By George Friedman
New political leaders do not invent new national strategies. Rather,
they adapt enduring national strategies to the moment. On Tuesday,
Francois Hollande will be inaugurated as France's president, and soon
after taking the oath of office, he will visit German Chancellor Angela
Merkel in Berlin. At this moment, the talks are expected to be about
austerity and the European Union, but the underlying issue remains
constant: France's struggle for a dominant role in European affairs at a
time of German ascendance.
Two events shaped modern French strategy. The first, of course, was
the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and the emergence of Britain as the
world's dominant naval power and Europe's leading imperial power. This
did not eliminate French naval or imperial power, but it profoundly
constrained it. France could not afford to challenge Britain any more
and had to find a basis for accommodation, ending several centuries of
hostility if not distrust.
The second moment came in 1871 when the Prussians defeated France and
presided over the unification of German states. After its defeat,
France had to accept not only a loss of territory to Germany but also
the presence of a substantial, united power on its eastern frontier.
From that moment, France's strategic problem was the existence of a
unified Germany.
France had substantial military capabilities, perhaps matching and
even exceeding that of Germany. However, France's strategy for dealing
with Germany was to build a structure of alliances against Germany.
First, it allied with Britain, less for its land capabilities than for
the fact that Britain's navy could blockade Germany and therefore deter
it from going to war. The second ally was Russia, the sheer size of
which could threaten Germany with a two-front war if one began. Between
its relationships with Britain and Russia, France felt it had dealt with
its strategic problem.
This was not altogether correct. The combination of forces facing
Germany convinced Berlin that it had to strike first, eliminating one
enemy so that it would not be faced with a two-front war. In both the
first and second world wars, Germany attempted to eliminate France
first. In World War I it came close, France saving itself only at
the Second Battle of the Marne. The Germans surprised the French and
perhaps even themselves by withstanding the Russians, the French and the
British in a two-front war. With the weakening of Russia, Germany had
new units available to throw at the French. The intervention of the
United States changed the balance of the war and perhaps saved France.
In World War II, the same configuration of forces was in place and
the same decisions were made. This time there was no miracle on the
Marne, and France was defeated and occupied. It again was saved by an
Anglo-American force that invaded and liberated France, effectively
bringing to power the man who, in one of those rare instances in
history, actually defined French strategy.
Charles de Gaulle recognized that France was incapable of competing
with the United States and the Soviet Union on the global stage. At the
same time, he wanted France to retain its ability to act independently
of the two major powers if necessary. Part of the motivation was
nationalism. Part of it was a distrust of the Americans. The foundation
of post-war American and European defense policy was the containment of
the Soviet Union. The strategy was predicated on the assumption that, in
the event of a Soviet invasion, European forces supported by Americans
would hold the Soviets while the United States rushed reinforcements to
Europe. As a last resort, the United States had guaranteed that it would
use nuclear weapons to block the Soviets.
De Gaulle was not convinced of the American guarantees, in part
because he simply didn't see them as rational. The United States had an
interest in Europe, but it was not an existential interest. De Gaulle
did not believe that an American president would risk a nuclear
counterattack on the United States to save Germany or France. It might
risk conventional forces, but they may not be enough. De Gaulle believed
that if Western Europe simply relied on American hegemony without an
independent European force, Europe would ultimately fall to the
Soviets. He regarded the American guarantees as a bluff.
This was not because he was pro-Soviet. Quite the contrary, one of
his priorities upon taking power in 1945 was blocking the Communists.
France had a powerful Communist Party whose members had played an
important role in the resistance against the Nazis. De Gaulle thought
that a Communist government in France would mean the end of an
independent Europe. West Germany, caught between a Communist France
supplied with Soviet weapons and the Red Army in the east, would be
isolated and helpless. The Soviets would impose hegemony.
For de Gaulle, Soviet or American hegemony was anathema to France's
national interests. A Europe under American hegemony might be more
benign, but it was also risky because de Gaulle feared that the
Americans could not be trusted to come to Europe's aid with sufficient
force in a conflict. The American interest was to maintain a balance of
power in Europe, as the British had. Like the British in the Napoleonic
wars, the Americans would not fully commit to the fight until the
Europeans had first bled the Soviets dry. From de Gaulle's point of
view, this is what the Americans had done in World War I and again in
World War II, invading France in mid-1944 to finish off Nazi Germany. De
Gaulle did not blame the United States for this. De Gaulle, above all
others, understood national self-interest. But he did not believe that
American national self-interest was identical to France's.
Nonetheless, he understood that France by itself could not withstand
the Soviets. He also knew that neither the West Germans nor the British
would be easily persuaded to create an alliance with France designed to
unite Europe into one alliance structure able to defend itself. De
Gaulle settled on the next best strategy, which was developing
independent military capabilities sufficient to deter a Soviet attack
on French territory without coming to the Americans for help. The key
was an independent nuclear force able, in de Gaulle's words, to "tear an
arm off" if the Russians attacked. Mistrustful of the Americans, he
hoped that a French nuclear arsenal would deter the Soviets from moving
beyond the Rhine River if they invaded West Germany.
But at the core of de Gaulle's thinking was a deeper idea. Caught
between the Americans and the Soviets, with a fragmented Europe in
between, half dominated by the Soviets and the other half part of an
American-dominated NATO, he saw the fate of France as being in the hands
of the two superpowers, and he trusted neither. Nor did he particularly
trust the other Europeans, but he was convinced that in order to secure
France there had to be a third force in Europe that would limit the
power of both Americans and Soviets.
The concept of a European alternative was not rooted solely in de
Gaulle's strategic analysis. Establishing deep ties through a security
alliance (possibly under NATO) and some sort of economic union was
viewed by Europe in general and France in particular as an appealing way
to end the cycle of violent competition that had begun in 1871.
De Gaulle supported economic integration as well as an independent
European defense capability. But he objected to any idea that would cost
France any element of its sovereignty. Treaties signed by sovereign
nations could be defined, redefined and if necessary abandoned.
Confederation or federation meant a transfer of sovereignty and the loss
of decision-making at a national level, the inability to withdraw from
the group and the inability of the whole to expel a part.
De Gaulle objected to NATO's structure because it effectively limited
France's sovereignty. NATO's Military Committee was effectively in
command of the military forces of the constituent nations, and at a time
of war, NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe -- always an American
-- would automatically take command. De Gaulle did not object to the
principle of NATO in general, and France remained a member, but he could
not accept that French troops were automatically tied to a war plan or
were automatically under the command of anyone who wasn't French. That
decision would have to be made by France when the time came. It could
not be assumed.
In this sense, de Gaulle differed from the extreme visions of
European integrationists, who saw a United States of Europe eventually
forming. Like the British, whom he believed would always pursue their
interests regardless of any treaty, he was open to an alliance of
sovereign European states, but not to the creation of a federation in
which France would be a province.
De Gaulle understood the weakness in what would become the European
Union, which was that national interests always dominated. No matter how
embedded nations became in a wider system, so long as national leaders
were answerable to their people, integration would never work in time of
crisis and would compound the crisis by turning it from what it
originally concerned into a crisis of mixed sovereignty.
However, de Gaulle also wanted France to play a dominant role in
European affairs, and he knew that this could be done only in an
alliance with Germany. He was confident -- perhaps mistakenly -- that
given the psychological consequences of World War II, France would be
the senior partner in this relationship.
The descendants of de Gaulle accept his argument that France has to
pursue its own interests, but not his obsession with sovereignty. Or,
more precisely, they created a strategy that seemed to flow from de
Gaulle's logic. As de Gaulle had said, France alone could not hope to
match the global superpowers. France needed to be allied with other
European countries, and above all with Germany. The foundation of this
alliance had to be economic and military. But with the collapse of the
Soviet Union, the urgency of the military threat dissolved. France's
presidents since the end of the Cold War, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas
Sarkozy, believed that the Gaullist vision could be achieved solely
through economic ties.
It is in this context that Hollande is going to Germany. Although
Sarkozy went as a committed ally of Germany, Hollande will not
necessarily be predisposed to German solutions for Europe's problems.
This is somewhat startling in post-Cold War Franco-German relations, but
it is very much what de Gaulle would have accepted. France's economic
needs are different from those of Germany. Harmonization agreements
where there is no harmony are dangerous and unenforceable. A strong
"non" is sometimes needed. The irony is that Hollande is a Socialist and
the ideological enemy of Gaullism. But as we said, most presidents do
not make strategy but merely shape an existing national strategy for the
moment. It would seem to us that Hollande will now begin, very slowly,
to play the Gaullist hand.
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