# France To Return to NATO's Command Structure



## tomahawk6 (6 Mar 2009)

A welcome development as long as the French are going to be team players.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0306/1224242372687.html

With Nato bogged down in Afghanistan and unable to intervene in other theatres, the French see a new opening, writes LARA MARLOWE in Paris

FORTY-THREE years ago tomorrow, French president Charles de Gaulle lobbed a bombshell in the form of a polite, five-paragraph letter to his US counterpart, Lyndon Johnson.

In a classic piece of Cartesian casuistry, de Gaulle distinguished between the North Atlantic Treaty, the one-for-all and all-for-one alliance of European and north American countries concluded 60 years ago next month, and the integrated military command of Nato, the organisation created by the treaty.

France remained committed to the alliance, but was pulling out of the integrated command, as de Gaulle wrote: “France would like to regain full exercise of sovereignty over her territory, currently breached by the permanent presence of allied military elements . . .”

More than 30,000 US personnel were kicked out of France, bases shut down, communications networks dismantled. As Time magazine put it then, de Gaulle’s “blow at the heart of the alliance” enabled France to benefit from Nato’s protection “and kick it too”.

De Gaulle explained his motivation in his memoirs. “A France without world responsibility would be unworthy of herself, especially in the eyes of Frenchmen. It is for this reason that she disapproves of Nato,” he had told the US secretary of state soon after he became president in 1958.

“It is for this reason too that she intends to provide herself with an atomic armament. Only in this way can our defence and foreign policy be independent, which is something that we prize above everything else.”

Now President Nicolas Sarkozy is about to reverse de Gaulle’s decision. In the presence of Barack Obama, Sarkozy will announce at the Nato summit on April 3rd, on the Franco-German border between Strasbourg and Kehl, that France is returning to the integrated command.

“In France, they made people believe that Nato was a threat to our independence, and nobody wondered why we were the only ones asking the question!” Sarkozy said in Munich on February 7th.

Appalled as de Gaulle might be at Sarkozy’s decision, the general would doubtless understand his demand to be seated next to Nato secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at the ceremonies. Under a compromise reported by Der Spiegel magazine, Mr Sarkozy will sit to the right of the secretary general while television cameras are running, then move to his place in alphabetical order, as required by protocol, after the cameramen leave.

Mr Sarkozy’s Atlanticism and love for America were his original motivation, but his diplomatic adviser, Jean-David Lévitte, and the foreign ministry reportedly persuaded him to “sell” the decision as a means of advancing the creation of a European defence capacity.

Other Nato members have long distrusted French attempts to promote European defence.

“When we made proposals to our European partners, they said ‘The French talk about European defence to weaken the Atlantic alliance’,” said Hervé Morin, the French defence minister. Yet Morin seemed to confirm those suspicions, adding, “Through our démarche , we want to Europeanise Nato.”

As part of the effort to prepare public opinion for the change, Mr Sarkozy and chancellor Angela Merkel last month published a full-page opinion piece in leading French and German newspapers. “We are convinced that it is in our interest to make European integration and the Atlantic partnership the two faces of the same security policy,” they wrote.

But if European defence and Nato are two faces of the same coin, why are both needed?

“Nato will be bogged down in Afghanistan for more than a decade,” predicts a high-ranking official at the French defence ministry. “In the meantime, there may be a need for military missions in Africa, the Maghreb, the Balkans or Caucasus. We may need to rescue EU citizens.”

The same official describes Nato as “a 60-year-old lady, with lots of love handles” compared to the “pre-teenager, growing in an incubator,” that is European defence.

“There are a lot of theatres where Nato simply cannot intervene,” he explains. “Because of the Rumsfeld effect, Nato isn’t welcome in the Middle East, in Southeast Asia . . .” Nato’s image as “the armed wing of the West” (the socialist politician Ségolène Royal’s term) has impaired its ability to operate. For example, Spanish personnel were rejected by Pakistan for earthquake relief because they were Nato troops. No African country has been willing to provide headquarters for the recently created Africom, which is based in Stuttgart. “Europe has a more neutral image,” says the defence ministry official.

The EU has carried out 23 military missions since 2003, at least five with Irish participation. These missions are proof, French officials say, that the “European defence pillar” exists.

Ever since his first major foreign policy address, Mr Sarkozy has repeated that “there is no competition between Nato and the EU”. By rejoining the Nato integrated command, he says, France allays the fears of east European allies and Britain that European defence could undermine Nato. Paris was particularly pleased when Britain agreed last December to command the EU naval mission against pirates off the Somali coast, and hasn’t given up hope that London will eventually agree to an EU operational headquarters.

The slow return to Nato integrated command started 19 years ago, when the late president François Mitterrand engaged in secret negotiations with Washington.

In 1995, president Jacques Chirac too attempted to return, but the deal collapsed because the US joint chiefs of staff refused to relinquish the Nato southern command in Naples to a Frenchman.

The Obama administration has offered the prodigal child of Nato two of the US’s cherished commands. French generals are expected to take over the Allied Command Transformation (ACT) in Norfolk, Virginia, a sort of think tank which contemplates Nato’s transformation, and the regional command in Lisbon, which is in charge of Nato’s rapid reaction force.

The return of the French means up to 900 officers will join various Nato commands. “We’re asking for posts for generals and colonels,” says a French official. “It’s creating panic among the Turks, British, Germans, even the Americans. All of a sudden, there are a lot fewer jobs for them.”

Public opinion has barely reacted to this major, symbolic shift in French foreign and defence policy.

But a March 17th debate on the subject in the National Assembly promises to be stormy.

Politicians from left, right and centre have condemned Mr Sarkozy. Some arguments are petty: “Nato imposes the use of North American English on all,” says the right-wing deputy Jacques Myard.

Others question why France is reintegrating an organisation that has been searching for a raison d’être since the end of the cold war, especially when the price could be deeper involvement in Afghanistan.

Perhaps the argument with greatest resonance is that used by the socialist Laurent Fabius and the centrist François Bayrou: that by reintegrating the Nato command, Nicolas Sarkozy is violating France’s identity, traditions and history.


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## ModlrMike (6 Mar 2009)

900 Frech generals and colonels. Now we can really get down to business.


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## Fishbone Jones (6 Mar 2009)

Well it was fun while it lasted : Guess all good things have to come to an end :blotto:


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## NL_engineer (7 Mar 2009)

I guess they will lobby for a new ROE change; "when under contact, turn 180 and move away as fast as possible"  :.


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