French Policy Toward NATO

📖 The Scoop

French policy toward NATO has consistently challenged U.S. policymakers. On the one hand, bilateral security and defense cooperation between Washington and Paris has long been cordial, if not intimate. Moreover, relations between the respective armed services of these two countries have also been close and mutually support common national objectives.1 However, this degree of cooperation has not extended into the multilateral fora of NATO. Paris has long suspected U.S. motives in the Alliance and harbored perceptions of inadequate political control over NATO's military structures.2 This distrust has resulted in obstructionist, if not counterproductive, French policies toward the Alliance. It is little wonder, therefore, that this seemingly irrational and schizophrenic approach toward an organization which has provided the very bases for French national security has confused U.S. officials. Yet, in its own Gallic and peculiar way, French policy toward NATO was logical. It was logique because President Charles de Gaulle, the architect of French security policy in the 5th Republic, felt that NATO-defined missions would not be as effective in ensuring civilian control over the military as those which were nationally defined. Thus, de Gaulle's decision to withdraw from NATO's integrated military structure served as the basis for Gaullist defense policy, which continues to influence strongly French strategy: * Firm civilian control over the military, both within France and NATO, * An independent strategic nuclear deterrent, * Substrategic and conventional forces for deterrence and defense in Central Europe and the Mediterranean, * Intervention forces for out-of-area operations, * A sophisticated and technically advanced industrial base to ensure a high degree of independence in nuclear and conventional force requirements.

Genre: Political Science / Political Freedom (fancy, right?)