Reagan's best friend
Sam White
Paris One has to go back to the distant pre-de Gaulle era to find a French head of government in such complete agreement with America's European defence policy as President Mitterrand is with that of President Reagan. And yet Mitterrand heads not only a socialist government, but one which includes communists. This is so glaring a paradox that no one in France has yet got around to openly discussing it. Thus Le Monde, which would be loud in its lamentations if it were Giscard and not Mitterrand who was supporting Reagan on the neutron bomb issue, for once seems to prefer straight reporting to comment. As for the communist L 'Human ite which normally might have been expected to tear its lungs out in denunciation of Mitterrand's 'treason', it too is displaying unusual restraint on the subject. True, it calls for demonstrations against the installation of the neutron bomb in Europe but it is Reagan's policy which it denounces and not Mitterrand's support of it — Reagan's decision to produce it which it attacks, and not Mitterrand's fairly evident intention to emulate him.
To round off this picture of general embarrassment, it should be pointed out that the right, too, feels reluctant to attack Mitterrand for being 'pro-American', especially after it had made so much of the dismay caused in Washington by the entry of communists into the French government. It prefers to talk of other issues rather than draw attention to the success Mitterrand has had in establishing an exceptionally warm relationship with Washington — a relationship which escaped all three of his predecessors.
Some mutterings, however, are beginning to be heard from traditional Gaullists who fear that Mitterrand is beginning to jettison some of the basic principles of Gaullist foreign policy which required, among other things, that France should maintain a balance between 'the twin hegemonies'.
'The essential fact', writes Paul-Marie de la Gorce, 'and in any case the most spectacular is the open satisfaction being shown by the United States at the new orientations being taken by French foreign policy.' He points out that France has taken a firm stand on Afghanistan, and has made it clear that it will not 'normalise' relations with the Soviet Union while its troops remain there. This has meant the abandonment of the regular Franco-Soviet summit meetings, and that the new foreign minister, M. Cheysson, who has already met more than a dozen other foreign ministers has not yet met with Gromyko. In short, the so-called Franco-Soviet special relationship on which Giscard prided himself is at an end. Then there has been Mitterrand's public support for the deployment of medium-range US missiles in Europe — a support which his predecessor always refused — and his equally prompt support for the Camp David agreements as against an independent European initiative in the Middle East.
As against this there is the emerging new French policy in the 'third world', especially in Latin America which is bound to bring about differences with the United States. This has already produced a conflict of views on El Salvador, a conflict which Washington seems to be taking calmly, no doubt on the principle that agreement on Europe and the Middle East and especially on attitudes to the Soviet Union is well worth a difference of opinion about El Salvador. It is, however, this breach with the Soviet Union which M. de la Gorce finds most unsettling, arguing that if three successive presidents of the Republic have thought it necessary to maintain special ties with that country it is because 'they were conscious that it was the only way to maintain an autonomous existence in the present state of international relations: and that experience proved that this did not exclude grave disagreements with Moscow or notable convergences with Washington'. What de la Gorce fails to see is that while this might have been a reasonable policy when there was a balance of power, or when the Americans enjoyed a clear superiority, it is not reasonable when the balance has shifted heavily in favour of the Soviet Union. After all, if de Gaulle ranged himself instantly on the side of the Americans at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, how much more likely that he would have done so when the crisis is not in far-off Cuba but in the heart of Europe.
For it is of course the steady build-up of the Soviet SS-20 missile in Eastern Europe which has changed the entire strategic picture in Europe as a whole. And it is because Mitterrand warned of this change long before he was elected that he earned for himself the deadly enmity of the Russians. It is, therefore, not surprising that he should be consistent with his views before he became president, and incidentally consistent with his deep detestation of Soviet communism, by insisting that Western and especially American re-armament should come first and negotiations with the Russians after. This is _what he told Willy Brandt in almost brutal terms when his old friend visited him recently. Brandt came not only as a friend but in his capacity as president of both the West German Social Democrats and of the Socialist International to plead with Mitterrand to soften his views. He got no change at all, and instead had to listen to some harsh views harshly expressed — as, for example, when he complained that West Germany was being treated as a colony by the Americans only to be told brusquely by Mitterrand: 'that is a consequence of the war'.
Meanwhile the oddity remains of a socialist president with communists in his government feeling freer to take a tough line with the Russians than either his predecessor or almost any other West European leader. Such problems as powerful neutralist, unilateralist or pacifist lobbies in general, which weigh heavily on decisionmaking in other European countries such as West Germany or Holland, sit as light as so many feathers on his shoulders. The pacifist wing of his own party is silent and, as for neutralism, that has ceased to be an important factor in French politics ever since France's own atomic striking force developed credibility. There remain the communists, and how long they can go along with a foreign policy of such avowed hostility to the Soviet Union remains to be seen. There is undoubtedly an influential section of the party which was hostile to the idea of joining the government in the first place, and will press for withdrawal from it should both the economic and the international situation worsen. There is, however, another section at the central committee level, rather than the higher politbureau one, which is almost daily proclaiming the party's determination to stay with the ship whatever happens. Meanwhile there has not been a peep out of the party's leader, Georges Marchais, for the past three months and one wonders what his own fate will be as the party grapples with the deep and all too evident contradictions between its loyalty to Moscow and its desire to establish itself as a party of government.
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