Why France loves the bomb
Sam White
Pans
Of all the neutralist and unilateralist demonstrations that rolled across European capitals last weekend, the one in Paris was easily the least impressive. It totalled no more than 50,000 as compared to London's 150,000 or, in even more striking contrast, Brussels's 100,000. A far cry from the scale of the demonstrations in other capitals, it was also a far cry from the anti-bomb demonstrations which the French communist party, working through the French section of the so-called World Peace Movement founded in Stockholm in 1949, could organise then and later throughout the Fifties. At that time the magic formula of anti-Americanism and pacifism worked like a charm: not only on the masses at large, but also on a bemused intelligentsia heavily sold on Uncle Joe's benign intentions. Many things have changed since then, including the general view of the Soviet Union, all of which have contributed to making the Picasso dove which was the symbol of the peace movement of the Fifties look more and more like a decoy duck.
These factors alone, however, cannot explain the striking decline of French pacifism or neutralism — not only compared to its strength in the Fifties but even more strikingly compared to its appeal in the years preceding the Second World War when, to large sections of left-wing opinion, aversion to war overcame aversion to Hitler. Why, then, does pacifism carry so little appeal in France today? The answer seems to me to lie with de Gaulle's policy of an atomic deterrent independent of American control. Once he established that policy and his successors successfully pursued it, he removed the anti-Americanism, which is the motive force behind neutralism, as an issue behind which neutralists could shelter.
Patriotism, he claimed, withered when one handed over responsibility for one's defence to someone else, no matter how well-intentioned or how close an ally. Nobody is going to die for NATO or, as he warned in the early Fifties, nobody was going to die for the projected European Defence Community. It was a point that took years to sink in as the debate raged over the early beginnings of the French nuclear force, but it is a debate which he has won handsomely though largely posthumously.
The circle of national agreement on the subject was finally completed when first the socialists and then finally even the communists embraced the bomb. That is why President Reagan's recent statement about the possibility of restricting atomic war to Europe, without the two super-powers becoming directly involved, provoked such remarkably little interest here. It has become a stale subject for debate in France, since the discussion of just such a possibility was initiated by de Gaulle in 1960 when he said that the Americans may not be willing to risk the destruction of their own cities in order to save Europe. The French have settled that argument to their own satisfaction by having their own atomic force, and thereby disarming the kind of criticism which is proving so effective in Bonn and to a lesser extent in London — that both these governments are acting as pawns in an American strategic game.
In short, the anti-bomb movement is as much a protest against loss of sovereignty as it is against the horrors of atomic war. In these circumstances it is difficult to see what can be done about the West Germans, who are denied access to atomic weapons by international treaty, except to insist on the voluntary nature of their acceptance of American protection. In this situation the French attitude is crucial, although it carries with it the overtones of a patronising superiority. For the French attitude to the installation of Cruise missiles in Western Europe is much the same as the British one to the European Defence Community project of the Fifties. Just as Britain at the time pressed others to join it while herself refusing to do so, so the French are pressing others, and especially the West Germans, to accept missiles on their territories which it is not prepared to accept on its own.
Indeed it cannot do so without re-joining NATO and its integrated command structure, which would entail a consequent loss of independence in the control of its own defence. Giscard solved the problem by keeping out of the debate, saying it only concerned NATO members. Mitterrand, however, has shed this reticence and is openly urging Bonn to accept the missiles. What would have seemed like arrogance on Giscard's part and, whatever its effect on Bonn, would have landed him in a storm of trouble at home, is apparently not only acceptable from a socialist President to home opinion but positively welcome to a beleaguered Chancellor Schmidt.
The peace movement in France is essentially a communist front-organisation, and if the party's support had been removed from last Sunday's demonstration it would have dwindled to a mere 10,000 instead of the 50,000 who turned up. The communists were cautious enough, so as not needlessly to underline their split with the socialists on this issue, to keep their most prominent leaders, including the communist members of the government, from the platform. But how long can so grave a difference within the socialist-communist coalition remain camouflaged as a minor one? On the one hand, for example, the Prime Minister, M. Mauroy, was solemnly warning socialists to stay away from Sunday's demonstration while, on the other hand, his own Cabinet colleagues were giving their moral support to it. It is a situation which cannot continue indefinitely without seriously weakening the government's own credibility. There is still a large enough segment of pacifist opinion left within the socialist party, despite the changes in thinking on defence in recent years, to make the communist example a tempting one for quite a number of socialists to follow. Then, too, indiscipline in one field will encourage indiscipline on other issues: especially at a time when disenchantment is beginning to sour the domestic scene.
Previous page
