President de Gaulle has shaken the Western world with his virtual veto on Britain’s application for admission to the European Economic Community, his decision to opt out of the gold pool, his forceful advocacy of a return to the gold standard and his condemnation of Israel as an expansionist power. President Johnson must be as infuriated at his performance as Mr Harold Wilson. There can be little doubt that President de Gaulle has come to occupy the first place in the Anglo-Saxon demonology. Even Mr Mao Tse-tung and President Nasser now arouse less fear, hatred and bitterness in America and Britain than the General.
The explanations of President de Gaulle’s present actions in the West have run true to form. The theory is that he is guided by personal pique and pride, 19th century nationalism, obsession with France’s greatness, the determination to wipe out the shame of defeat first by Nazi Germany in 1940 and then by the nationalists in Viet Nam and Algeria, compulsive distrust of the United States because it is economically and militarily powerful and the fear of Britain as a competitor for influence in Europe.
No Secret
There is an element of truth in all this. President de Gaulle himself makes no secret of his view that nations are the fundamental reality of history and that it is the essential task of political leaders to defend the national patrimony from all those who try to infringe it in the name of race, religion or ideology. In his own words, “the banner of ideology in reality only cloaks ambitions.” For him it is not a subject of argument that France is a great country and deserves to be regarded as such by the world. And who can blame him if he has gone ahead with the development of nuclear weapons so that his country is not pathetically dependent on the US shield and can regain a measure of self-confidence and status after a series of humiliations since 1870?
It is possible that President de Gaulle still nurses a sense of grievance against the United States and Britain on account of the treatment he received at the hands of Mr Franklin D Roosevelt and Mr Winston Churchill during the last war when his country was under German occupation. It is equally plausible that he does not wish to be reminded of his country’s debt to America and England for its liberation and economic recovery and security in the postwar period and that his fulminations against them are part of an elaborate defence mechanism.
But it is not necessary to go into complex, elusive and unprovable psychological factors to explain President de Gaulle’s policies. Britain has been France’s principal rival in Europe for centuries except for brief periods when the two countries co-operated to meet the German threat. It should not be surprising therefore if President de Gaulle is determined to keep it out of the EEC and thus forestall the possibility of London and Bonn uniting to overrule France and to advance the American grand design of the Atlantic Community in which they both believe. His anti-US posture can similarly be explained in terms of contemporary realities. The General dislikes American efforts, conscious or unconscious, to reduce Western Europe to the status of one of its provinces through military and economic integration and is determined to resist it to the best of his ability.
Distrust
The distrust of Britain and the United States could be kept in check so long as France, like other West European countries, felt menaced by the Soviet Union. But even in the ’fifties when the General acknowledged the need for NATO he was opposed to the integration of the French defence forces with others under the European Defence Community scheme. His opposition to the concept of the Atlantic community and the now defunct American proposal regarding the establishment of the multilateral nuclear force under NATO is similarly the expression of the fear of being absorbed by a bigger and more powerful entity.
President de Gaulle dislikes the present monetary system primarily because it enables the United States to invest in West Europe and acquire control over the fastest developing and most sophisticated sectors of its economy in spite of its trade deficit year after year. The American argument that the deficit is the result of its contribution to the defence of the non-communist world in Europe and elsewhere does not concern him because his preoccupation is to prevent the provincialisation of Western Europe. He might not have pressed his views with the same vigour if the Soviet threat had not receded. But today even Europeans who are opposed to most of his policies recognise the danger of US economic domination though they argue that the admission of Britain to the EEC alone can enable Western Europe to meet this challenge.
Though partly valid the popular Anglo-US theory misses the central core of the French foreign policy as it has developed in recent years, particularly since 1962. The year is notable for France for several reasons. It witnessed the end of the senseless struggle in Algeria which had been bleeding the country for many years. This has won for France great respect in the third world and also a much greater room for manoeuvre. Moreover for President de Gaulle, the result of the Russo-American confrontation over Cuba in October 1962 provided the final confirmation of the correctness of his view that the Soviet threat to Western Europe need no longer be taken seriously. The second point obviously is of critical importance for an understanding of his current policies. For him, the ideological cold war is more or less over and with it the compulsion to accept American leadership and American military presence in Europe and to pool resources with fellow members of the Atlantic alliance for joint defence.
France has consequently withdrawn its forces from the joint NATO Command and forced the NATO headquarters to shift to Brussels. US troops have also been made to leave France. The General has been far more forthright in his criticism of the United States after the Cuban episode than before.
The pronouncements of General de Gaulle and his Ministers in the past have created the impression that they wish to build Western Europe into a third force independent of both America and Russia. They have even indicated that Britain has disqualified itself for membership of the EEC because at the crucial stage in 1962 Mr Macmillan did not think of pooling his nuclear weapons with those of France and thus establish the nucleus for a purely European deterrent. Instead he chose to make the British nuclear force wholly dependent on the American supply of Polaris missiles. This may well have been President de Gaulle’s reaction when he applied the veto on Britain’s application on January 14, 1963 and the third force concept may have influenced him even subsequently.
Third Force
But he could not have blocked all progress towards political unification in the Common Market and opposed the admission of other members if his dominating passion was to build Western Europe into a viable third force. The little Europe of the Six with no supranational authority to evolve and implement a common foreign and defence policy cannot possibly aspire to the status of a third power. The General’s policy towards the EEC has been determined exclusively by his conception of France’s interest and not by any larger concept.
The desire to build bridges welt the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and not the consolidation of Western Europe as an independent entity provides the clue to President de Gaulle’s actions and policies. As he sees it, East European nations have won a measure of freedom from the Soviet Union and thus fulfilled the first condition for progress towards the abolition of the artificial ideological wall in the centre of the continent. Rumania’s decision to establish diplomatic relations with West Germany in defiance of Moscow and its firm refusal to take sides in the Sino-Soviet ideological struggle cannot but encourage the General in the belief that he represents the wave of the future.
To believe that President de Gaulle thinks that his force de frappe can protect Western Europe against Russian encroachments is to insult his intelligence. He does not expect the United States to fold up and retire from Europe just because he makes some sharp remarks about its role from time to time. During his visit to the Soviet Union last year he told Mr Kosygin and Mr Brezhnev, “I am not displeased to have the USSR as a counterweight to American hegemony and I am no more displeased to have the United States as a counterweight to Soviet hegemony.” There is nothing Machiavellian about this concept which was the very basis of Mr Nehru’s policy of non-alignment. In France’s case there is no question of reversal of alliances.
Stalemate
The Russo-American nuclear stalemate, the break-up of the communist monolith, the phenomenal economic progress of Western Europe, the trend towards liberalisation in Russia and Eastern Europe and the growing desire for independence of the two superpowers among their respective allies have made the cold war approach unfruitful. President de Gaulle is among the few European leaders to have fully recognised this fact. He goes further and welcomes it and is sparing no effort to strengthen this trend because it accords with his most cherished desires.
There is no scope for a grand design in this kind of policy. In fact the approach has to be tentative and change from time to time to accord with the needs of the situation. To think in terms of grand designs is the prerogative of the two super-powers which are driven by the ambition to reshape the world according to their lights. Medium powers like France can either fall in line or step out and assert their independence. They cannot hope to build an alternative world order. The same is true of China in spite of its claims to be in possession of a universally valid political doctrine.
The Times of India, 13 December 1967