The Incompatible Allies

HOFFMANN, STANLEY

PARIS VS. WASHINGTON The Incompatible Allies BY STANLEY HOFFMANN The current Franco-American clash has a tedious quality of deja vu. France discerns an imperial design behind Washington's moves,...

...Given the other European nations' recurrent antipathy to our policies (often less spectacular but no less real than France's), we are increasingly obliged to use our trump cards—our military umbrella and the access of our market to foreign goods—to obtain compliance...
...For one thing, Washington's sense of surprise...
...scored a diplomatic victory...
...involvement, seeing such talks as offering Europe: (1) emancipation from the multinational and largely American oil companies...
...It exploited Europe's misgivings about Soviet-American collusion, especially after Party chief Leonid I. Brezhnev's visit to the U.S...
...So what else is new...
...As usual, Europe is caught between Washington and Paris, but refuses to choose, seeing an advantage in courting both sides...
...Or, to put it another way, we have always resented France's reluctance to play the role assigned to her in what Jobert calls the "American cosmogony...
...Professor Kissinger, while aware of the limits and contradictions of Gaullism, had perceptively shown its attractiveness and the force of its vision...
...The alternatives for Paris were the rapid exhaustion of French reserves or massive subsidization by Germany...
...and, second, a disturbing tendency to let off steam in semiprivate (that is, semipublic) conversations at the expense of the Europeans in general and the French in particular...
...on world monetary reform, for instance...
...Unless they can be removed, France is faced with the choice of capitulating to the "American cosmogony," or resisting in rather impotent isolation...
...Jobert's wit wounds, and his fervor fights...
...Nonetheless, Kissinger's triumph was only temporary...
...Yet once in power, he began to behave in exactly the same way...
...2) the possibility of insuring European oil supplies on a long-term basis, free of interference, guidance or obstruction from the United States...
...Within the Common Market, it was not necessary for the French to try to rally their partners against the Americans: Our long list of demands and complaints about agriculture, about trade preferences and about the European Economic Community's decision-making procedures constituted an attack on the very cement of the European edifice that itself engendered hostility among EEC members...
...Schumann had been all rhetoric and sugar and soft curves...
...On the French side, Michel Jobert, also a year ago, replaced Maurice Schumann, who had lost his seat in Parliament, as foreign minister...
...France has always resented our tendency to assign roles to others...
...This should have been clear from the difficulties caused by France in the drafting of the neo-Atlantic declaration demanded by Henry Kissinger last April...
...We mistook a shift in French tactics following Charles de Gaulle's departure for a genuine change in policy...
...for security, and by the technical difficulties involved in working out the problems of the EEC...
...last spring, and during the Yom Kippur War...
...In his academic writings, the European-born Secretary of State had sharply criticized his predecessors' lack of sensitivity toward Europe, their failure to consult with allies and their arrogant belief in America's superior understanding of Europe's true interests...
...Paris' recent deals with the Arabs allowed the Secretary of State to focus on the selfishness of bilateral negotiations, despite Jo-bert's pointed observation that out of sheer necessity most of the European countries, as well as Japan, were seeking similar deals...
...and (4) influence in the Middle East to counter that of the two superpowers (a French goal ever since the mid-'60s...
...At the root of this misconception was, of course, our old conviction that de Gaulle had been an aberration: After him, France would come back to her senses, i.e., to us...
...Actually, quite a lot...
...Jobert had even begun to talk openly about cooperation for defense, apart from nato...
...Above all, it provided Kissinger with a chance to push for his new Atlantic partnership, mired at the time in a swamp of semantics and trivial differences, by means of a fetching if sketchily described common energy policy...
...We denounce the French view as short-sighted today, just as we called it inward-looking yesterday...
...But it is not exhilarating...
...The United States proclaims its concern for the common interests of all its allies, and pities the French for their parochial nationalism...
...Personalities account for another difference in this latest dispute...
...and we mistake effect for purpose when we dismiss the French government's position as a contrivance aimed solely at gaining domestic support (indeed, we should realize that the stand is popular with Pompidou's Left-wing opposition, the only alternative to the Gaullist coalition...
...He avoided any diplomatic showdown with the U.S...
...With this proposal, Washington and Paris collided head-on...
...Nothing is more paradoxical than this...
...leadership (thereby inevitably reviving French resistance...
...errors...
...What he has added to the old Atlanticism was, first, a blunt resort to a kind of blackmail ?our military role in Europe depends in part on your willingness to make concessions to us in other areas"—in place of a more hypocritical but soothing appeal to a common higher calling...
...Jobert is all angles and barbs and vinegar...
...Secretary Kissinger dismisses it—in the manner of Dean Acheson —as petty obstructionism...
...Washington, though, did not pay sufficient attention to two significant facts...
...France discerns an imperial design behind Washington's moves, calls on the West Europeans to resist and denounces them for their pusillanimity...
...As a result, the less self-serving elements of the French position got lost in the shuffle...
...If Jobert's refusal to accept any institutionalization of the Washington conference highlighted France's isolation in February, in March her Common Market partners accepted the French program...
...It exhorted its partners to reject U.S...
...Furthermore, even with firmer common institutions, the security issue and the complexities of the EEC remain formidable obstacles to European "emancipation...
...That leaves the second choice...
...Whereas de Gaulle rudely emphasized diplomacy and defense—thus paralyzing Western European cooperation by stressing the very issues on which France's neighbors refused to dissociate themselves from the United States—Pompidou gave precedence to economic questions, and promoted fiscal cooperation within the Common Market...
...There is no reason to think the Franco-American tug-of-war will end soon, for two radically different conceptions of world order are in contest...
...3) the opportunity to attract Arab trade and investment, and so recover some of the additional money being paid for oil, rather than having the Arabs invest in and buy primarily from the U.S...
...On the French side, the appeal to a kind of European nationalism is diluted by France's hostility to supranational institutions, by Europe's total dependence on the U.S...
...Schumann always gave the impression that any obstacle could be overcome by unction...
...The French commit a similar error by indicting American motives, when they really mean to attack the result of Kissinger's grand strategy—the reas-sertion of U.S...
...requests for "burden sharing...
...Opting for the first of these—something Washington has been waiting for all these years —is ruled out by Parliamentary arithmetic: Although some groups in the Center and on the Right favor it, they cannot govern without the Gaullists or the Socialists (who have consolidated their alliance with the Communists by raising the level of their anti-Americanism...
...The French, for their part, desired Arab-EEC negotiations without U.S...
...predominance...
...While we talk about a pluralistic "structure of peace," we act frequently as though pluralism meant the execution by many of a plan devised by us...
...Within the Atlantic Alliance, moreover, France continued to encourage a separate West European identity...
...The Arab decision to raise the price of oil reversed the trend?weakening Europe relative to the U.S., whose currency regained lost ground, and destroying the Continent's shaky six-nation monetary union by forcing the franc out of the joint float...
...Therefore, we must expect the French to keep trying to convert their Common Market partners to a European Europe, and to exploit U.S...
...To be sure, the Gaullist argument against delegating sovereignty to bodies whose decisions would serve America's design for Europe is strong, but it perpetuates the very weakness of Europe that it deplores...
...Stanley Hoffmann, Professor of Government at Harvard, is the author of the forthcoming Decline or Renewal?.abook on modern France...
...President Georges Pompidou, after all, had lifted the General's veto on British entry into the Common Market and had reversed Paris' priorities...
...He proclaimed the importance of an American military presence in Europe...
...The vigor of the present French opposition can best be understood, however, if one realizes that as late as last November France believed the development of Western Europe into a distinct entity was doing quite well, thanks to U.S...
...In short, the French objective remained a "European Europe," led by Paris and divorced from Atlanticism old or new...
...On the American side, Kissinger, after the Vietnam war and the "breakthroughs" with Moscow and Peking a year ago, decided to reactivate Washington's European alliances under firm U.S...
...excesses whenever we behave as if the only united Europe we could tolerate is one that invariably followed our lead...
...What makes this clash of conceptions so disturbing is the contradiction at the heart of each one...
...But Washington preferred to believe the Pompidou government was simply trying to cover, albeit gracelessly, a gradual retreat...
...Yet such compliance does not make for friendship or stability...
...The three-day Washington energy conference in February provided the setting for the confrontation, and when the two nations met, in the persons of Kissinger and Jo-bert, the U.S...

Vol. 57 • April 1974 • No. 7


 
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