Search

The failed expedition of Suez in 1956 and France’s subsequent strategic ‘divorce’ from the United Kingdom and the United States lies at the heart of a policy paradigm that has dictated France’s defence posture from de Gaulle’s presidency to the end of the Cold War. Some crucial features of the Gaullist posture remain today enduring references for French presidents in the definition of France’s exceptionalism. While it is so, there have been significant changes since the 1990s when it comes to France’s strategic relations with the United States and the United Kingdom. This article demonstrates the extent and mechanisms of this rapprochement by analysing it through three dimensions of policy change: modes of action, institutional commitments and discourses. The article demonstrates the dimensions’ mutually reinforcing effects and argues that France’s exceptional posture has de facto been reversed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the key tenets of French foreign and security policy during the Cold War, and illustrates the deep challenges to the French consensus raised by the emergence of a unipolar system. There is a growing gap between the rhetoric of French security policy, emphasizing ‘autonomy’ and ‘sovereignty’ out of habit from the Cold War, and the actual security practices showing a gradual embedding within the transatlantic security structures. In the absence of a new transpartisan grand narrative relevant for the contemporary international system, such embedding is easily portrayed in France as a ‘treason’ from a romanticized Gaullist foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009, President Nicolas Sarkozy decided that France should return to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO) integrated military structure, which it had left in 1966. Sarkozy also restated the complete independence of the French arsenal, the policy of non-participation in NATO's nuclear mission: the nuclear exception. This article takes the view that this policy of nuclear exception is outdated and potentially damaging to French interests within NATO. This is so under two scenarios: (1) As long as American non-strategic nuclear weapons (NSNW) are on European soil, NATO's nuclear posture will evolve without official French input. (2) If these nuclear weapons were to be removed from Europe, France would stand as the predominant nuclear power among the European Union states. Since the consequences of removal would impact French interests directly, it seems unwise for Paris to opt out of this debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

President Sarkozy's decision to bring France back into NATO's integrated military structure was logical from a military standpoint, since France was heavily involved in the missions of the Alliance, without occupying the corresponding positions of responsibility. France has made major efforts to restructure its defence tool and thus, all the capabilities it will provide to NATO gives the country some legitimacy to wish a renewed Alliance, rational and credible. But so far, France still continues to support the Common Security and Defence Policy as it continues its reintegration with NATO. This article examines this seemingly contradiction in French security policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]