between the United States and France but also opens up new possibilities for improving US–European cooperation more broadly. Cooperation between NATO and the EU in particular should become easier.
However, France’s return to fuller integration in the Alliance faces a number of obstacles and could still falter. Sarkozy’s plan faces opposition at home, even from within his own party. Much depends on the approach of the new Obama administration as well. The last attempt at reintegrating France collapsed at the eleventh hour due to inadequate preparation and mismanagement at the top on both sides, leaving a legacy of suspicion and mistrust that exacerbated US tensions with France and Europe for the better part of a decade. Thus, how well the Obama administration manages this issue will be an important test of its diplomatic skill and ability to forge a new security partnership with Europe.
Creeping reintegration
Although Sarkozy’s decision to promote France’s return to NATO’s integrated command appears to reverse a key tenet of Gaullist thinking, it represents less a rupture with de Gaulle’s policy than the culmination of a process of ‘creeping reintegration’ that has been quietly going on since the early 1990s.
In the initial period after the end of the Cold War, France saw little need for NATO and favoured a diminished role for the Alliance and the United States in European security. When it became clear, however, that Europe was not capable of managing the Bosnian crisis on its own, President François Mitterrand gave the green light for combined operations between French and NATO forcesand increased ‘deliberative participation’, on a selective basis, in meetings of NATO defence ministers and the Alliance’s Military Committee. He also agreed that the French forces in the Eurocorps could be put under NATO operational control in times of crisis.
This process of creeping reintegration intensified under President Jacques Chirac. Chirac came very close to achieving France’s full reintegration into the Alliance in 1996–97. Indeed, had he been a bit more modest in formulating his conditions for France’s return, his efforts might well have succeeded. However, Chirac’s price for agreeing to full reintegration, European command of Allied Forces Southern Europe (AFSOUTH) in Naples, was regarded by the Clinton administration as too high and the deal ultimately collapsed.
Behind the scenes, however, French cooperation with NATO on a practical level quietly increased. France is today the largest contributor to the NATO Response Force and participates in all major Alliance expeditionary operations...
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Jeremy Ghez is a doctoral fellow at the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School. F. Stephen Larrabee holds the Corporate Chair in European Security at the RAND Corporation.
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