France's return to NATO's integrated military structure after a 43-year absence brings to an end at least one of the exceptions françaises, and it also helps frame the growing debate over whether to either develop European defence more effectively or to seriously reform the Atlantic alliance.
At first glance, it might seem that France has chosen NATO at the expense of a European defence strategy which, 10 years after the Anglo-French summit at St Malo that launched the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), has not lived up to France's initial ambitions. But such a reading would mean taking a pessimistic view of the achievements of ESDP over the past decade, and would also be based on a flawed understanding of the relationships between NATO and the European Union. For, on the contrary, France's new policy is far from being a U-turn that reflects disenchantment with ESDP. It is instead the product both of a rapprochement with NATO that has been taking place over the past 15 years, and of the real progress being achieved in European defence.
Only time will tell whether President Nicolas Sarkozy's rapprochement with NATO was both politically astute and worthwhile in military terms. Presenting it as a "return to NATO" is also flawed, for although it's a phrase that's frequently used in the French and wider European debates on defence, it betrays a misunderstanding of the relationship between France and the alliance since 1966. France's re-integration into NATO is in fact the final stage in a process that has seen the French military play an increasingly important role in NATO operations. France has been aligning itself with the military structures of a NATO that has progressively abandoned the practices that were at the root of General de Gaulle's decision to quit, most notably the placing of all NATO forces under a single command, even in times of peace.
President Sarkozy's new policy on NATO is thus more of a follow-up on decisions and developments in the 1990s than a radical U-turn from the policies of his predecessors. Where Sarkozy does distinguish himself from them is in adopting a more openly pro-Atlantic stance.
Over and above the often partisan and quintessentially French polemics that surrounded Sarkozy's NATO decision, it's possible to discern what might best be termed as a three-way wager by the President. The first concerns building European defence in an appeasing relationship to NATO, rather than in opposition to it. Ending the exception française in NATO has removed the suspicion that French support for the development of European defence was really aimed either at competing with the alliance or weakening it. Whether this suspicion has any truth or not, the message for many allies is clear; the developments the French want for ESDP are entirely compatible with its full and complete membership of NATO. The United States' support for EU efforts to play a greater role in defence and security - a stance that has been apparent since 2007 and was confirmed by the arrival of the Obama Administration - consolidates this approach.
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Camille Grand is Director of the Paris-based defence policy think tank Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique.
Related Materials from the Atlantic Community:
- Sebastian Bruns: Rasmussen Set To Reinvigorate NATO
- Guillaume Levy: NATO Needs Europe to be a Better Security Partner
- Jan Techau: New NATO Concept a Chance for Europe to Recommit to Alliance
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October 28, 2009
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However, how would that increase global security and peace is something that yet needs to be understood or seen. Between the realities of the Second World War and the realities of the twenty-first century - its abuse of the global uncivil society in tandem with US evangelical visions barely contribute to either strengthening democracy or global security - except threaten to push the world in different directions of war. That it is the twenty-first century is evident enough.
Global environmental security is a major concern that goes way beyond the myopic pathology of a Judeo-Christian world view in the twenty-first century that seeks to replace modernity with a medievalism that only the US and France and Germany would propagate in today's world.
The prupose and the continued relevance of the NATO lies in how it helps maintain the zone of peace of Europe while it helps/assists contribute in the creation of similar zones of peace elsewhere. Creating zones of conflict and war elsewhere barely contributes in the long-term to either European security or those of other states.
Given this medieval backdrop to bothe the US and French foreign policies - it remains to be seen how NATO can usher in peace or it ushers in a global war. The idea of the state can never be strengthened by the creation/usage of a global uncivil society that helps these two states (in particular and with specific mention) spread their medieval judeo-christian agenda in other parts of the world. Both the United States of America and France have ceased to represent the saner voices in the global community. Their coming together in NATO can only mean a certain direction to NATO policies. One merely hopes that NATO continues strengthening democracies (the creation/usage of the global uncivil society is definitely NOT, by any stretch of imagination, helpful in that).