BEYOND DE GAULLE
Barry, Joseph
Beyond DeGaulle by JOSEPH BARRY Paris " A re you consulting us," President Charles de Gaulle asked Dean Acheson, who had been speeded to Paris by President Kennedy during the Cuban missile...
...This is a "heavy price"?] Three—France will then join the Soviet Union, as Europe's only other nuclear power, to guarantee all the terms of the above-outlined arrangements, particularly including the quasi-neutralization of Germany...
...Moreover, the lifting of the military menace, except for war by accident or miscalculation—which, in any case, is not in their hands but in the hands of the Big Two—has brought into high relief a new, much more tangible—and talked about—menace: American industrial might...
...No wonder they warn that America threatens not only Europe's markets, but, by investment, its industries as well...
...Whenever General de Gaulle challenges that concept of unity, as he did last summer, his popularity suffers ¦—witness the presidential elections...
...Well, France will stand by you," said de Gaulle, "but don't let it happen a second time...
...Apparently integration of lesser allies was all right so long as the French general was among the commanding powers...
...Whether or not de Gaulle's Moscow trip will produce the rumored "reversal of alliances," or the signing of a new Franco-Soviet non-aggression pact which we find so oddly offensive, his going has set into motion a final settlement of postwar Europe...
...But this has been skillfully concealed by de Gaulle in his latest decisive maneuver and a more popular face given to it for the European audience...
...Speaking before the French National Assembly on April 20 in criticism of a resolution calling for a vote of censure of the de Gaulle government for its NATO policy (a resolution which was to fail badly that night), Prime Minister Georges Pompidou returned to the Cuban crisis...
...They have been magnified, by no coincidence, at a time when Washington still talks escalation in Vietnam while losing political control...
...Dean Acheson himself has contributed to the irritation by a paternal, patronizing television interview on de Gaulle's policies and attitudes, which he compared to those of a man once sick, who, recovered, dismisses his doctors and protectors...
...As for French forces, they would be withdrawn from NATO by July 1 of this year, The NATO council of ministers, as distinguished from the military command, might remain...
...That is not their idea of Europe...
...It is simply not true...
...Two years later he recognized the collapse of the Franco-German accord—Bonn chose the battalions of Washington—and turned to Peking in a new balancing act...
...His new book, "The People of Paris," will be published in August...
...Here, to be absolutely fair, is Alsop's own summary of it: One—The Soviets will be required to permit the reunification of Germany at the expense of their dreary old puppet, Walter Ulbricht...
...But de Gaulle's caustic "don't let it happen again" has been discreetly withheld...
...Nearly all of this conversation is fairly well-known, thanks largely to Washington's ex post facto defense of its unilateral action in the Cuba crisis as having had "even de Gaulle's support...
...Is it...
...Fascinated or irritated, they have watched him essay one combination after another in trying to achieve it...
...On that occasion, he charged, while France and other NATO partners were being informed, not consulted, American forces in Europe were being put into the highest state of alert for immediate action...
...Europe is...
...The Communists did not back the Socialists' resolution criticizing de Gaulle's NATO policies, which produced, significantly, one of the smallest votes of censure against the Gaul-list regime in its eight-year history...
...Two—The German price will come in three parts...
...It has long been time, to put it in the simplest terms, to think beyond de Gaulle...
...It was in this interview, incidentally, that Rusk revealed the United States had more than 4,000 treaties with other countries around the world—a staggering commitment, indeed...
...Or, possibly better, substitute the signature of all nations that fought in World War II and make it part of a final German peace treaty...
...The responsible men of this old continent, whether in power or in opposition, whether Prime Minister Harold Wilson or Edward Heath, Chancellor Ludwig Erhard or Herr Willy Brandt, have few illusions about de Gaulle's design...
...military base of Evreux...
...These fears proved to be seductive arguments...
...interview blasting de Gaulle in most undiplomatic terms for breaking the NATO treaty...
...Peking produced no conspicuous payoff, so General de Gaulle is off to Moscow this month—June—and already Bonn feels that pressure...
...A second point the Prime Minister stressed was the unilateral action of the United States shifting NATO strategy from "massive and immediate atomic retaliation" to the concept of the "flexible response...
...While Washington's solution to French withdrawal from NATO seems to be a Washington-Bonn axis with British icing—and growing European iciness— the French President is suddenly seen taking the positive role that should be the American President's...
...And all this boils to the surface, ironically, when a conflict with the Soviet Union in Europe has never seemed more remote...
...industrial growth, I'Express and other European weeklies constantly point out, is equal to some European countries' total national product...
...It is an argument we have been conducting clumsily on the level of ward politics in France, delaying a fixed date for the departure of American troops so as to draw out the internal debate, particularly during the parliamentary elections next spring...
...Shouldn't that," he said to the opposition, "give you pause for reflection...
...But the West Germans, in return for reunion with East Germany, will be required to pay a very heavy price...
...So did Secretary Dean Rusk's hard-line (Acheson-line...
...Or, rather, a possible program for the continent which is far more practical—and certainly more popular—than our makeshift solution of the Washington-Bonn axis, however real politik the latter may seem...
...he was refused...
...military plane and landed at the U.S...
...Again, Washington's clumsiness has compounded Washington's problems...
...Add to this the continuing flood of American movies, magazines {Mad has been translated into French), books, plays, and what not, including le drugstore, and one can appreciate the European atmosphere in which de Gaulle is maneuvering...
...In de Gaulle's view, for whatever it may be worth, the "flexible response" places France in a more vulnerable position, and represents a NATO policy in which the French had no voice...
...Were an American President to make this proposal, most Europeans, and many Germans, would hail it as statesmanship...
...The issue is political, not military, and it deals with the future of Europe, East and West, whose crux at the moment is a divided Germany...
...The China adventure was also a bid for leadership of the Third World, a bid which is at least part of the motive for de Gaulle's Vietnam policy...
...Certainly de Gaulle's bombettes could not defend Berlin, but that hypothetical defense has always depended on the American Strategic Air Command, which has never been integrated into NATO...
...And they will have to keep out of the nuclear business in all shapes and forms...
...Substitute NATO, including the United States, for France in that paragraph and it is a realistic program, at last, for a European settlement...
...It is already fairly clear that the votes General de Gaulle might lose among the "Atlanticists" in the center and the right he will gain on the left and far left...
...They will have to agree to the quasi-neutral-ization of Germany by removal of all foreign troops, particularly including American troops, from German soil...
...The issue lies elsewhere, but American officials have been arguing it badly or not at all...
...They will have to accept the existing eastern frontiers, with no more nonsense about lost territories...
...yesterday in Cuba, today in Vietnam—by virtue of the famous escalation principle, risk assuming dimensions which could lead to a general conflagration...
...As erroneous, however, as the notion of "fourteen against one" is the newer report, in reaction, that de Gaulle represents the "real" Europe...
...In that event, Europe, whose strategy within NATO is that of America, would be automatically drawn into the struggle she had not sought...
...But the beginning of American wisdom...
...The Algerian war ended, de Gaulle reached for the political leadership of the six in the Common Market by courting German backing and blocking British entry...
...On one occasion a French minister flying over the center of France asked to land at the American base in Chateauroux...
...failure has been the lack of success in efforts to transform a fading NATO military alliance into a positive force for European political union, involving realistic approaches to German reunification and East-West relations...
...And this would be true for France, if the inclusion in the military system under American command of her forces, many of her air bases, and some of her ports, were to be further prolonged...
...A conflict anywhere in the world between the United States and the Soviet Union would inevitably involve American bases in France, both as target and take-off point...
...If it is easy for any American to follow this reasoning, it should be no hardship to understand that possibly no French President would want his hands tied to the American President's, and so de Gaulle spelled it out publicly at his press conference February 21: ". . . while the likelihood of a world war breaking out on Europe's account is decreasing, conflicts in which America is engaged in other parts of the world—the day before yesterday in Korea, JOSEPH BARRY, a former columnist for The New York Post, is European correspondent for The Progressive...
...When, however, de Gaulle talks of an independent Europe, most people know he means either France or a Gaullist Europe...
...But in his bid for leadership, de Gaulle has shrewdly capitalized on Washington's failures in Latin America, in Southeast Asia, and now in Europe...
...What American plenipotentiary could promise there would be no second time and what American President would want his hands tied should another such occasion arise...
...NATO is neither a political nor a pocketbook issue...
...Even the hint of a "de Gaulle deal" has produced an astonishing reaction, and "cold warriors" like Joseph Alsop have already called it an "ugly business...
...Beyond DeGaulle by JOSEPH BARRY Paris " A re you consulting us," President Charles de Gaulle asked Dean Acheson, who had been speeded to Paris by President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis, "or informing us...
...What was so clearly signaled in February was sent as a French note in March: NATO—that is, American —forces and bases must be removed from France by April of next year...
...That is what their approval of military integration really means, and Washington reads it wrongly if it reads it otherwise...
...When Assistant Secretary of State George Ball came to France to discuss the NATO crisis, he arrived in a U.S...
...General de Gaulle's break with NATO has been his intention since at least September, 1958, when his famous memorandum to President Eisenhower proposing a tri-power— French, British, and American—directorate was turned down...
...The polls show it...
...I am here," said the former Secretary of State to the French Chief of State, "to inform, not consult...
...In fact, only he could make it and be convincing, for French power to guarantee its terms, as in paragraph three, is obviously inadequate...
...The idea of a united Europe ¦—the combining of its markets, and the pooling of its electronic, aviation, automobile, and other industrial capacities—as the only way to compete with America's mammoth corporations has won the European public...
...But when he takes on NATO, he does not create in Europe the excitement he generates in the United States...
...The greatest U.S...
...It is not so much a case of "fourteen against one"—fourteen NATO countries against France—as it is thirteen asking Number One for a fuller voice, if only a veto, on the possibility of annihilation...
...It would be the end of NATO, of course...
...It has struck Europeans who are by no means Gaullist as not only bad taste but all too typical of an American paternalism tending fatally towards arrogance...
...It is that which has produced the present crisis...
...Washington, in turn, has responded with sound military arguments for a situation that no longer exists about a menace no one believes in—not even Der Alte, Konrad Adenauer...
...Further, under NATO's "flexible response" strategy the two giants might even limit their missiles to the bombardment of Western Europe before committing themselves to their own destruction...
...A single year's increase in U.S...
...Not unlike the French leader, they would like to be consulted more and informed less...
...Whether the Gaullist deputies will return with a majority depends on other issues, but in the meantime de Gaulle's declaration of independence from America has not found a wholly unsympathetic reception—not only in France, but in the rest of Europe...
...Both stories appeared in Paris Match, France's most popular picture magazine...
Vol. 36 • June 1966 • No. 6
