A Certain Idea of France: French Security Policy and Gaullist Legacy

by Phillip H. Gordon

Overview

As France begins to confront the new challenges of the post-Cold War era, the time has come to examine how French security policy has evolved since Charles de Gaulle set it on an independent course in the 1960s. Philip Gordon shows that the Gaullist model, contrary to widely held beliefs, has lived on--but that its inherent inconsistencies have grown more acute with increasing European unification, the diminishing American military role in Europe, and related strains on French military budgets. The question today is whether the Gaullist legacy will enable a strong and confident France to play a full role in Europe's new security arrangements or whether France, because of its will to independence, is destined to play an isolated, national role.

Gordon analyzes military doctrines, strategies, and budgets from the 1960s to the 1990s, and also the evolution of French policy from the early debates about NATO and the European Community to the Persian Gulf War. He reveals how and why Gaullist ideas have for so long influenced French security policy and examines possible new directions for France in an increasingly united but potentially unstable Europe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400820917
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/05/1993
Series:	Princeton Studies in International History and Politics , #42
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	292
File size:	500 KB

About the Author

Philip H. Gordon is currently a Visiting Scholar at the German Society for Foreign Affairs in Bonn, Germany. He is a consultant for the RAND corporation and a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Table of Contents

List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Pt. 1 The Gaullist Years 1
Ch. 1 Perspectives on de Gaulle 3
Why Start with de Gaulle? 3
De Gaulle and Change: The Provisory and the Permanent 6
De Gaulle and the Nation-State in Europe 9
De Gaulle's "Idea of France" 14
Independence and Grandeur as Goals and Means 17
Gaullist Ideas and Gaullist Policies 21
Ch. 2 The Missing Pillar: France's Role in the Defense of Europe in the 1950s and 1960s 23
The Missing Pillar during the Fourth Republic 24
The Missing Pillar during the Gaullist Years 29
Explaining the "Missing Pillar" under de Gaulle 31
France's Nuclear Force and Europe 39
The International Context and the French Contribution 46
Ch. 3 Manipulating Ambiguity: Military Doctrines under de Gaulle and Pompidou 53
Conventional Doctrine through the Mid-1960s 53
Early Nuclear Doctrines 57
The Direct Legacy: The Fourquet Doctrine 64
Pompidou's Initial Challenge 68
Codified Ambiguity: The White Paper on National Defense 70
French Military Doctrine in Retrospect 77
Pt. 2 Struggling to Adapt 79
Ch. 4 Giscard's Balancing Act, 1974-1981 81
The "Post-Gaullist" Period 81
Revising France's Military Doctrines 83
Reorganizing the Army, 1975-1977 89
Nuclear Cooperation with the United States 92
Opposition to Change and Its Lessons 93
Defense Policy and the Economic Constraint 100
Conclusions on the Giscardian Experience 104
Ch. 5 Mitterrand's Adaptations, 1981-1986 106
The Socialists' Turnaround and Its Explanations 106
Security Policy under the Socialists: Adapting to de Gaulle 112
Mitterrand's Atlantic Rapprochement: Adapting to NATO 118
The German Role: Adapting to Europe 124
Defense Policy and the Economic Constraint Revisited 134
The Socialists in Retrospect 138
Ch. 6 Tensions in the Consensus, 1986-1989 139
A Changing Military Context and Its Impact on France 140
Cohabitation and the French Defense Debate 144
The Debates of Cohabitation 146
Cohabitation in Retrospect 156
Putting off the Choices: May 1988-May 1989 158
Pt. 3 France in the New Europe 161
Ch. 7 The Gaullist Legacy Today: French Security Policy in the 1990s 163
A Look Back: Continuity Since de Gaulle 163
France and NATO in the 1990s 165
France and the European Security Identity 172
The Lessons of the Persian Gulf War: The View from Paris 178
Conclusions: Continuities amid Change 183
Ch. 8 Epilogue: The Gaullist Legacy and the Post-Cold War World 186
De Gaulle's Post-Cold War World 186
Gaullist Military Logic and the New Europe 191
Reconciling de Gaulle with Europe 197
Notes 203
Glossary of French Terms Used 235
Selected Bibliography 237
Index 251

Editorial Reviews

"Philip H. Gordon's brilliant exposition of France's Gaullist design provides us with fresh insight and perspective on how its principles have become foundation-stones of the country's political culture. The book is most original in its acutely perceptive analysis of how successive French governments have sought to reconcile a jealous sovereignty, on the one hand, with the commitment to increasingly ambitious plans for a multinational European union, on the other."

Political Studies

"Philip H. Gordon's brilliant exposition of France's Gaullist design provides us with fresh insight and perspective on how its principles have become foundation-stones of the country's political culture. The book is most original in its acutely perceptive analysis of how successive French governments have sought to reconcile a jealous sovereignty, on the one hand, with the commitment to increasingly ambitious plans for a multinational European union, on the other."--Political Studies

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