The French Way (22 page)

As Ronald Reagan neared the end of his presidency, his image, but not that of America, lost its glow. The romance with Reagan cooled from late 1986 on after the stumble at Reykjavik and news of the Iran Contra Scandal; at the same time as Reagan's stock fell, Gorbachev's climbed. At the end of his administration Reagan's popularity was substantially lower than it had been.
¹³⁰
A combination of bungled international initiatives and skepticism about the social costs inflicted by his management of the American economy had reduced his stature. What appeared especially impetuous and capricious was Reagan's attempt at disposing of nuclear deterrence and promoting the SDI. According to Dominique Moisi, a pro-American analyst, it seemed to many in France that “not only were the Americans unpredictable and adventuristic, their diplomacy was unreliable and probably incompetent.”
¹³¹

Yet the image of America remained pleasing. In April 1988 the French posted an overwhelmingly positive view of the United States at levels similar to those for the United Kingdom and West Germany.
¹³²
If a majority of the French thought Washington did not try to understand their problems and two-thirds said that it expected France to give in to its wishes—expressing a constant anxiety over unilateralism—virtually everyone opined that bilateral relations were good and that the United States treated France with “dignity and respect.” By a
margin of three to one, those surveyed described themselves as prorather than anti-American.
¹³³

During the final years of Reagan's presidency the integration of the European Community (EC) surged forward after a decade or more of lethargy. Spurred by Jacques Delors, the European Commission's president, it adopted the Single European Act (SEA), which, once ratified in 1987, set in motion the construction of a single market by eliminating remaining obstacles like nontariff barriers to intracommunity trade by 1992. The nonchalant attitude of the Reagan administration toward the effects of its macroeconomic policies on Europe was one, among many, motives for the SEA that also gave impetus toward monetary and political union and strengthened Europe's ability to defend its common interests. After a nod in favor of a market liberating initiative, Reagan's team greeted the SEA with inattention and some distrust. The EC appeared as little more than a talking shop—incapable of concerted action—that was at best marginalized; the U.S. government preferred managing its economic relations bilaterally. One top Reagan official admitted that the administration did not understand what was happening in the EC and did not care.
¹³⁴
Moreover, America's leverage in Europe came through NATO rather than the EC, and for the Reagan administration security issues and the Iran Contra Scandal trumped transatlantic commerce. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, furthermore, shared her growing skepticism about the future of the SEA with her close friend in the White House. After ratification, however, anxiety mounted among some officials, the U.S. Congress, and the American press about a future “Fortress Europe” that might close opportunities and discriminate against American corporate interests.
¹³⁵
Trade experts spoke of the need to be “vigilant” about the trend toward a “Europe for Europeans” while France was singled out as the leader of the protectionist clique that could manipulate the EC.
¹³⁶
Once Europeans began implementing the SEA with specific directives, including the Television without Frontiers directive (discussed in chapter 2), transatlantic
disputes grew. Reagan's successor would have to deal with a more assertive EC, and big troubles lay ahead.

Nineteen eighty-eight was a presidential election year in both countries. The French reelected Mitterrand to a second seven-year term, and in the U.S. George H. W. Bush succeeded Ronald Reagan. At a White House dinner in September, Mitterrand complimented the outgoing president, to which Reagan responded, “We are friends. We are like an old couple. It's always difficult to separate….”
¹³⁷
But the president-elect later confided that Mitterrand and Reagan “were not close” and he intended to improve relations with the French. In May 1989 Bush invited Mitterrand to his home in Kennebunkport, Maine, where the two heads of state got on well. Bush later reflected that the “deep trust” they had established there helped them cooperate in the coming years over trying issues like German reunification. Mitterrand “proved to be a dependable ally and friend.”
¹³⁸

With Mitterrand's reelection the socialists regained control of the government from the right and France tilted away from the Atlantic Alliance, toward Europe, for security. The new defense minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement, a fierce Jacobin, stated, “It is time that Europe thought about ensuring itself its own defense….Today, the aim must be to replace the American defense of Europe with an autonomous European defense.”
¹³⁹
Mitterrand had never given up on Europe, even when he was embracing Atlanticism, and during the late 1980s he was on the move again toward constructing a powerful European Community. He actively promoted economic integration by backing the ambitious SEA, and by 1989, thanks to the prodding ofJacques Delors, the European Commission was preparing intergovernmental conferences that would create financial unity through the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Mitterrand had also sanctioned a proposal, initiated by Chirac, to work with the Germans to rehabilitate the Western European Union (WEU), a hidebound vestige of the 1940s, as a first step toward constructing a European defense—which the U.S. government resented.
¹⁴⁰
The WEU was not taken seriously among some American
diplomats, who joked that it was little more than a place to shelve retired Italian admirals.

When Mitterrand hosted the G7 meeting in Paris in 1989, despite this new European tilt, he made a special effort during the lavish ceremonies to honor the new president of the United States, George H. W. Bush. Celebrating the bicentennial of the French Revolution was linked conspicuously with the American Revolution. Harmony reigned at the summit, according to the French press, and Mitterrand seemed pleased that his presidential colleague was Bush rather than Reagan.
¹⁴¹
It was during the first years of Bush's presidency that perceptions of the United States climbed to stratospheric levels with the euphoria generated by German reunification and the end of the Cold War. In November 1989 the French viewed the United States as favorably as did the British or the West Germans. Multiple surveys conducted in the years 1987-89 recorded significantly higher appraisals of the United States than comparable polls from the years 1981-82.
¹⁴²

The shift in the White House to Bush from Reagan did not mark any flagging of American pretense to direct Europe. In his State of the Union Address the new president spoke of America's destiny to lead and organize a “new world order,” and his secretary of state, James Baker, insisted on NATO taking the lead in European security.

Within months of the G7 extravaganza in Paris, events in Central and Eastern Europe faced France and the United States with a major international crisis: How were they to respond to the collapse of the East German regime and the political upheaval underway in other communist states, the signals of reform emanating from Moscow, and the effort by the West Germans to seize the opportunity to realize the great ambition of German reunification?

The remainder of this chapter explains how the Mitterrand and Bush administrations dealt with the German question. Other major issues confronting them, like the Gulf War and the creation of a European security alternative during 1990-91, will be discussed in chapter 5.

Long before the events of 1989-91 that marked the end of the Cold War, Francois Mitterrand had said he was not afraid of German reunification and thought it was historically inevitable. But he, like most, was surprised in the autumn of 1989 at both the rapid pace of events and Soviet acquiescence. While some contemporary officials and scholars, especially Americans, contend that Mitterrand tried to retard reunification, at least until the spring of 1990, the most authoritative recent studies assess him more positively. In particular, Frederic Bozo proves that Mitterrand, although initially anxious about the possible unsettling consequences of a powerful, united Germany, collaborated with all the principal players—especially West German chancellor Helmut Kohl—to advance the process of reunification. “At no moment did French diplomacy seek to slow down, let alone impede, German reunification,” he writes.
¹⁴³
The French facilitated German unity even if, at times, they irritated the chancellor by trying to shape the new Germany—especially its boundaries with Poland.

The Bush administration was equally surprised at the sudden dissolution of communist rule, but, it gradually overcame its apprehensions about the turmoil in Central Europe, realized the process of East Germany's disintegration was irreversible, and worked closely with the West Germans to help manage the transition. On the essentials of German reunification the French and Americans converged. Both, if at first cautious, accepted the Germans' right to choose unity, and then sought to advance the cause without destabilizing the continent or jeopardizing Gorbachev's position in the Soviet Union. Both also wanted the new Germany anchored in NATO. But convergence, as we shall see, did not mean unanimity.

Mitterrand's initial response to the rush of events leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was passive and philosophical—American officials found his statements “elliptical.” At a press conference in November he stated he was not alarmed by the prospect of reunification: “History is there. I take it as it is If this is what [the Germans] want and they can bring it off, France will adjust its policy
so as to be able to act for the best in Europe's interest and in its own interest The answer is simple: insofar as Eastern Europe is evolving, Western Europe must itself grow stronger, strengthen its structures and define its policies Reunification poses so many problems that I shall make up my mind as the events occur.”
¹⁴⁴
In fact, he was apprehensive that the rapid pace of events in Germany would destabilize Gorbachev and return Europe to the fragmented world of 1913. French diplomats were slow to accept reunification because they remained convinced until the end of 1989 that Moscow was not ready to relinquish its grip on Central and Eastern Europe and that the way out of the bipolar division of Europe was to strengthen European integration, especially the Franco-German partnership, rebuild the Atlantic Alliance, and create a European security structure that would engage the Soviet Union as well.
¹⁴⁵
Among the French public, almost three of four accepted the prospect of a unified Germany in November, believing it dangerous to oppose it but fearful of German economic power.
¹⁴⁶

Despite his anxieties about the destabilizing effects of a united Germany the French president during the winter of 1989-90 conferred with all the major participants—Bush, Thatcher, Gorbachev, and Kohl—about channeling the process. He informed the German chancellor that France would not stand in the way of unity, but he insisted that reunification must also serve the purpose of European integration—in particular, to advance the goal of the EMU. In December 1989 Kohl bent to Mitterrand's request. The chancellor's concession was less a quid pro quo for French approval than it was a ratification of the importance of the Franco-German tandem in the construction of Europe.
¹⁴⁷

The cascade of events in Central and Eastern Europe raised the possibility of the end of the Cold War and the need for channeling developments.
Encadrement
, or framing, was the French solution. The diplomats' motives for encadrement stemmed from several fears and hopes. There was the fear of reverting to the divisive nationalisms and ethnic rivalries of pre-1914 Europe as well as anxiety about a powerful
Germany cut loose from its mooring in the EC. And there was a desire to support reform in the USSR and the communist bloc and the hope of ending the bipolar domination of the continent and constructing a new European order run by Europeans. The French project focused on binding a united Germany within an integrated EC, using the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) to manage disarmament (the CSCE, a product of the Helsinki Accords of 1975, was a thirty-five-nation organization that included the USSR and the United States), renovating the Atlantic Alliance, and initiating a new pan-European confederation, which would exclude the United States, to preside over the new map of Europe. Encadrement in its grandest scope meant building an independent Europe outside the Atlantic Alliance. The premise of the Elysee and other French policy makers was that the end of the Cold War would, and should, lead to America's retirement from Europe. It seemed inevitable that as the Soviet danger subsided, the United States would withdraw its forces from Germany and gradually diminish its commitment to Europe. The imminent withdrawal offered an opportunity to overhaul NATO as well as define a new security system for the continent. One U.S. diplomat who was privy to French thinking wrote, “The most striking impression I derived from my many conversations is the nearly total absence of the U.S. in the mid-and long-term calculations of French policy makers. So convinced do the French seem that the U.S. will rapidly withdraw its forces from Europe that they are thinking, and at times acting, as if we were already gone.”
¹⁴⁸
The French pressed the United States for a fundamental reassessment of the Atlantic Alliance, thinking this would lead to Europeanizing the structure. NATO would survive, but only as a kind of insurance for continental security; it certainly would not enlarge its role. The Americans had other plans.