Why France Belongs in NATO

...It is in light of these observations and my faith in alliances that I should like to re-examine briefly France's Atlantic policy of the last two decades and to suggest what its new orientation should be...

...now it threatens to make the whole continent a Soviet sphere of influence...

...It would give fresh vigor to all democrats in the Free World...

...in the United Kingdom the extreme Left is becoming increasingly vocal while the Labour Party tries desperately to avoid a major economic catastrophe...

...What is more, France's economy lagged in a 19th-century style...

...No doubt he hoped to attract other members of the Common Market to create a counterweight to the United States within NATO...

...America responded by applying pressure to Germany to reaffirm its commitment to the Atlantic Alliance...

...The deep and recurring recessions and the accelerating inflation caused by the sudden five-fold oil price increase have created or accentuated political crises in several European countries: Portugal, Italy, Great Britain, and France to name a few...

...and one with the Soviet Union...

...The Warsaw Pact forces outnumber those of NATO 3 to 1 in manpower, planes, and tanks, and the Communist forces are deployed offensively, whereas the readiness of United States armed forces in Europe is, in the words of the U.S...

...his flattering speeches warmed many Germans to a friendly posture, and in some circles even won him the sobriquet, Unser General (our general...

...And the mark of a true statesman is to recognize in time the necessity for alliance...

...And the aims of Soviet foreign policy pose a far greater menace to those values than would the most constricting alliance with the United States...

...Gaullists claimed that France's adherence to the NATO integrated command would hazard dragging her into a conventional war in remote Angola or Indochina, or worse, into a nuclear conflict...

...And Peter Viereck, in a not uncritical review in the New York Times, was able to say: "As gadfly against the smug Comrade Blimps of the left, this important, symptomatic, and widely hailed book is a necessary counterbalance...

...The book was written in great style, the facts, however much one might quibble about this or that quotation or emphasis, were irrefutable, Buckley's personality and skill as a debater were invaluable promotional assets, and Yale is a major American institution...

...18 The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977...

...Whatever justification there may have been for French policy in the sixties, today the situation is different and the danger very pressing...

...What is required here is a knock-out punch, not a homeopathic treatment...

...Such a policy statement would have a triple effect...

...Germany has emerged as the real winner in the Franco-American confrontation, re-establishing its political and economic significance to the point of becoming the dominant factor in Western Europe today...

...What is needed to top this is a gesture of dramatic psychological impact and France is in an excellent position to deliver it, since she has acquired a reputation for international nonpartisanship during the Gaullist regime and its aftermath...

...It is vital for Gaullists to remember this because they tend to forget that de Gaulle's initial choice was not independence but integration in a system where France would be on a par The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977 17 with the U.S...

...How does one account for the remarkable impact of a book which, as Dwight MacDonald observed, was "a non-fiction work by an unknown author put out by a small publisher and dealing with no broader or livelier topic than the Yale curriculum...

...One may deplore this fact, but it is useless for the leaders of the Free World not to acknowledge it nor to show the courage of stating this alternative plainly to their peoples, while there is yet time...

...A great power play is in the making in Western Europe...

...Meantime the Communist political opposition within Europe presses ever harder to accede to power...

...As a result, the leftist factions and the Communist parties in these countries are in a position to lure the electorates into thinking that their venue to power would bring back to the masses the steady growth in their standards of living which they had been enjoying since World War II...

...Finally, we should add that France should have no reluctance in making such a move because since the initial Gaullist attempt to install a tridirectorate the balance of power within the Atlantic Alliance has changed sufficiently for it now to have a better equilibrium between its constituents...

...Communists now lead the most powerful--and still growing--labor organization in Spain...

...the revolutionary leftists of Portugal, denied power last year in the first elections since Salazar's demise, wait anxiously for a false step by the Socialist minority government...

...Dissensions now mar the union of OPEC countries and we do not have to face the implacable and united front of three years ago...

...In Italy, a Communist takeover of the parliament was averted in last summer's elections, but the Communists continue their insidious penetration into the highest levels of government...

...One of General de Gaulle's first major moves after regaining power in 1958 was to propose that NATO be led by a tridirectorate of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States...

...First, within the Atlantic Alliance and in particular in Europe, it would create a renewed enthusiasm, a greatly yearned-for togetherness and sense of common purpose...

...The Anglo-American refusal to set up a tridirectorate can therefore be understood, but with hindsight it can also be seen that the United States and Great Britain misjudged both their own latent weaknesses and General de Gaulle's capacity to turn France into a disruptive force within the Atlantic Alliance...

...As Bundy confidently predicted they would, Yale alumni contributed more to their university the year after the publication o f " the book" than they ever had before, thus confirming Joseph Schumpeter's famous remark that the bourgeoisie not only educates its enemies, but permits itself to be educated by them...

...While the Communist threat in Western Europe looms large--perhaps larger than ever before--NATO, the treaty organization designed to defend Western Europe, lies weak...

...It remains an open question whether France's proposal for a tridirectorate was the best course...

...We have come a long way since McGeorge Bundy characterized William F. Buckley, Jr...

...De Gaulle adroitly took advantage of the feeling that only France could absolve Germany of its guilt feelings from the Nazi era...

...the dollar was king...

...Be that as it may, it has been a constant of French foreign policy in the last fifteen years to try to separate and distinguish Western Europe, and especially Germany, from the United States on all major international issues...

...Hiroshima and Nagasaki had demonstrated with startling clarity that knowledge, pursued for its own sake and without regard to value or purpose, can give us the means to destroy ourselves...

...Within the Atlantic Alliance, France failed to polarize European nations into proFrench and pro-American camps, but she succeeded in retarding and confounding the political organization of Europe, and consequently its military defense...

...Third, the Free World would be in a better position to pressure the OPEC countries into substantially lower oil prices, which in turn would permit the world economy to bounce back into a healthy growth orbit and ipso facto significantly reduce the economic and political turmoil we are in...

...In spite of this apparently glum picture, all is far from lost...

...the Americans and the British, at the time, were unconvinced...

...the growth of Soviet military might and involvement throughout the world has taken its toll within Russia, stunting internal economic growth...

...The real choice for the French people, and indeed for all the peoples of the Free World, is between an alliance with the U.S...

...President Giscard d'Estaing has made some timid and surreptitious steps in this direction, but this is quite insufficient...

...For the Anglo-Saxon leaders of the Free World, France's strength still had to be proven...

...But irritated and impoverished electorates may still call leftist regimes to power, as they look for an alternative to their growing discontent...

...The United States had not yet tasted defeat (Vietnam) and could see no serious threat on the horizon...

...There are increasing pressures for national independence in Eastern Europe...

...but there was more to it than timing...

...large numbers of Soviet intellectuals now question totalitarian authority, as illustrated by an endless list of cases like Solzhenitsyn's...

...His thinking might have been that if America would not admit a tridirectorate with France holding a major position, perhaps she could be obliged to accept one with Europe, led by France or a Franco-German condominium, as a principal partner...

...The move was easy for the Americans, since the Germans could not and still cannot do without America's nuclear protection, or even conventional forces, in the face of the Soviet-Warsaw Pact buildup...

...Bill Buckley put an issue before us for which there is no simple solution, but which becomes every day more pressing: How do we control the universities...

...This in fact is an illusion since the latest increase in the price of oil (equivalent to a 50 to 70% increase over the 1973 price) will quickly send the industrialized nations back into a new recession and keep them going on the road to increased poverty, no matter which political party were in power...

...To what extent de Gaulle was bluffing in these maneuvers, we cannot be certain...

...The British lived on the illusion of their glorious performance during the war...

...they had so far refused to join the Common Market...

...His solution, that the alumni must step in and take over, was obviously no solution, but the question remains...

...MacDonald's explanation, that "there is a big market today for anti-liberal polemics," explains nothing...

...It began with the oil crisis of 1973...

...Seeking allies to increase his pressure on the Americans, General de Gaulle consolidated France's entente with Adenauer's Germany...

...The weakening and gradual disintegration of the Atlantic Alliance, which one or more Communist-influenced governments in Europe would cause, might very soon force the American armed forces from Europe without the Soviets having to fu'e a single shot themselves--as was the case in Vietnam...

...this in turn breaks down the unlimited faith and solidarity which Western European working classes had in the utopian Soviet regime, and the hypocrisy of their own Communist leaders for the last 20 years is a theme that can be repeatedly drummed upon...

...Joseph Hazan Why France Belongs in NATO France's re-entry into full military status in the Atlantic Alliance would breathe fresh vigor into the Free World...

...The Soviet Union continues to devote ever larger proportions of its Gross National Product to its military forces, despite a lagging national economy...

...General Accounting Office, "woefully deficient...

...The memory of her humiliating defeat in 1940 lingered while her difficulties at decolonization--the rout in Indochina (1954) and the Algerian upheaval which started in earnest in 1956--were blemishes on the West's democratic image before the Third World at a time when America still had an angelic reputation...

...While the universities themselves have proved Buckley to have been right in his basic thesis, the immediate impact of the book, in spite of the storm it aroused, was probably slight, at least on Yale...

...In the only valid sense, French national independence must be understood as the condition wherein French values are best preserved...

...their economy did not yet show the signs of weakening...

...The French leaders should come out publicly and strongly to say that in view of the danger at hand they have decided to re-enter NATO with full status...

...In a larger sense, both France and the United States--indeed all the Free World--have been losers in the Franco-American feud...

...Felix Morley, former President of Haverford College, wrote in a long review in Barron's that: "....his well-reasoned and well-supported argument must be taken seriously...Mr...

...Buckley makes a case against current college instruction that cannot go unanswered...

...Joseph Hazan, a French chemical engineer and consultant, is presently writing a book, Freedom Will Conquer...

...none will feel dominated, and on the contrary, a real sense of the interdependence of the democratic nations of the world would be publicly revealed and enthusiastically accepted...

...There is also another factor, and this might be the most important one: Buckley, as I said at the beginning, challenged a concept of knowledge and of teaching which has dominated the universities for at least a century, and which many people, perhaps more instinctively than explicitly, were beginning to feel uneasy about...

...The book was perfectly timed, of course--Yale was in the act of celebrating, with much ceremony, the two-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of its founding just as the book came out...

...For a country like France to continue stressing the theme of "national independence" under the present conditions is in fact to prepare her passage from dependence upon the United States to a merciless colonization by the Soviet Union...

...Second, the Soviets, the OPEC countries, and the whiners of the Third World (to be distinguished from the serious members of the developing group of nations) would know that they would henceforth be facing a redoubtable front of nations whose toes are not to be trodden upon...

...and the United Kingdom...

...It was only after the proposal for a tridirectorate fell through that France mustered every available stratagem for an anti-American offensive: the attack on the dollar in the gold-standard controversy, the military withdrawal from the NATO integrated command, vocal opposition to America's presence in Indochina and elsewhere in the world...

...True, France transformed her old colonialist image to one of solidarity with the Third World, but in so doing helped turn world opinion against American policy everywhere...

...But France appears to stand aloof from this power play, her allegiance to NATO shaken since General de GauUe withdrew France from the integrated military command in 1966...

...Yet in the light of global realities, there must be doubt as to whether a country like France, if it acts alone, is not in the end working against its best interests by profoundly weakening NATO...

...as "violent, unbalanced, and twisted" to the point of being unbelievable for having pointed out a situation which subsequent events--the student revolts of the 1960s, among others--have made obvious...

...The great question the Buckley book raised, however, still remains unanswered, and asking it may have been its greatest service: If those entrusted with handing on "the sustaining intellectual and moral structures of civilization" (the phrase is Eliseo Vivas') instead disparage and subvert them, where are we to turn...

...unfortunately real independence does not exist...

...Throughout history, even the greatest of empires have relied on alliances to defend themselves...