The French Way (19 page)

The climax to the conciliation of the Reagan administration came during the formal state visit of the French president to the United
States in March 1984. The limits of the new Atlanticism and Mitterrand's allegiance to Gaullist principles of balance between the superpowers were also apparent. Since the economic and cultural aspects of this tour were discussed in chapter 1, attention here will be directed to the diplomatic agenda.

Mitterrand began with a meeting at the White House and a speech to the U.S. Congress in which he praised the heroes of the American War of Independence for representing the principles of freedom, law, and respect for others and oneself.
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If there were allusions to some differences, like those over Central America, Mitterrand impressed everyone with his courtesy. Speaking of the Atlantic Alliance the French president made the usual reference to Gallic independence and insistence on full partnership. He noted that the alliance's success depended on candor, consultation, and the acceptance of different points of view: “[I]t's in remaining themselves that France and the United States understand and respect one another. It is essential that the two countries can count on each other.”
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He reminded the members of Congress that each member of the Atlantic Alliance determined its own relations with the Soviet Union and, with a bow toward renewing detente, that allies should not be afraid of reopening conversations with Moscow about reducing nuclear weapons. At the state dinner that followed, Ronald Reagan said he approved of his guest's remarks.

After a stop in Atlanta to meet Mayor Andrew Young and lay flowers at the tomb of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mitterrand flew to California for his now famous visit to Silicon Valley. In a telling rhetorical stumble in San Francisco Mitterrand said, “Nous aimons le peuple americain,” which the translator rendered as “We love the United States,” but the president corrected the translation, saying, “the American people.”
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He returned via New York, where the weeklong tour ended with a gathering at the home of his friend Elie Wiesel and other intellectuals like William Styron; some said this meeting aimed at compensating for Jack Lang's speech in Mexico City about American cultural imperialism.

Everything had gone well on the official tour, unlike the awful visit of President Georges Pompidou in 1970.
Le Monde
praised Mitterrand for the “excellent state of relations between the White House and the Elysee.”
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One American official said the U.S. State Department now “saw fewer problems between the United States and France than between the United States and Britain.”
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And Secretary of State George Schultz stated to the French press that France was “a very reliable friend” and that “we don't have a better one.”
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A close adviser who had accompanied the French president assessed the visit as a complete success and called 1984 “an idyllic year” for Franco-American relations.
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Despite such applause, all was not well between France and the United States during the early 1980s; insiders knew it, and the public caught glimpses of trouble. France was indeed a friend and an ally, but it was not aligned. The story is one of continued attempts at redirecting the superpower or, at times, obstructing it—usually with little success.

Mitterrand was always something less than the “new Cold Warrior” that the Reagan administration sought, according to historian Frederic Bozo.
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The Elysee continued to believe in detente as the best way of loosening Moscow's grip on Eastern Europe. Poland's imposition of martial law, encouraged by the Kremlin, only underscored this problem. More generally, Paris had never relinquished its geopolitical goal of ending the superpowers' division of Europe symbolized by Yalta. “All that will help leaving Yalta is good,” Mitterrand declared on television on New Years Eve 1981. His diplomatic team, moreover, soon learned that embracing the Atlantic Alliance compromised their independence and encouraged Washington's bad habit of dominating its allies, forcing its interpretation of agreements on others, and trying to extend NATO's scope and functions. Transatlantic solidarity had its disadvantages. In 1982 Mitterrand politely rebuked Reagan for “not respecting national personalities” within the alliance.
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By 1984 the French president was ready to visit Moscow and resume detente.

The earliest trouble between France and the United States surfaced over the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The French socialists, with their dedication to
tiers-mondisme
, sought to aid this embattled leftist regime that the Reagan administration was trying to suffocate.
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In the eyes of French diplomats, the White House, in its anticommunist ardor, mistakenly assumed that the Soviets intended to create a new Cuba in Nicaragua and U.S. support for rightist movements like the contras—that is, anti-Sandinistas insurgents—as well as authoritarian regimes in Central America would only inflame the entire region and play into the hands of Moscow. Speaking in Mexico in 1981, Mitterrand chided Washington for introducing Cold War politics into countries that were trying to emerge from backwardness while insisting his efforts at easing the north-south divide did not contradict his rapprochement with the United States.
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In December of that year France agreed to supply the Sandinista government with economic aid, arms, and helicopters. The French public, in general, supported their government on this issue and strongly disapproved of U.S. policy in Central America.
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In Washington the Republicans, eager to overturn the Nicaraguan government by helping the contras, were upset by France's meddling in the region. State Department officials complained, “Central America is an ideological freebie for the French. They can be as leftist as they want there. Whatever happens can do them no harm ”
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The White House, sensing communism on the march in the region, objected vehemently to the arms deal and suspended Apollon, the covert program that assisted French development of nuclear weapons. Mitterrand had to fly to Washington in March 1982 to patch matters up personally with the White House. Reagan said he could not tolerate communism “south of the Rio Grande” and warned gravely that the arms deal placed Franco-American strategic cooperation at risk.
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Mitterrand responded that American policy in Central America was “counterproductive,” yet he drew back because he was unwilling to antagonize the White House over a minor matter and sacrifice nuclear cooperation. The Elysee suspended
further sales of weapons to the Sandinistas; a month later Apollon was revived. In the end Paris submitted to Washington's coercion. It also lacked the means and the determination to bolster the Sandinistas: France had only modest resources for foreign aid, and priority went to Francophone Africa. Yet French officials continuing to criticize the U.S. government over Central America and other issues prompted the White House in October 1982 to send a special emissary to the Elysee who insisted that France tone down its “anti-American campaign.” Once again Mitterrand stepped back rather than jeopardize relations with Reagan, and he urged both sides to turn down the volume. In the early 1980s the socialists had to retreat from helping the Third World even if they never relinquished the cause in theory.

American monetary and economic policies aggravated the Europeans—especially the French. There was friction over tariffs and agricultural subsidies, but the biggest problem was America's high interest rates and the overvalued dollar exchange rate, which contributed to inflation and unemployment in France as well as to trade deficits and hindered the socialists from stimulating the French economy. Mitterrand found the U.S. government uncooperative: he said obliquely that the dollar appeared “not to have understood its duties” and its increasing value represented “a practically intolerable” situation for the rest of the world.
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The Reagan administration, when pressed by the French, cited the need for an elevated dollar to fight inflation and blamed the Democratic-led U.S. Congress for deficits; otherwise it ignored their entreaties about staging an international monetary conference to address the problem.

The primary transatlantic grievance was American financial policy.
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Large majorities saw the United States as uncooperative and unconcerned about helping improve European economic conditions. Objections ranged across the political spectrum with—unusually—the UDF and RPR supporters registering even stronger criticism on this issue than the socialists or communists.
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The media excited opinion by blaming the Americans for refusing to rein in the dollar. The public
thought that during his presidency Jimmy Carter had taken better account of West Europeans than Ronald Reagan was presently.
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Then came trouble with the Soviets.

The imposition of martial law by the Polish government in December 1981 prompted the Reagan administration to retaliate with trade sanctions against Poland and the USSR. A combination of concerns, such as the need to offset the Soviet military buildup; to thwart Soviet efforts—including espionage—at technological catch-up; and ultimately to bring the USSR to the negotiating table, convinced the U.S. government that the West needed to curb exports of technology and credits that might strengthen its Cold War rival. Some hard-liners on the Reagan team, though not the president himself, wanted to launch all-out economic warfare against the Soviets in order to create stress that might topple the regime.
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The specific issue was the proposed Euro-Soviet pipeline, which would bring natural gas from Siberia to Western Europe; the United States feared it would give Moscow hard currency, Western technology, and leverage with which to control its European customers.
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But West Europeans—including the French—who were dependent on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries wanted to diversify their energy supplies: they were willing to extend credits and sell advanced technology in order to construct a pipeline that would stretch from Siberia to the Czechoslovak border and then transfer natural gas to West European consumers. The Reagan administration sought a coordinated Western policy that would apply sanctions, curb credits, and effectively kill the pipeline. The West Europeans submitted to Washington's pressure over some penalties, but balked at the prospect of giving the United States control over trade with Eastern Europe and the possibility of scuttling the Siberian project. On this issue a majority of the French people backed their government, believing that buying energy from the Soviets would not make them vulnerable to political pressure from Moscow.
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Trade with the Soviets, the pipeline, and American interest rates became the top agenda items at the G7 meeting held at Versailles in June 1982.

Mitterrand dazzled Reagan and the other heads of state by staging an opulent and carefully choreographed conference at the palace of Louis XIV, but disputes over dealing with the Soviets upset the pageant. Mitterrand and his West German counterpart, Helmut Schmidt, objected to Reagan's attempt at using the G7 for political purposes, particularly for, as they put it, creating a “political directorate” that would control exports and credits with the Eastern bloc according to political criteria.
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American negotiators at Versailles pushed their agenda so hard that their French counterparts complained of the “brutality of unilateralism.” They also charged the United States with holding back financial help for the defense of the franc, which was facing another humiliating devaluation, as a form of diplomatic blackmail.
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Behind his back French officials scoffed at Reagan's ignorance of issues and ridiculed his boasts—based on his experience in Hollywood with the Screen Actor's Guild in the 1950s—about knowing how to treat communists.

At the end of the summit the statesmen tried to conceal their bickering with an embarrassingly vague final communique. A disappointed French president lashed out at the United States in the press for its “insupportable attitude of political and economic domination.”
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On the left the press spoke of basic differences that divided the two countries over dealing with the Soviets, describing Reagan as indulging in “simplistic anticommunism,” mistakenly attributing disorder in the Third World to Soviet subversion, and demanding “blind loyalty” of Europeans while neglecting their interests.
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American hypocrisy also seemed evident when the Reagan administration, after admonishing the Europeans against subsidizing the communist bloc, ended former president Carter's grain embargo and resumed shipments to the Soviet Union.

The Europeans, as it turned out, wrongly believed they had conceded enough on trade and credits to merit American softening on the pipeline. Shortly after the Versailles Summit the quarrel escalated when the Reagan administration, instead of relaxing the pressure on its allies, unilaterally extended the scope of sanctions to include retro
actively foreign subsidiaries and licensees of American companies. It appeared that European firms would suffer for providing equipment based on American know-how to the Soviets. The French manufacturer Alsthom-Atlantique, which was scheduled to supply rotors patented under General Electric, was singled out for penalties if it disregarded the embargo. The Americans were insisting that the Europeans violate their contractual agreements, a tactic that even bothered Secretary of State George Schultz.
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France was joined by other Europeans, including the United Kingdom, West Germany, and Italy, in formally taking exception to the way the Americans were usurping their rights as sovereign nations.
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Prime Minister Mauroy's office, referring to the sanctions, announced that the government “cannot accept the unilateral decisions taken by the United States,” noting that this was also the view of other members of the European Community. Hubert Vedrine, an adviser to the Elysee, called the turmoil surrounding the Soviet pipeline the “most serious crisis since 1973.”
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In private, Mitterrand assailed the sanctions: “There is no question of accepting this American approach according to which everything that is economic is strategic, thus military, thus within the scope of the Alliance. Taking this path would be to admit that there can no longer be independence for France. Reagan is completely oblivious of his allies' needs, ushering us into hard times.”
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And outspoken foreign minister Claude Cheysson rather dramatically warned on national television that American indifference to the problems of the Old World was leading to a “progressive divorce between Americans and Europeans.”
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