The New European and World Order: The Current French Debate

THE NEW EUROPEAN AND. WORLD ORDER: THE CURRENT FRENCH DEBATE By Benoît d'Aboville On *n the eve ofthe March 20 legislative elections in France, the WIa// Street Journalexpressedtheconventional pre-election wisdom in the United States: Frenchparliamentary elections ... aregivingrise toapolitical conundrum: Broadly put, they will change everything, and theywillchangenothing ... Butthenewadministration,while employing different rhetoric, isn't expected to veer substantiallyfromthepresentcourse ,particularlyineconomicpolicy.' The theme of this paper is that the above interpretation is wrong. In reality, the most substantial reexamination of foreign and defense policies since theearly 1970s is already well underway in France. A new government will be an additional factor furthering this process. After the debate over the Maastricht Treaty referendum nothing has been the same in French politics. Public opinion and the political class are now keenly aware of the need to respondtothenewEuropeanandinternationalcontext. Theyalsoseetheneed to pursue European Union and, accordingly, to search for new relations with the United States. This, I believe, is the correct long-term perspective. And it is from such a perspective that I am writing here. It may be said, ofcourse, that there are also interesting tactical or short-term questions about the parliamentary elections. It may be wondered, for example, whether they should be consideredagenuinemajorshiftin thepolitical landscape(theprevalentview 1 Peter Gumbel, "In France, Only the Leaders are Changing," Wall Street Journal, March 18, 1993, p. A8. 17 18 SAISREVIEW in France now) or merely a sort ofU.S.-style "mid-term election" before the "real" political showdown ofthe presidential election scheduled in 1995. Chitmaybewonderedhowthepower -sharingthattheConstitutionrequiresfrom thepresidentandthegovernmentwill affectthecontentofforeign anddefense policies during the 1993-95 period. ButIconsiderthese questions tobeoutside the scope ofthis paper, since they relate to a much shorter-term agenda than I am addressing here. So far, moreover, power-sharing (cohabitation) does not seem to have created the kind ofproblems expected a few months ago and indeed experienced during the 1986-88 period. Instead, my topic is the major debate underway about the reordering of the priorities ofFrench foreign and defense policies—a debate that began in the wake of the complete transformation of the East-West landscape from 1989 to 1991. This debate has manifested itselfnot so much as anexplosive change but rather as a slow process of reexamination. It is often said, of course, that defense and foreign policies in France are limited by a broad, hallowed and very stable consensus on both subjects. But, as Pierre Hassner has convincingly demonstrated, serious discussion of defense policy was already well underway in the mid-1980s. European policy, however, was less controversial . The Single Market provoked little debate. It was only after the tearing down ofthe Berlin Wall that the European debate began to heat up in France. There were, moreover, important French initiatives earlieron. The resuscitation of the Western European Union (WEU), for example, was part of the French effort to encourage a European defense identity, and figured prominently in the Hague Declaration of 1987. What crystallized the European debate in France was the 1992 referendumontheMaastrichtTreaty . Thisbroughttoaheadthepublicdebateonhow farsovereigntyshouldshifttotheEuropeanUnion(theissueof"subsidiarity"). As StanleyHoffmann putit, the debate was about "how many leaves from the artichokeandwhatisleftofthenationalcore." Theelectoralcampaignbrought forwarda whole series ofquestions, such asthe shape androleofthe Brussels institutions or the optimal balance between further "deepening" ofthe EuropeanCommunity (EC)versus "widening" ittoencompasscandidatesfromthe newdemocraciesofCentral andEasternEuropeandtheEuropeanFreeTrade Association (EFTA). Most importantly, it questioned in a serious way the relationship between the role ofthe nation and the functioning ofits democracy , on the one hand, and the European process, on the other: How will the nation's "civic space" relate to the functional role of a confederal Europe? THE NEW EUROPEAN AND WORLD ORDER 1 9 Whatwill be themeaningofnationalcitizenshipin thenew European Union? Will what the individual gains as a consumer be paid for by what he loses as a citizen? Those issues areraised notmerely in aEuropeancontext. They lie atthe core ofthe process through which the WestEuropean democracies are trying to adapt to a global world economy where the traditional role ofthe national state is under increasing challenge. The depth and scope ofthe discussion provoked by the referendum was hardly anticipated by the political class. The French National Assembly had, of course, discussed the Maastricht Treaty but it was not until the popular referendum that the debate grew serious. Polls registered that...