The French Way (35 page)

By 1992 it was obvious to Paris that Washington was having its way with NATO reform and stalling the alternative French initiative. The Americans had added political duties to the alliance, opened it to Eastern Europe, gained “out-of-area” competence, and retained their control. The WEU/Eurocorps remained a plan without much support among Europeans and one that was operationally dependent on NATO. Instead of building an autonomous defense capacity, Europeans were reducing military spending. And France's principal ally, Germany,
seemed less than fully committed to the project. Above all, the premise of French reform had proved faulty. The Americans had reduced their force levels on the continent, but they were not departing: rather, as the Bush team demonstrated, they were committed to remaining a European power. And as Yugoslavia disintegrated into violence and European and UN peacekeeping missions faltered, an American commitment to continental stability seemed more vital. Indeed, the reticence of Washington to become involved in the Balkans spoke to a contrary concern: Might the Americans disengage when they were needed?

French diplomacy quietly reversed course. At first slowly in 199294, under Mitterrand, and then rapidly afterward, France launched a rapprochement with NATO.
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It abandoned constructing a rival to the alliance and tried to work from within to build a European pillar. In July 1992, against the background of ethnic violence in the Balkans, Michel Rocard as prime minister spoke of “a long time misunderstanding” that marred relations with the alliance, hailed NATO as a “solid reference point in a world in turmoil,” and recommended “France's “intensifying its cooperation with NATO.”
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Later that year an agreement among France, Germany, and NATO placed the Eurocorps under NATO's “operational command” with the clear understanding that the Europeans could only act if NATO stood aside; and small steps followed toward raising French participation in the alliance.

The rapprochement initiated by the socialists gained momentum when legislative elections in 1993 brought a massive conservative majority and another round of cohabitation with a government dominated by the Rassemblement pour la Republique (RPR): Edouard Balladur became prime minister and Alain Juppe foreign minister, and they would move France even closer toward the alliance. The master of the RPR, Jacques Chirac, sanctioned this strategy. He reasoned that because France's partners were uninterested in creating a European defense identity, “the necessary rebalancing of relations within the Atlantic Alliance, relying on existing European institutions such as the WEU, can only take place from the inside, not against the United
States, but in agreement with it.”
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And Juppe reaffirmed the presence of American forces in Europe as “indispensable for our security,” noting, “The time has passed for haughty reserve with respect to the Atlantic Alliance as well as for a shameful presence which would be unworthy of our country….It must be clear that France wishes for a solid alliance and that it will engage without reticence in its necessary renovation.” Still Juppe admonished Washington: the U.S. must accept Europe as “a real partner” especially in cases where it did not want to be militarily involved: “We need a strong alliance and ‘more Europe.'”
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For the first time since the 1960s French defense ministers began attending meetings of NATO's Military Committee, and France hosted NATO exercises on its territory. It became imperative when the French military began to conduct joint operations with NATO in the Balkans that it gain some say in alliance decision making. Once Chirac became president, in 1995, the move toward working within NATO begun under Mitterrand reached a climax.

Far more than Mitterrand, the new incumbent at the Elysee tried to cultivate close personal rapport with his opposite in the White House. Jacques Chirac had the advantage of speaking English well, and he had visited the United States as a young man beginning in 1953 with a summer session at the Harvard Business School and a job at a Howard Johnson's diner. Touring America took him from San Francisco to New Orleans; then there was a “fiancee” from South Carolina who drove a white Cadillac convertible and called him “Honey Child.”
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As president, Chirac at first worried about Clinton's lack of experience in international life, compared to that of his predecessor, but the two presidents quickly warmed to one another. Clinton spoke of “the good chemistry” between them.
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They were both affable extroverts who impressed others with their enthusiasm, familiarity, and chatter. Compared to Mitterrand, according to Ambassador Pamela Harriman, the new president was, in Clinton's estimation, “a breath of fresh air.”
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They communicated routinely by phone and letter, and when the
Clintons visited France in 1996 for a G7 meeting they dined with the Chiracs at a chic Parisian restaurant.

Washington welcomed President Chirac with a formal state visit that featured an address to the U.S. Congress on February 1, 1996.
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Members of Congress, however, were most inhospitable: hundreds of them boycotted the speech in protest against France's resumption of nuclear testing. Pages and other staffers had to be rushed in to fill the empty seats. Ignoring the only partially filled chamber, the president of France declared his personal affinity with his hosts by recalling how as a boy he had watched American troops land in Provence in 1944. Anxious that the country might retreat into domestic concerns, Chirac exhorted his audience to remain engaged in international affairs, noting that “the world needs the United States.” Chirac, who was known for chiding Congress for its isolationist ways, praised the United Nations as the source of international legitimacy, mildly rebuking Congress for refusing to pay its dues to the organization. After saluting the United States for its role in reconstructing Bosnia, the speaker affirmed that France regarded America's political and military commitment to Europe as “an essential factor of the continent's stability and security.” The only dramatic moment of the address came when he confirmed France's intention of seeking a rapprochement with the military structure of NATO, which he connected with renovation of the alliance, referring to building a strong “European pillar” that was capable of sharing the burden of security. Chirac thus linked the promise of rapprochement with NATO reform. Not only Congress was absent that day; so were most Americans. The speech was rarely mentioned in television news that evening.
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By 1995-96 France was ready to resume its quest for NATO reform.
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Four years of combat in the former Yugoslavia had demonstrated that the Europeans could not pacify the region by themselves. Bosnia revealed that France, among other deficiencies, lacked the air-and sealift capacity to project a sizable military force, and budgetary constraints kept it from spending what was necessary to make up for its shortcomings. NATO alone had the necessary logistical means. Officials
in Paris became convinced that since a functioning European security capacity was years in the future, the American military was the only reliable force for the continent's stability.
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Moreover, the French recognized that the WEU scheme had stalled because of the opposition from Washington and most European capitals. The only way to create a European security entity was to avoid the appearance of pursuing a course that would weaken the alliance. In addition, the high hopes once held for the EU constructing its own security capacity—aspirations that had peaked at the Maastricht Conference—had been dashed by the strong opposition to the Maastricht Treaty's ratification recorded in France and Denmark as well as by Franco-German quarrels over Yugoslavia. Perhaps most important for changing course, the Gaullist posture—that of standing outside the integrated military structure—no longer made any sense; not when France would, in all likelihood, engage in future combat with NATO forces as it had in the Balkans. Absence from NATO decision making denied France leverage in framing strategy and tactics. Thus Chirac complained he was unable to select targets for air strikes in Bosnia. This sober reappraisal led France to seek an accommodation by building the European pillar inside the alliance. Or, as one French expert observed, “in order to be more European tomorrow, it is necessary to be more Atlanticist today.”
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Happily the Clinton administration signaled it was open to such reform as part of a package that featured NATO enlargement to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.

Once again France recalibrated the delicate diplomatic balance with the United States. If the presumption had been that there was less need for American presence in Europe at the end of the Cold War, after 1992 the premise was that the United States needed to be coaxed back. The Clinton administration was paying more attention to domestic than foreign affairs and, given its reluctance to intervene in the Balkans, seemed inclined to distance itself from Europe—at a time when ethnic and nationalist disorder had erupted and NATO was essential for peacekeeping. It was time, to a much greater extent than even Mitterrand's
demarche
of the early 1980s, to tilt the balance back toward the alliance.

The Elysee, especially the president and his advisers like Jean-David Levitte, backed by the defense ministry, took the lead in trying to construct a “new NATO” from within. Officials at the Quai d'Orsay, the guardians of Gaullist principles, were less enthusiastic. What was needed was a European chain of command that could take charge of the new peacekeeping—that is non-Article 5 and out-of-area missions—in cases where the United States did not want to participate. To be credible peacekeeping required access to NATO assets. Such missions might also involve non-NATO actors and thus would benefit from a more flexible and more Europeanized command apparatus than the old American-run, integrated structure—a hierarchy that was best reserved for Europe's defense or Article 5 crises. A new chain of command would begin at the top with European personnel. American officers, it should be recalled, not only staffed the key commands, including Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) itself, but were also “double-hatted,” meaning they received orders from both NATO and the Pentagon. This may have been tolerable when the Soviet Union had seemed poised for attack, but now it was out-of-date, especially when the alliance was facing the new kinds of threats seen in the Balkans.

In December 1995, Francois Bujon de l'Etang, the French ambassador in Washington, alerted Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott that France intended to rejoin the military structure of the alliance.
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This, as it turned out, was a tactical error. The Clinton administration wrongly assumed that France had made up its mind to rejoin NATO when in fact such a move was dependent on overhauling the alliance.

In August 1996 Chirac took up the promise he had made during his recent state visit and wrote directly to Clinton recommending two options for renovating the command structure of the alliance: either elevating Europeans to the post of SACEUR (after creating a “super-SACEUR” for an American) or to the two regional (north and south)
commands. The quid pro quo was that France would rejoin the integrated military structure. The French proposal enjoyed substantial, but not solid, support from other Europeans—more from the Spanish and the Germans, less from the British—and outright opposition from the Italians. France also recommended to the White House that if the United States wanted to enlarge the alliance it should include Romania (Italy want to add Slovenia), along with the other three former Soviet bloc nations.

The Clinton administration was amenable to the return of France. In the eyes of American officials France was one of the few nations that had the means and will to share the security burden in Europe and project military power in areas like Africa, the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East. But Chirac's “new NATO” encountered mistrust and opposition from American officials, especially from some in the Pentagon and the State Department who thought the French proposals were “thinly conceived devices for curtailing U.S. influence in Europe.”
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Or, as one State Department hand informed the French ambassador, he thought France wanted to “kick us out of Europe.”
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Moreover, Congress gave priority to limited enlargement rather than reform. The sticking point was awarding a European—in all likelihood a French officer—the command of NATO's southern forces (AFSOUTH), based in Naples, which included the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. The Clinton administration might have entertained assigning some commands to Europeans, but not a key one like AFSOUTH. Congress, it was said, would never countenance the Sixth Fleet taking orders from a European officer. Nor would the United States surrender control over decision making in the alliance: Washington was willing to grant more visibility to the Europeans, but not actual authority—which was precisely what France sought. The French position was weakened by the lack of an endorsement from the Italians, who enjoyed having the U.S. Navy stationed in Naples. For his part Clinton, engaged in a presidential campaign, could not be seen as giving away the Mediterranean command to the French. He wrote back to Chirac
in September, explaining why he could not concede the southern command to a European officer. Nor could he surrender U.S. control over the alliance. Nor, as it turned out, because of Congressional opposition among other reasons, would he add Romania and Slovenia to the list of new NATO countries.

Negotiations went awry when Chirac's August letter was leaked, stirring up a press campaign that distorted his proposal as a scheme for the French to take charge of the Sixth Fleet. In fact, France had offered alternatives. By the fall, journalists and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic embellished the debate, making it more difficult to find a compromise. According to one French daily the White House had been brutal with Chirac; allegedly, Clinton wrote, “Jacques, I must be frank about the southern command: it's no.”
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Meanwhile, the socialists, including prominent figures like Laurent Fabius and Jean-Pierre Chevenement, distanced themselves from Chirac's project while a few hard-line Gaullists directly criticized him; the old Gaullist baron, Pierre Messmer complained, “It is rather astonishing that the government enters NATO at the very moment that it has lost its
raison d'etre
.”
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Members of the U.S. Congress took aim at the French proposal and the press vented at an alleged slight of Warren Christopher by Herve de Charette. As the story goes Charette, at a NATO meeting in Brussels, dashed out of dinner at the very moment when the secretary-general of the organization was presenting a toast to the American secretary of state. The
Washington Post
headline read, “French Snub NATO Tribute to Christopher.”
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The Quai d'Orsay believed the anti-French faction in the State Department inspired the article and Charette was embarrassed and angry. According to NATO sources, relations between the allies had become “vitriolic.” “Chirac cannot back down,” it was reported, “because he would be seen as caving in to the Americans, and the U.S. will not back down because it's too important a command to give up and Congress would never approve.”
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