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Journal of Cold War Studies 4.1 (2002) 115-117



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Book Review

The French Defense Debate: Consensus and Continuity in the Mitterrand Era


Rachel Utley, The French Defense Debate: Consensus and Continuity in the Mitterrand Era. London: MacMillan, 2000. 300 pp. £45.00.

For the French foreign minister Hubert Védrine, European integration was a multiplier of influence for France, at least until the 1990s. A German diplomat expressed a similar view in December 2000 during the Nice summit of the European Union (EU), which rang down the curtain on France's ascendancy in the EU: "Europe is the continuation of France by other means."

François Mitterrand, the man who presided over what was a painful period of transition for France from the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 until his replacement by Jacques Chirac in June 1995, is very much at the center of Rachel Utley's superbly researched book on the French defense debate during those years. Mitterrand comes across in the book as the grand architect of French defense (and foreign) policy, appropriating for himself the trappings of power (real and symbolic) of the French presidency, as conceived by Charles de Gaulle. Even in the period of cohabitation (1993-1995), when the French government was run by a prime minister of another party, the Gaullist Edouard Balladur, Mitterrand was responsible for deciding [End Page 115] defense and foreign policy, the reserved domain of French presidents since de Gaulle.

It was ironic that Mitterrand, who in the 1960s had railed against President de Gaulle's arrogation of powers (a "permanent coup d'état," he called it) and who had criticized French nuclear weapons as providing neither security nor autonomy but only an "additional danger" (p. 25), was called upon in the twilight of his life to exercise these very powers in order to assure a continued raison d'étre for France's nuclear force de frappe. Also, as Utley emphasizes in one of the central themes of her book, continuity and consensus in defense policy were necessary conditions for assuring France's international standing, especially its seat on the United Nations Security Council. However, this consensus, invoked in the name of patriotism (p. 209), was often more apparent than real, as Utley demonstrates.

The thaw in East-West relations after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the headlong rush toward German reunification, the liberation of the former Eastern bloc, and the collapse of the Soviet Union itself rendered French nuclear weapons virtually "caduc," a favorite phrase in France. Although the force de frappe had always been more of a lever vis-à-vis France's allies than a real threat against the Soviet Union (p. 16), France needed the Soviet Union as a cover for its nuclear policy, and suddenly that cover had disappeared. The force de frappe at present carries very little political weight, although French diplomats used it--unconvincingly--in the preparations for the above-mentioned Nice summit. They cited the possession of nuclear weapons as one of several factors entitling France to the same voting weight in the European Council that Germany has, despite the latter's substantially larger population (22 million more people).

The crucial problem for Mitterrand in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall was to contain a resurgent Germany and preserve France's position vis-à-vis its now more powerful neighbor, while at the same time maintaining peace and stability in Central and Eastern Europe. None of this was easy, and the impending withdrawal of some 380,000 Soviet troops from the former East Germany was bound to pose some risks of disruption.

Mitterrand has often been criticized for being slow to adapt to German reunification and slow to recognize the continued vitality and importance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the 1990s. Although some of this criticism is justified, most of it is not. The new security architecture in Europe may have been largely engineered by the combination of George Bush, Helmut Kohl, and...

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