France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (45 page)

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Authors: William I. Hitchcock

Tags: #History, #Europe, #France, #Western, #Modern, #20th Century, #Political Science, #Security (National & International), #test

BOOK: France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954
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up to Jan. 1953
200
Total Marshall aid
2,906.3
Total American aid
5,502.3
Source:
Papers of the Comité Interministériel pour les Questions de Coopération Economique Européenne, Archives Narionales, F60 ter, boxes 378 and 379; and Mutual Security Agency,
Monthly Report of the MSA to the Public Advisory Board
(data as of Dec. 31, 1952), Feb. 18, 1953.
finding a way to ''punch above their weight" in the international arena. John Foster Dulles himself seemed to recognize this fact. In reflecting on the inability of the United States to secure EDC ratification, Dulles told his colleagues in the National Security Council that "certain of the pre-suppositions which the Administration had inherited seemed not to be valid. This was particularly true of the pre-supposition of dependence of our allies on the United States. This had turned out to be not as great as had been thought at the end of the war." He went on to say that American policy had become in recent years "increasingly unpopular," and that a growing distrust of the United States had led to the "whittling down" of American influence in Europe. The United States, he said,
 
Page 208
must acknowledge that it "can no longer run the free world."
5
If the United States had ever exercised imperial sway over Europe, it was a fleeting empire indeed.
France's leadership in the nascent European community worked the same way. Officials in Paris exercised a degree of influence within these institutions far beyond that which could be expected of a nation as weak and divided as France. Rather than evaluate French power merely in terms of GNP or the relative size of armies, then, historians have to find a way to calculate the more subtle kinds of political power visible within the new institutions of postwar Europe, institutions that, because they were chiefly designed by France, naturally served French interests well.
This study suggests, therefore, that the negative characterization of the Fourth Republic, one promoted by its contemporaries and its historians alike, must be rethought. Its myriad shortcomings notwithstanding, France showed that it was able to influence, in many ways decisively, the shape of the postwar settlement. Despite the apparent dependence on American aid, French planners were successful in outlining and pursuing a national strategy that advanced French interests, cleverly skirting and at times adapting to American priorities. Thus Robert Schuman could reassure his MRP colleagues in early 1950 that "our [foreign] policy is one of alliance, but it remains above all
une politique francaise
."
6
Not only did the French government resist the initial American onslaught in favor of a vague United States of Europe, but it managed in the end to bring the Americans around to its view that European stability was best assured through regional economic and political ententes, built on sectoral cooperation, and framed by clear political and military guidelines that could control and direct intra-European political activity,
This approach to international relations  one that sought to build a transnational consensus in favor of stability without resolving fundamental and persistent national antagonisms  hearkened back to the planning consensus that Monnet had urged on state, labor, and industry in the first years following the war. A basic continuum has been posited here between domestic and foreign policy styles, and the argument therefore points to the need to rethink the prevailing view that the American model of capitalism and internationalism was the dominant one in European eyes. Indeed, this study implies that historians must desist from examining only American actions and American archives for explanations of what may be uniquely European phenomena. In the ten years examined here, French officials pursued with tenacity and effectiveness their own vision of a carefully crafted, balanced European set-
 
Page 209
tlement. It was a vision that sprang from a particular set of historical circumstances and expressed a peculiarly French worldview. France advanced novel ideas about the organization of economic life that continue to shape the political topography of Europe to this day. In a brutal world order in which power counted for so much and traditional status so little, France had exercised meaningful and lasting influence in European politics  an outcome for which few French citizens could have dared to hope in June 1940, when German troops entered Paris and placed the very existence of the French nation in jeopardy.
 
Page 211
Notes
Note on the Sources
In 1994, the French Foreign Ministry archives renumbered many of the files relating to France's European diplomacy. I had already completed the bulk of my research by then, and so most of the notes use the old numbering system. However, I continued to do research after the reorganization, and used the new numbering system in my citations. Thus, in parts of chapters 4 and 5 and most of chapter 6, I have added an astèrisk (*) to indicate where the new numbering system has been used.
Unless otherwise noted, translations of French-language sources are my own.
Abbreviations
In addition to the abbreviations used in the text, the following source abbreviations are utilized in the notes.
AN
Archives Nationales, Paris
DBPO
Documents on British Policy Overseas
DDF
Documents Diplomatiques Français
FRUS
Foreign Relations of the United States
MAE
Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris
NARA
National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
PRO
Public Record Office, Kew
Introduction
1. Milward,
The Reconstruction of Western Europe,
501.
2. Elgey's two volumes on the Fourth Republic,
La République des illusions
and
La République des contradictions,
make wonderful reading, but the author was drawn more to scandal, deceit, and personalities than to policy. Fauvet, in
La IVeme République,
provides a useful overview but emphasizes the political and institutional failures of the regime. Two other negative assessments may be found in Werth,
France, 19401955,
and de la Gorce,
Apogée et mort de la IVeme République,
which stresses the colonial wars of the period. A contemporary American assessment was given by Schoenbrun,
As France Goes
. For an effort to rehabilitate the Fourth Republic, one that curiously neglects the positive record in foreign affairs and economic policy, see Fonvielle-Alquier,
Plaidoyer pour la IVeme République
. The most thorough, and on balance favorable, assessment of the period is offered in Rioux,
The Fourth Republic
. Eisenhower quotation cited in Steininger, "John Foster Dulles, the European Defense Community, and the German Question," 88.
3. Gerbet,
Le relèvement;
Young,
France, the Cold War, and the Western Alliance;
Buffet,
Mourir pour Berlin;
Bossuat,
La France, I'aide américaine et la construction européenne;
Wall,
The United States and the Making of Postwar France;
Gillingham,
Coal, Steel, and the Rebirth of Europe;
Poidevin,
Robert Schuman, I'homme d'état;
Dalloz,
Georges Bidault;
Kuisel,
Capitalism and the State in Modern France
.
4. Wall,
The UnitedStates andthe Making of'Postwar France,
8. The French tide

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