After Pompidou (2)
Prance and the Atlantic crisis
,Nicholas Richardson
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, 'Ile change in the wizard's voice was as`01Anding. Suddenly it became menacing. Powerful, harsh as stone . . . All trembled, and the Elves stopped their cars." Some 1 sPPPed their minds as well, because when the USt settled after Henry Kissinger's calculated ?1,4tbursts on his return from Brussels in early March, it became painfully obvious that his lal4er was directed less at France than at Main and the Federal Republic. It was rif Flashman had turned on his friends: the Ib3e0lish virgins of Europe were to be treated no 1 lter than its thoroughgoing whore. , Previously there had been a comfortable vte.eling of déjà-bu about the crisis. No doubt ,Intage prose sells as well as vintage port; in Ttr_iY event the old clichds about France and Yie French were dusted off and wheeled out ,or A„ a new airing. On the other side of the ivantic James Reston wrote of the "maladie !pr"caise". In Britain the Times compared the ▪ rierich stance to the way a fractious child can y establish his identity by an attitude of lirrrnanent sulky refusal. France, the chorus ' went, was the EEC's oddball. Its European' li139, licY was narrowly selfish when, not negaike, overly influenced by domestic concerns, 1sPired by an almost paranoid hatred of f hierica Nothing had changed since de 5Galaiie. .
, t asy writing, and a blend of misconception misstatement in about equal parts. If the
• rsuit of national priorities inside the Com'fluainity is Gaullist, then we're all Gaullists st'W. Certainly France left the Snake when it ciaited her — but both Britain and Italy had ,°Ile so before. Certainly the French have r,de bilateral deals with the Arab oil-. `Lc)ducers — but so have Britain and West ;rmany. Certainly France plays the CAP for 4 it's worth — but critics might care to look th‘the kickback those virtuous Danes and ‘,7,,tch get. In last winter's major EEC row, it orsn't the French who blocked all discussion q tile energy problem in the hope that the ejrnans would fork out more, but the British. te"or is the argument that France persisOtIY frustrates any combined Community etion much more plausible. The EEC wklaration on the Middle East last November has the kind of victory little Peterkin might b„ave queried, but inglorious as it may have ips'en it was at least an agreement, and the sPiration was French; the Washington fference in February may have been a 4p8co, but that was hardly France's fault. Ore Kissinger adopted his bow-wow style arle Nine had, on another French initiative, i r ,.°Pted a common line. Under pressure they tn'eged — but this was one occasion when st of the regiment really was out of step. igheri came the Brussels conference in March, rd the joint decision — once again at tt,nee's suggestion — to propose a full 4111.°Pean-Arab meeting this autumn. All in ' a curiously constructive record for the French. However sick the joke may seem in the wider context, for the French 1973-4 really was the Year of -Europe.
But what kind of Europe; and Europe for what? Here there certainly is a major difference between France and the Eight. Not so much because of the traditional Gaullist notion of a Europe des pa tries with no supranational structure; this has been considerably attenuated which is one reason why, paradoxically, until the recent British election a political Europe looked a slightly better proposition than its economic eqiiivalent. It lies rather in the French emphasis on a Europe that, in the General's phrase, has its own personality, is associated with but not assimilated to the States. Behind this there is a still more fundamental option. Every country in Western Europe has less the choice between independence and security, than the problem of weighting them. As things stand, an armed American presence in Europe is its only effectual guarantee. But this guarantee implies, if not hegemony, then at least some measure of American control over the states concerned, some loss of independence.. At one extreme is the Federal Republic, whose chips go down for the largest tolerable measure of security. At the other are the French for whom the scales are weighted precisely the opposite way.
As a strategy, France's may seem a little like having one's cake and getting the others to pay for it. The French are convinced that the Americans will keep their troops in Europe because Europe is necessary to their defence, and argue from this that it permits France a very considerable leeway. Like the progressive French disengagement from NATO. Should the worst threaten, then she hopes France's ally the Federal Republic will be there to mend any broken fences: something the German attitude makes probable. But in an interview on March 8 Michel Jobert not only spelt out the French argument in full, but carried it a significant stage further. Although no one could have been in a better position to understand the difficulties of establishing a common European defence system worthy of the name, he emphasised that if France were forced to choose between the security the American presence provided, and independence or as he phrased it national dignity, she would choose the latter. This was an innovation of some consequence. For one thing it ran straight across Pompidou's previous policy, and threatened the cohesion of his governing , coalition. For another, it brought into the 'open differences within the EEC that had always been a potential threat to its survival. What then had happened? The answer can be found in Kissinger's sustained diplomatic offensive. Kissinger's style, ironically, has been more Gaullist than de Gaulle's. Only unlike the General he doesn't just have the style, he has the muscle too. For most of 1973 the international situation was thrown out of gear, because, for a variety of reasons running from Watergate to its economic troubles, the United States was in an unusually weak position. The Middle East War changed all that and as the Americans have not tired of repeating since, altered the balance between Europe and the States. The War put the EEC over the oil barrel; understandably they saw the issue as primarily an economic one. For the States, far nearer selfsufficiency in fuel, and with far wider-ranging responsibilities, the war was a strategic issue, something that affected the whole tenuous balance of international relations, and in particular threatened their hard-won détente with the USSR. The EEC's common declaration on the Middle East infuriated the Americans for two reasons. The first was that the EEC's unfavourable attitude toward Israel contradicted American policy; the second that the declaration implied an independence, almost a rivalry with America that European non-cooperation and dragging of feet over the airlift to Israel had already suggested. Both meant that America could no longer count on the unquestioned support of its allies; but the whole assumption on which détente rests is that both superpowers can control their clients.
As a result, the Americans have been less concerned with the efficacy of the arrangements they have proposed to the Nine, than with the Nine's atcepting them. The first indication was as early as last April, when Kissinger suddenly proposed the formulation of a New Atlantic Charter. The crux was his suggestion for an energy action group including the Nine, the States, Canada and Japan. What mattered here was less what this co-ordinating group might do than that the Europeans should be seen to come toCanossa. And, Michel Jobert included, come they did. Along with this has been a parallel offensive, the demand that America should be consulted in the formulation of any joint EEC position or policy, and not simply presented with a fait accompli.
The tactics were as peremptory as they may seem presumptuous; after all, when the Americans ordered a Grade Three alert on October 25 last year, they did not see fit to consult their allies. They could hardly have been better calculated to put the EEc on the spot. The successive diktats, that the Europeans should produce a new Atlantic Charter, that they should come to Washington to form the energy co-ordinating group, forced the EEC into the position of being obliged to take a common stand before they had worked out the background details, and difficulties. This tendency to put cart before horse was sufficiently marked in Brussels already. The calculated sloth with which the EEC set about elaborating their new Atlantic Charter was very largely due to the American demand that they produce a common foreign policy when they had previously been unable to settle even its components. Whatever credit is given to Kissinger's pursuit of detente, and in spite of his crocodile tears over European behaviour, it's difficult not to see his tactics as a deliberate wrecking operation. Europe, he has said, should not imagine it can define its identity only by distinguishing itself from the States. But it rather looks as if he has gone some way to ensuring just that. _ _
So far as the first round goes therefore, it seems that Kissinger may have overplayed his hand. France has always feared what Porn
pidou called a joint Soviet-American condominion — "one ring to bind them all." Kissinger's railroading has made this seem less illusory. War, the General once said, is against our enemies; peace against our friends. It's not only the French who have noticed the sharp contrast between Kissinger's complaisance towards Soviet Russia and his severity toward Europe. The result of Kissinger's diplomacy has not been to isolate the French, but, provisionally at least, to alienate the Europeans. In a more than usually untranslatable pun Les Informations wrote that for the EEC the choice was that of Amireurope ou atnere Europe.Such European unity as has been achieved to date has been in response to outside and hostile pressure. It would surely be ironic if this highly calculating diplomat were to prove the catalyser for the next modest advance.
But so far we've only seen the first round, and Michel Jobert seems to have won it on points, but he was the spokesman of a president always pessimistic about Europe's future whose permanent fear had been of another Yalta, a system of international relations in which Europe and France were left in the cold. Georges Pompidou didn't leave a political testament; but the Wednesday before he died he presided at a cabinet meeting in which he spoke his mind at some length on the Atlantic issue. There were purely political reasons that have brought him back to the orthodox Gaullist line. Affective ones too; Duke moriens reminiscitur Argos . . .
Nicholas Richardson, author of The French Perfectoral Corps, is currently writing Apres Gaullisme.
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