Our Friends, the French
By MALCOLM RUTHERFORD
FRANCE,' said General de Gaulle on his arrival in Moscow, 'is par excellence a country of liberty and a Western nation.' Though the General may not always put the truth so plainly, it would be hard to accuse him of any kind of deviousness in this simple remark.
France is a Western nation and, though she is going faster than most Western nations in seeking new relationships with the Communist East, it is only as a Western nation that she can operate. Once the probes in the East are well under way, it is unthinkable that General de Gaulle ' will not return to make new soundings among his friends and allies in the West. For the approaches to the East can only form half a strategy; they make no sense unless they are then related to changing patterns in the West, and especially in Western Europe.
Some time ago—it seems an age—the air was full of hints and rumours that what General de Gaulle most desired was a purely European defence system, which, however it was clothed, would have stripped down to something un- commonly like an Anglo-French nuclear entente. It is very noticeable how this sort of talk has now completely disappeared. De Gaulle, when he announced his intention of withdrawing France from the military side of NATO, made no apparent effort to take any other country with him. He did not even drop a hint that sooner or later he expected other countries to follow of their own accord. It seems almost as if the French regard it as in their own interests for the NATO of the fourteen to survive. Moreover, French spokesmen have been most careful throughout the NATO crisis to say nothing to suggest any French disloyalty to the alliance of Western European Union, which is the alliance of the European 'Six' and Britain, which led to the formation of NATO and which itself has thirty- odd years to run.
Yet, at the same time, the French have remained deeply reluctant to say what sort of future defence relationship they envisage having with the NATO countries. Two weeks ago in Brussels Couve de Murville made it quite plain that what the French wanted to avoid most of all was the sort of formal discussions with their allies that would work this relationship out.
Taken together, these facts are very curious. They appear even more curious if one asks the question: what is French defence policy? Not only do the French not say what their defence policy is, they no longer talk very much about the power of the force de frappe. Still less do they talk any more about the French capability to deter aggression in Europe. French defence policy, it seems, is completely in abeyance. General de Gaulle, in fact, appears to have made an assumption that at least for the present a European war is out of the question, and even if it isn't, there is always the carefully preserved NATO of the fourteen to act as a deterrent. Naturally, these are splendid circumstances in which to make the dash for better relations with the East.
But it is here that it is worth remembering the first premise, that France is a Western nation and cannot be otherwise. The 'rigidity' which General de Gaulle complains of in Europe has already been partially broken because of France's new attitude to NATO, but this development alone could turn out to be of only passing interest
—like the defection of Yugoslavia from Stalin's. empire—if it is not followed up. And to follow it up, de Gaulle, as the leader of a Western nation, and a Western nation at that which has always aspired to leadership among its neigh- bours, has to have something attractive to offer to his Western friends.
,De Gaulle cannot, like the man who rides his bicycle with no hands, simply say look at me, I've given up all alliances and I find that France is safer than ever. For his friends would merely observe that his safety was due to the maintenance of NATO and the convenient fact that France has no frontier with Communist Europe. Besides, if a military crisis in Europe ever came, it would be the ultimate insult for de Gaulle to find himself defended by the NATO he had denounced and to which he no longer contributed. Clearly, the General has something else in mind and, equally clearly, he is not the man to leave French defence policy in abeyance for ever.
This is why the continued French loyalty to Western European Union is so interesting. It is out of the members of this union that any purely European system for the collective defence of the area is bound to grow—the 1948 treaty, in fact, provides for just this, though without laying down the schema. A French initiative to get defence discussions going in this forum is by no means out of the question; indeed one could go so far as to say that such an initiative is inevitable sooner or later, unless, that is, someone else broaches the subject first.
As it happens, the time for such discussions is very'ripe. The United States is now under severe, if still indirect, pressure to start withdrawing a number of her troops from Europe; 30,000 of them, in fact, have already gone—half to Vietnam, and only 15,000 are being immediately replaced. If, as is possible, the war in Vietnam is going to go on for around four years, then the pressures for the Americans to take more troops from Germany. and then more, may be irresistible. This would save money and therefore make things easier with Congress. It should also help placate domestic American opinion, which will surely begin to question the need to maintain an army of a quarter of a million men in prosperous Western Europe when perhaps half a million men are needed in Vietnam; and it should help limit the drafting.
The question of American withdrawals from Europe is, of course. an embarrassing one to raise : embarrassing for the Germans who don't know what to do about it, for Mr McNamara who, until very recently, has repeatedly denied that anything of the kind has ever been contem- plated and not least for Britain which, having no other policy, like to think that NATO will go on for ever. But it is surely better to raise it now, when everyone could be comparatively calm about it, than later, when it might have turned into a major issue and General de Gaulle will be in a position to say he told us so. It would surely not be out of place for Britain to draw attention to the matter in Western European Union and invite discussion of the possible con- sequences.
This is not to suggest that Britain should do anything as crude as to advocate an immediate Anglo-French nuclear agreement—if only be- cause the French would then merely think us ridiculous. Nor need we go so far as to make any definite proposals, for, after all, the American withdrawal is not happening overnight. But it is the basic principle which is important: that Western European Union is the proper place for discussions by the Western European nations on their own security, and indeed on relations with the East, upon which their security depends. This is a principle which needs to be re-established, and there is no better way for Britain to start repairing her embittered relations with France than by suggesting such discussions now.
'Who's for tennis?'
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