Energy, Economics and Security in Alliance Perspective

Robert 1.Lieber Energy,Economics and Security i n Alliance Perspective . The real danger for France today is the oil crisis, not the SS-20' T h e s e words, spoken by a leading French expert on foreign policy, reflect an increasingly urgent fact of contemporary European affairs. Energy problems, in their broadest sense, together with a group of important and substantially related economic issues, have become fundamental European security concerns. Although the importance of traditional military and strategic issues should not be minimized , for most Europeans, including the informed public and even those generally attuned to foreign policy, discussion of European deterrence and defense has tended to become somewhat abstract and removed. SALT 11, the SS-20, grey area weapons, MBFR, enhanced Pershings, and a 3 percent real increase in NATO defense budgets are debated among a relatively limited number of specialists. By contrast, economicand energy security issues have become pressing and important subjects of great attention in both public and elite arenas. The energy crises of 1973-74 (touched off by the Yom Kippur War), and of the winter and spring of 1979 (following the Iranian revolution) have brought energy to the fore as a crucial concern. In retrospect, the October War and the upheaval in Iran have been catalysts, rather than fundamental causes for an energy problem which is likely to be enduring in both its supply and price consequences. Together with difficultiesinvolvingeconomic growth, inflation, unemployment, balance of payments, monetary instability and industrial structure, Europe faces an ensemble of troublesome issues, many of which have important security consequences, and which are likely to prove increasingly threatening during the 1980s. The topic of energy and economic problems as European security issues is not only crucial, it is also enormous-a subject lending itself rather to the 1. Interview with the author, Paris, 17 May, 1979. A version of this paper was presented at the Core Seminaron "The Security of WesternEurope in the 1980s," at the Woodrow Wilson Center, InternationalSecurity Studies Program, Smithsonian Institution. For comments, the authorwishes to thank BenjaminJ. Cohen, Samuel Wells, and Kenneth Oye. Research upon which this article is based was supported i n part by a Rockefeller InternationalRelations Fellowship. Robert Lieber is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis. 139 lnternational Security I 240 length of a book more than to an essay. This article then focuses specifically on the situation of France in both a European and Atlantic context, rather than attempting to cover the entire geographic area. It begins with a brief treatment of France’s position in the international economy, followed by an analysis of the energy problem and the attendant security consequences. It then deals with the international policies of France and the United States in seeking to cope with these consequences, and the results (both intended and unintended) of these policies. Finally it analyzes energy and economicissues in a Western alliance framework, examining the condition under which these are likely to lead to greater disarray or increased solidarity. France and the International Economy 1 want France to be able to win, to win in international competition, because winning is a must for France and for the French people -President Valtry Giscard d’Es taing* Sincethe end of World War 11, France has undergone an economicrevolution. Hand in hand with modernization, the French economy has been opened to international competition. After 1958, French membership in the Common Market played a particularly important role in this process of entering world markets. During the 1960s and early 70s, France benefited substantially, enjoying the highest economic growth rate in Western Europe (an average of more than 6 percent per year between 1961 and 1973). But this prosperity and growth was purchased at a price: greatly increased involvement (or ”interdependence”) with other economies of both the developed and less developed worlds, and a correspondingly greater vulnerability to problems originating outside the boundaries of France and over which France had only limited influence. The dilemmas which this created for the France of President de Gaulle and his successors are by now a well-worn theme in the analysis of French foreign and economic policy. Essentially, these dilemmas embodied Gaullist (or nationalist...