The General and the world
PATRICK COSGRAVE
'Things fall apart,' Yeats wrote, 'The centre cannot hold/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.' In the last few weeks that description has seemed more than apt for the world body politic. Two great crises—gold and Vietnam— seem together to have begun to shake the United States apart and the shock waves have set up yet another deep disturbance in storm-tossed Britain. And again at the centre of affairs— whether as a moving force in the series of events leading to crisis or as a scornful observer of the final truth of his own doom-laden prophecies— stands the President of France.
One high American official (according to re- ports) saw the whole situation as depending essentially on one's reaction to General de Gaulle. America could not withdraw from Vietnam in order to remove the causes of the international monetary crisis, he said, because that would be giving way to the General. He probably spoke in heat, but the absurdity of planning reaction to great crises according to its likely effect on one man was perhaps indica- tive of a deep psychological failure of perspec- tive.
Mr George Brown, too, in his resignation
article in file Sunday Times spoke in emotion- ally heightened terms of General de Gaulle. Despite his personal admiration for the Presi- dent of France, he wrote, 'French actions in almost every field of foreign and defence policy are frightening and could have shattering effects.' Why is it that the General can seem to penetrate in so marked a way to the very nerve centre of British and American politicians?
There are, it seems to me, two points about de Gaulle's system of politics which are abso- lutely central and are never sufficiently stressed. They provide, I believe, the key to his character and also the explanation of the effect he has in Britain and America. They represent both his success and his failure, and they are, as well, directly relevant to the crisis of will and identity that seems now to afflict the civilisations of Britain and the United States.
The first point is the General's deeply rooted belief that the will of a strategically placed in- dividual can alter the course of events, that, in international affairs, a creative impulse in dip- lomacy can be made to prevail over a web of circumstances and inhibitions, however com- plex. Secondly—and, as always with de Gaulle, an element of paradox is introduced here—the General has, all his life, been plagued by a reluctance to take action. Far from being a granite monolith, he is a man of unusual—even extreme—sensitivity, and the strain on his spirit involved in any of his great interventions in affairs is so tremendous that he always seeks to postpone action.
Since Churchill retired the Anglo-Saxon countries have, on the whole, been steadily los- ing faith in the ability of political leaders to make their will felt. Because in 1945 the western world was confronted with the hostility of the communist political system we ourselves began insensibly to construct a rival system. We stressed, not the individuality of the nations to whom communism was a threat, but the char- acteristics they (more or less) had in common, like democracy or capitalism. We began to be- lieve that there were ground rules for survival and security in the modern world and that what mattered was understanding of and loyalty to the common objectives of the Atlantic Alliance. Leadership devolved on the United States be- cause of her wealth, not her talent. We began to try to cooperate with, to serve, circumstances and we called it 'facing facts.'
It may be, of course, that the experience of our conflict with Nazism led us to fear the exaltation of willpower and leadership. The fact remains that when Mr Maudling says that the actions of France in the world monetary crisis are 'frankly, political' he is expressing just this Anglo-Saxon loss of will. He is speaking up for adherence to the agreed rules of the game, for companionship rather than competition, for collective rather than individual responsibility.
There have, it is true, been exceptions to this drift from willpower. Kennedy, for all the failures of his government, was such an excep- tion. The wild enthusiasm he excited—and, cur- rently, the enthusiasm excited by Senator Mc- Carthy with his assertion that he can end the war in Vietnam—suggests that in the citizenry of the great Anglo-Saxon democracies there is a visceral longing for just such an assertion of capacity on the part of their leaders. The fall of President Johnson and the rapid decline of Harold Wilson are due more than anything else to the conviction of their electorate that these leaders can no longer hope to master circumstances.
When today we think of Harold Wilson or Lyndon Johnson, we think of men trapped by circumstances, men of talent and intelligence on whom the manifold burdens of responsibility bear down too heavily. When we think of Ken- nedy (in his early days) or of de Gaulle, we think of men liberated rather than trapped by responsibility, men confident that they could master appalling difficulties. And the venom with which our politicians so often regard General de Gaulle sterns from their mingled envy of his freedom of action and fear of assum- ing a similar responsibility themselves, as well as from their annoyance at the fact that in his long periods of prophecy before action he seems so often right in the end.
The crisis over gold, inextricably linked as it is with Vietnam, has brought all this to a head. De Gaulle has never before had such a devastating effect. And it would be wrong, at this point, to shirk the major question : are his enemies right in their argument that, whatever the philosophical justification for his activities, de Gaulle is essentially irresponsible, wrecking the machinery of international politics when he cannot get his way? To what extent, if at all, is he a maniacal nationalist, unleashing in the world the same dark forces thatoin Hitler's bands, precipitated the Second World War?
A few years ago, when Gaullist policies were still a novelty, Maurice Couve de Murville, on a trip to London, said that French foreign policy was aimed at maintaining the balance of power in the world. Both he and his master take it that the fundamental reality with which statesmen have to deal is the place and the role of the nation state in the world; no stability, tranquillity or happiness can be achieved with- out an orderly distribution of influence and responsibility between independent national governments. And the willpower and talent of statesmen must be devoted to ensuring just such a distribution. No other combination, no search for refuge in amorphous economic groupings (which cannot retain the loyalty of ordinary men), no hapless bending to the economic or non-national logic, can achieve world stability. Thus, in a sense, the interests of France and of the world are identical, despite ceaseless com- petition between nations. In serving France de Gaulle also serves us all. That is his message.
Vietnam is the test case. Following the dic- tates of doctrinaire anti-communism America blundered into violating the rules of the balance of power and lacks the will and the talent to ex- tricate herself. International relations have been poisoned and the incapacity of American leaders to control their own war effort and its brutality have started (as New Hampshire showed) a cancerous growth of disillusion and disgust among the American people. And all this—the unthinking inertia which dominates the Johnson administration's attitude to the war and Britain's support of it as much as the original involvement—has spread outwards, dominating the gold crisis. international eco- nomics, America's European strategy, even down to the attitude of younger generations in Britain and the us towards politics. Even when he ordered a bombing pause, President Johnson was clearly acting under pressure rather than from judgment so that this sensible and humane act cannot convey any confidence that, in his twilight, he is beginning to master the war.
That is the logical fulfilment and conclu- sion of the postwar Anglo-Saxon attitude to politics and international affairs. This being so, what Anglo-Saxon can cast the first stone at General de Gaulle's nationalism, at his poli- tical record, or at his approach to politics?
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