Paris and Peking

...it is responsive to popular and Congressional moods which can be decisively affected by what appear to be ungrateful anti-American activities by America's allies...

...A further desirable element in a multilateral balance of power would be a nation strong enough to cause concern to Russia in Asia and thus divert Soviet attention to some extent from European affairs...

...But in accepting their defeat, the French decided to cut their losses and conciliate the victor: They assumed that the Viet Minh would take over the whole of Vietnam within a short period of time and hoped to preserve a residue of French economic interests in the country by doing business with it...

...This particular crisis passed, but it left a legacy of bitterness among Frenchmen specially concerned with the Far East...

...interest in preventing a Russian take-over of Western Europe remains, regardless of France's behavior...

...The circumstances of the French departure were ignominious, for there could be no pretense of a voluntary decolonization...

...He has sought to do this both by giving France a nuclear capability and by building up through the Common Market a political union of continental Western Europe under French leadership...

...This puts China and France together in an unpleasant international isolation, and gives them a common interest in opposing any further anti-disseminationist pressures...

...and one can discern two major political interests on the part of France in a rapprochement with China...

...Over and above this strange ground of sympathy, France has a special reason for regarding an increase of Chinese power with satisfaction rather than alarm...

...policy, inflicted not by a combination of the Communist bloc and AfroAsian neutrals, but by a NATO ally...

...The United States, Britain and Russia have reached a stage of nuclear experience at which they can afford to renounce atmospheric testing, and the nations which cannot or do not want to become nuclear powers can also afford this...

...the settlement reached by the international conference at Geneva was the sequel to the great disaster at Dienbienphu...

...But Gaullist foreign policy is determined far more by political goals...

...The first demonstration of the French re-entry was de Gaulle's condemnation, shortly before the overthrow of the Diem regime, of U.S...

...France will take full advantage of any commercial opportunities arising out of good political relations with Peking...

...But after the end of the Algerian involvement, President de Gaulle's purpose of reasserting the role of France as a Great Power in world affairs—and with policies independent of those of the U.S.—was bound to lead him sooner or later back into the Far East...

...But France must continue to have such tests in order to reach maturity as a nuclear power, and China will have to have them from the time it makes its first bomb...

...Since the conclusion of the North Atlantic Alliance Russian power has been matched by American, and Western Europe has thus been protected against Russian expansion or coercion...

...If these relations were left to professional diplomats, France's basic loyalty to the Alliance as against Russia would be recognized in spite of unfriendly actions by France in the Far East...

...Both France and China are striving to become nuclear powers against the will of their own allies, and the effect of the testban treaty has been to array almost all the other nations of the world against them on this issue...

...But American foreign policy is not made only on such calculations of fundamental national interests...

...He is playing with fire...

...These aims are primarily political, though economic considerations count for something...

...But for de Gaulle the danger for France lies in the prospect of a domination of Europe by a too powerful Russia, and this is a danger inherent in the ratios of national power in Europe, whether Russia is Communist or not...

...There is in the first place the common interest of France and China in opposition to the test-ban treaty and the nuclear anti-dissemination policies of the United States, Britain and Russia...

...protests, it would be a major defeat for U.S...

...In Vietnam the French aim is primarily to make a political comeback in an ex-colony by sponsoring a policy which has attractions for many Vietnamese and may gain increased support, unless measures to suppress the Viet Cong show more success in the near future than they have so far...

...American and French policies are thus now clashing over both Vietnam and China, but the issue is not the same in both cases...

...De Gaulle may have come to the conclusion that the Communists are winning in Vietnam anyway, and that there could be some gain in political influence for France through mediation of a settlement between North and South...

...It would be remembered in the State Department that France has been the most unyielding of the Western powers to the Russian pressures on Berlin, and gave unhesitating support to America in the Cuban crisis of October 1962...

...During the interim period of the French evacuation, relations between French and American military personnel became so bad that there was at one time a danger of fighting between them in the streets of Saigon...

...Needless to say, however, Washington does not see Communist China in this light, and French pursuit of a policy favorable to Peking will be likely to increase the tensions in Franco-American relations, which are already serious enough...

...De Gaulle may seriously underestimate the strain which will be put on NATO by the kind of policies he is now pursuing...

...But de Gaulle believes that a merely bilateral balance between the two super-powers condemns France to a too dependent and subordinate position, and his policy has been to impose a check on Russia but with a reduction of French dependence on the United States...

...Since the development of the Sino-Soviet dispute an increase in China's strength can be seen, no longer as a supplement to that of the Soviet Union, but as a potential reduction of it...

...French aims in policy toward China have a larger scope and are relevant to the general purpose of France in world affairs...

...French diplomatic activity on the spot was at the same time promoting the idea of a reunification of Vietnam on a basis of neutrality...

...The French had nothing but resentment for the United States policy of backing Ngo Dinh Diem (who had built up his reputation as a nationalist from the fact that he refused to collaborate with the French) as an anti-Communist leader in South Vietnam...

...These moves greatly added to the difficulties of the Americans in Saigon who were endeavoring to sustain Vietnamese resistance to Commust conquest...

...Having been driven out of Indochina themselves, they took no satisfaction in seeing America take their place as the preponderant Western power, thus spoiling their chances of making a deal with the Viet Minh...

...But there is a prospect that the states formed out of the former French empire in Africa, nearly all of which had followed France in withholding recognition from Peking, may also change course, and together with some other African states influenced by them assure the twothirds majority needed to seat the delegates of Communist China in the United Nations Assembly...

...From 1954 to 1963, however, France played virtually no part in Far Eastern affairs...

...This is no minor matter either for Paris or for Peking...

...If such an outcome is brought about by the deliberate action France has taken in spite of U.S...

...In America and Britain, the Sino-Soviet dispute has been regarded as an opportunity for improving relations with Russia...

...interference" in Vietnam...

...Such a nation in Russia's rear can only be China...

...De Gaulle, and indeed French political opinion generally, thinks of the world in terms not so much of ideological division as of an international balance of power...

...That such a settlement would almost certainly lead in a short time to complete Communist control of the country does not appear to worry de Gaulle, who probably feels that France has now virtually nothing to lose in Vietnam and can afford to intrigue with Hanoi...

...This in itself might not be a more serious matter for Washington than the previous recognition of the Peking government by Britain and a number of other nonCommunist states...

...A revival of isolationism in America or an ascendancy of "Pacific-Firsters" at the expense of the defense of Europe could be the consequence of too great an exasperation of American national feeling by Gaullism, and it would be no profit to France if diplomatic success in Peking were to be purchased at the price of disaster to the Western cause in Berlin...

...Then came reports of France's intention to recognize Communist China...

...French business interests are certainly impressed by the prospects of expanding trade with China, particularly at a moment when the economy of the People's Republic is slowly reviving after three years of disaster and foreign commercial connections are being readjusted to reduce the economic dependence of Communist China on the Soviet bloc...

...The French no longer had either a territorial holding or a strategic base in the area, and Algeria replaced Indochina as the focus of the effort to retain control of at least a part of the French overseas empire...