VIEWS OF THE WEEK
The Shadow of 1969
KEITH KYLE writes:
The London NATO conference was a good conference, as these conferences go nowadays. This means that the French were not nasty to anyone and that the Greeks and Turks were nice to each other. It was a success.
But across all NATO discussions there now falls the forward-shadow of 1969. This is not when the alliance comes to an end unless it is positively renewed. The alliance is of unstated duration. It is, however, the first year in its life in which a Member may give a year's notice to quit. It is quite possible—some people say certain—that General de Gaulle, NATO's principal ground landlord, will give such notice at the first avail- able moment unless he is bought off with changes in the treaty. The treaty itself provides for the negotiation of such changes from 1959 onwards. Marilio Brosio, the Secretary-General, has, said that this facility should be invoked in 1966 or 1967 to anticipate a possible crisis in 1969.
Gaullist politicians are themselves not at all shy of calling attention to this deadline, and the date has some bearing on the further develop- ment of the force de frappe. By the end of 'the current year, fifty-four French Mirage IV supersonic bombers carrying medium-yield atomic bombs will be operational. By the early 4seventies the next generation of French nuclear Weapons will be deliverable by rocket. Some Gaullisit spokesmen have openly stated that France will use her prospective ability to sabotage American strategy to force a reconsideration of that strategy. Particular exception is taken to Mr. McNamara's Ann Arbor speech elaborating the variety of options other than massive retalia- tion now open to the West because of the super- abundance of American nuclear strength. The French hold that while it may _well suit Akterica's national interest to make stage-by-stage tests of the enemy's intention after an initial incursion has taken place, this cannot suit France or Ger- many because it is their territory on which this stage-by-stage testing would be taking place.
This view was put in its crudest form in an article in the Revue de Defense Nationale of August 1964 by General Charles Ailleret, French Chief of the General Staff. He maintained that Soviet forces could not be held by conventional means unless, by a slowly developing flexible response, on the Rhine or farther westwards. Tactical nuclear weapons, short-range missiles or atomic artillery should not be used to halt such an attack. Although Europe might by these means escape invasion, it would not escape de- struction. The only means of saving Europe would be a strategic nuclear bombardment of Soviet military and industrial bases.
Ailleret's article offended the more refined spirits among even French strategic thinkers, since it employed the language of fighting a war rather than the approved vocabulary of deter- rence. It has been suggested that President de Gaulle could only have allowed it to appear in print because, being absolutely con- fident that there would never be a Soviet attack, he had seen in the general's unintellectual thesis another political weapon to be used against the United States.
But it is as well to remember that de Gaulle also has high-powered intellectual support for the- direction in which -he is moving. General Andre Beaufre believes that in dealing with an opponent like the Soviet Union it is 'the uncer- tainty which makes him wise.' Deterrence,' he claims, 'is only 10 per cent forces and 90 per cent uncertainty•: He concludes that the existence of several nuclear buttons, each controlled by one man, on the western side will itself impart the element of uncertainty necessary to deter. He therefore sees positive merit in the apparent confusion of strategies within NATO. There should even appear to be for public consumption a button-possessor on the western side who is 'unwise.' During an international crisis the Russians might say: 'We may think we can outstare' President Johnson,- but can we be cer- tain that we can also outstare President de Gaulle or Prime Minister X; may not one of them be foolhardy enough to plunge all of us into a nuclear apocalypse?'
Some leading defence commentators, such as Theo Sommer, of Die Zeit, discount the ability of the French to bring American strategists to terms by threatening otherwise to make the force de frappe a menace to the whole alliance. Sommer argues cogently that even into the 1970s France's capacity to deliver nuclear weapons effectively will be so small that she would have to aim them at Russian cities to make a worthwhile strike. The Russians, understanding that Ameri- can strategy would not call for a strike at cities at this stage, would easily identify this as a unilateral -French initiative and would take out France alone by way of retaliation. The burden would then be placed on the Americans of de- ciding whether they would want to start a devastating exchange because France had been punished for going it alone.
Translated into the vocabulary of deterrence, this argument is over Whether France's pOtential ability to involve Anierica.'againSt her will in a nuclear exchange over a European issue is as credible as America's present ability to involve her European allies in a nuclear war over a non- European issue. If the answer to this question is: Yes, or Yes in x years, France hopes that she, as a surrogate for Europe, will thereby gain equal bargaining power with the United States, despite the wild disparity in total military and economic power between them. This means, of course, equal bargaining power not only over deciding the appropriate military strategy for Europe, but equal bargaining power over decid- ing the appropriate political strategy for South- East Asia and even perhaps the Caribbean.
France hopes and expects that in the course of time other Europeans will come to acknow- ledge that in acting as President de Gaulle has been .doing he has been acting as the authentic trustee of Europe.
Of recent years France has been developing a recognisable style of negotiation with existing partners that can be seen in its most marked form in the institutions of the European Common Market. All possible options are systematically eliminated until the only choice left is between the existing situation and the French proposal. The chances of the latter are greatly enhanced if the existing situation runs out at a known dead- line. The deadline for the North Atlantic Alli- ance with its present membership intact is 1969.
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