Minotaur: French Military Justice and the Aernoult-Rousset Affair

Afterword—Theseus Unbound

Afterword Theseus Unbound If at this point we return to the central theme of the entire Aernoult-Rousset Affair, the contest between insularity and accountability with respect to military justice, then the multiple ironies of the situation simply clamor for attention. In fact, as we step back and survey the entirety of this story, those ironies practically define it. To the champions of the military jurisdiction, “politics” was the enemy of discipline and must be kept as far from the daily operations of the jurisdiction as possible. They had acted on that conviction in aborting the many reform projects brought before the legislature. But, far from securing the ramparts, their obstructionism had galvanized antimilitarist passions and triggered the Aernoult-Rousset Affair—by which those ramparts were actually breached in myriad ways. In defending themselves from the toxic force of “politics,” then, supporters of military justice called forth a political firestorm. And most of the damage was suffered by the jurisdiction. Yet this damage was healed and forgotten, and the political insularity so prized by the system’s defenders restored and even Afterword 233 reinforced by—perversely—“politics,” or a shift in the political winds. A nationalist sirocco was now scorching and dividing the enemies of military justice,whilecomfortablywarmingitsfriends.This,andonlythis,sparedFrench military justice the need to narrow the gulf between its practices and those of the civilian legal world. The jurisdiction’s defenders had long feared exposure to political currents. But these currents were celebrated. “Politics,” so loudly decried as a mortal threat to military justice, had in fact saved it—from itself. Yet it will not do to conclude this study with a simple inventory of ironies. There remains the matter of judgment. Was the outcome of the AernoultRousset Affair a good thing for the military jurisdiction? Was it a good thing for the nation? Was justice served in any way? The answers are no, no, and maybe. It is important to recognize at the outset a simple truth, one that defenders of the military jurisdiction, in their anti-political zeal, could not see. “Politics” comes in many shapes and sizes. The relatively orderly process of parliamentary reform is one thing. The volatile, unpredictable dynamic unleashed by the Aernoult and Rousset cases was something else entirely. It is quite fair to say that the public agitation over those cases owed far more to passion—and barely governable ones, at that—than to reason. The AernoultRousset Affair was largely driven by unseen, intra-leftist rivalries; indeed, its precise trajectory was shaped by unknowable personal intimacies and antipathies. Those churning, combustible energies were granted far more political space than anyone could have expected—certainly far more than defenders of the military jurisdiction did—simply because of unanticipated governmental preoccupation with larger questions. Exposure to these latter varieties of politics (“street” politics, and international realpolitik) were infinitely more damaging to military justice than the politics of parliamentary reform precisely because they were not predictable or in any way subject to the control of the jurisdiction’s spokesmen. Parliamentary reform, on the other hand, had proceeded with due deference to military interests, for the simple reason that its defenders could not be denied their role in the deliberations—however much the authors of reform may have wished they could. Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, the outcome of the Aernoult-Rousset Affair did represent a significant loss of control for the military jurisdiction. It had managed to elude its foes and avoid any real penalty for the structural shortcomings that had been revealed. But it had escaped that reckoning through luck, not design; the jurisdiction was “rescued” by a change in the nation’s political mood, not by the wisdom or 234 M I N O T A U R fortitude of its own personnel or supporters. In fact, the political change that so benefited the jurisdiction owed more to decisions taken in Berlin than to any taken in France. Sophisticated defenders of the jurisdiction, like General Bourelly, could hardly have been pleased at the thought that the Kaiser had served as a sort of deus ex machina whose interventions created the climate in which French military justice could be shielded from its enemies. There was no honor in this, or in the fact that the “victory” of military justice at the conclusion of the Affair reflected the fact that it had essentially lost—or, rather, eschewed—real control of its own...