The French Deterrent

Froni•DREW

MID.DLETON

PARIS

OVER the last year French preoccupation with the independent nuclear force now being built has reached the point where it may be asked whether this preoccupation has not become an obsession, and a potentially dangerous one.

General de Gaulle, of course, has made it clear that his countrymen should consider the force primarily as an instrument of protection in the event that the United States, at some future date, changes its mind about protecting Europe from Soviet attack through the etnploymen't of its own nuclear armament, one qualitatively and quanti- tatively superior to that of the USSR and im- measurably superior in every respect to the French effort. To this, de Gaulle has added the political argument that possession of the force enables France to command her own fate.

There is something, but not much, in both arguments. Of the first it can be said that the General, habitually fond of studying the prob- lems of the day after tomorrow, is dealing with a. situation that conceivably could arise. The prospect that it will arise in a world that shrinks day by day, even for the citizen of Chicago or Irkutsk, is increasingly unlikely. No man and no nation is an island any longer. The argument, indeed, can be construed as insulting the good faith and resolution of the people of the United States and the governments that serve them.

To the second argument, the reply is that no country, not even the Soviet Union or the United States, now has an independent command of its own destiny. Such views may be attractive when delivered On television. But are they relative to the world in which we live? More especially, are they relevant to France which in a year may have ninety fighter bombers, armed with atom bombs, and which, by the end of the decade, may have three nuclear-powered submarines armed with guided missiles equipped with nuclear warheads?

The true danger of the French preoccupation with their nuclear weapons is the manner in Which it encourages a well-established attraction in this country to superficially simple solutions, by theory or material, to 'the international problem arising from the fact that France is no longer the great nation of Louis XIV, but one of a num- ber of European States, equal in strength and, collectively, very powerful, but still overshadowed by the power of America and Russia.

The tendency to see such solutions in the possession of nuclear weapons has been streng- thened in the last year by the continued and often unwarranted publicity given to the nuclear strik- ing force and by the willingness of men regarded as experts to emphasise and occasionally exag- gerate its military importance.

Not long ago, for example, a retired French general told an audience that the French atomic force could induce the Soviet Union to alter its plans for an invasion of Germany by dropping seven or eight atom bombs in the path of the invading forces. Here was a remarkable example of the desire to over-sell the atomic bomb and an even more remarkable reflection of French- men's ability to see war in the nariow and unreal context of a contest between France and Russia.

The whole trend toward embracing the nuclear force as a final solution is deplorable, especially when one considers what similar tendencies in the French military mind have done in the past.

One sunny Sunday in the autumn of 1939, General Gamelin, the Allied Commander-in- Chief, gathered a group of American war correspondents together to explain that the great defensive system of the Maginot Line had created a new situation in war. Before it, he assured us, the Germans were powerless.

All through that winter of 1939-40 other Frenchmen, soldiers and civilians, talked on and on about 'the Line' and its miraculous virtues. The line became a military philosopher's stone, one whose possession would redress the popula- tion imbalance between Germany and France, halt the Panzers and, by some mysterious method never fully explained, guarantee eventual victory.

During that winter the best of the French Army sat in the line. Neither its leaders nor the gov- ernment paid much attention to the lightly fortified area to the north that covered the approaches to France through the Ardennes. They were content to believe that the hills and forests of the Ardennes were impassable for a large modern army.

`This sector is not dangerous,' Marshal Main told the Senate Army Commission. Since the Marshal was then regarded as the repository of national military wisdom, few, if any, serving officers had the effrontery to argue.

If the line was good enough for the Marshal and the French General Staff, which then en- joyed, except in Berlin, a global prestige, surely it was good enough for the peoples of France and Britain. Popular confidence was increased by the appearance in the press of detailed draw- ings of the line, showing its artfully contrived system of guns, casemates, magazines, observa- tion posts and lighting and ventilation. Such propaganda was marvellously effective. If a few unruly soldiers murmured that the line did not extend far enough to the north, no one listened.

Indeed, the people of France and the British could not be blamed for believing in the Maginot Line, nor for assuming that it protected the whole French frontier from Belgium to Switzerland. The blockhouses and pillboxes which the British Expeditionary Force found on its sector of the front in 1939 were indistinguishable in French popular opinion from the massive underground works to the south.

So the Maginot Line became a popular, mili- tary obsession. The Germans had encountered nothing like it in their brief campaign in Poland. Here was the final example of the triumph of the defensive in war.

Writing after the war, Sir Winston Churchill noted that `the Line not only absorbed very large numbers of highly trained soldiers and tech- nicians, but exercised an enervating effect upon military strategy and national vigilance.'

In the event, the German armies in May, 1940, broke through the rudimentary defences in the Ardennes at the start of the offensive that brought France to her knees. The great obsession was exposed. So, one would think, was the folly of wagering all on a single military idea.

History reminds us, however, that this is a costly French habit. Just over a quarter of a century before, France had embraced another concept, this time a tactical theory, which did her almost as much harm. But the hardihood of the French soldier and the courage of political leaders intervened, enabling France to avoid complete military disaster.

This earlier error was the obsessive and, in view of the military lessons of the preceding

forty years, the false belief that the élan, the cran or guts of the French soldier would enable France to mount a successful offensive into Ger- many.

The famous Plan XVII became' a panacea for France's military 'disadvantages. The new Field

Regulations of 1913,. written to guide the training and conduct of the French Army, began. ' I he French, Army,, returning to its traditions, admits no.law but the offensive.'

Considering the .French record, this love for the offensive is hard to understand. Throughout the Peninsular War and at Waterloo, the French addiction to the offensive almost inevitably led to disaster for the columns attacking the British infantry arrayed in a double or triple line.

Yet the French Were bemused by the offensk e. A new school of staff officers, inspired by Colonel de Grandmaison, sold the belief that troops of high morale could carry out a successful offen- sive and that the offensive had been re-established in war. This view was adopted despite the harsh lessons of the Russo-Japanese and Boer Wars which had demonstrated the stopping-power of rifle fire, machine guns and artillery.

13. H. Liddell Hart wrote that this French philosophy of war, with its exaltation of the offensive, was out of touch with the reality of material forces on the battlefield. And so it was, as the events of 1914 demonstrated.

Sir Winston Churchill has told us what oc- curred when twenty divisions of the French Third and Fourth Armies put the staff theories to the test : The brave troops, nobly led by their regi- mental officers, who sacrificed themselves in even greater proportions, responded in all the mag- nificent fighting fury for which the French nation has been traditionally renowned . . • in the mighty battle of the Frontiers . . more than 300,000 Frenchmen were killed, wounded or made prisoners.

I have returned to these military reverses to indicate how dangerous, to themselves and to their allies, French obsession with a weapon or an idea, can be. The other members of the Atlantic Alliance must ask themselves whether the present national attitude toward the inde- pendent nuclear force could lead to comparable reverses. The willingness to put all to the touch on one idea, one factor, seems to be part of one of the most ennobling and one of the most dangerous of French national characteristics, the thirst for glory.

For nearly six years, ever since General de Gaulle resumed power, the French appetite for glory has been nourished by the General and his lieutenants. It seems quite conceivable that to many Frenchmen the path to glory may lead to the use, as well as the possession, of a nuclear force.

There is a readiness to believe that French fighter-bombers, armed with atomic bombs, will be able to penetrate the Soviet defences. When, on manceuvres last autumn, the French forces got their first chance to simulate atomic warfare, the `bombs' were used, one Allied general said, as though they were only a new type of artillery. There was little understanding of the effect of such weapons on the battlefield or the probable response of the Soviet forces. Finally and per- haps most disquieting, the French appear con- vinced that the Russians, in the event of war, will act as French planners expect.

There are many reasons for deploring the spread of nuclear weapons. The French obses- sion is one of the least noticed, but certainly not the least dangerous.