Chapter 4
This would not be a French version of American "gridlock," given the differences between the hybrid presidential/parliamentary French system and the pure presidential American system. An understanding of French security policy, today and in the future, requires some knowledge of institutional/constitutional development at the summit of the executive branch.
The Mitterrand-Balladur cohabitation brought the question of constitutional authority in foreign and security policy to the fore in August-September 1994, on the occasion of a general meeting of French ambassadors in Paris, a sort of short course to review governmental policies with French emissaries.39 Before France's ample ambassadorial corps, first President Mitterrand, then Foreign Minister Alain Juppé, then Prime Minister Balladur defined French foreign policy.
In terms of substance, the three leaders, loyal to the spirit of cohabitation, gave basically identical versions of French policy. The essential point of controversy was Prime Minister Balladur's seeming claim to a larger role in foreign policy overall, including defense and security policy, than was customary in cohabitation rhetoric. Balladur tried to legitimize the idea that French foreign policy was a "shared domain" between president and prime minister, thus constantly negotiated, rather than part of the Gaullist presidency's traditional "reserved domain."
Mitterrand, opposing the thesis of shared responsibility for defining the fundamental lines of foreign policy, anchored his interpretation in the Fifth Republic's constitution:
[The realm of] foreign affairs, part of the numerous functions of my job, is among the most important and the most clearly defined by the constitution. . . . I intend to preserve very exactly the various divisions of the tasks of the executive, because this [division of powers] is a safeguard for the Republic and for democracy.
Balladur had earlier put the matter differently, saying that "the government, in agreement with the president of the Republic, has conducted France's foreign relations."40 An outsider unfamiliar with cohabitation's ambiguous constitutional rules might not perceive much drama here, but in the first cohabitation between Mitterrand and the Chirac government of 1986-88, the president's usual control of current foreign policy, as opposed to strategic decisions on defense and security affairs, had been quickly dragged by Chirac under the prime minister's aegis. Mitterrand during the first cohabitation retained authority, one could say, just where new policies least often arise, though in this sense he was still in charge of national defense, NATO affairs, European integration principles, and G-7 business. But otherwise, Jacques Chirac was suddenly running the day-to-day decisions of French foreign policy, excepting an inevitable gray area in between current and long-term matters, where he and the president either had to agree or decide to avoid a decision. The threat of policy deadlock, with its background menace of constitutional crisis, hung over the first months of the Mitterrand-Chirac cohabitation (as it did not in the Mitterrand-Balladur relationship).
Balladur, with his strong majority in parliament, dealt scrupulously with President Mitterrand, and their personal and political relationships were businesslike if not genuinely cordial. Unlike Chirac's initial enthusiasm in 1986 for confrontation with Mitterrand, hoping to benefit politically from taking the initiative clearly and quickly out of the president's hands, Balladur's style let a new, more pluralistic configuration develop at the top of the French Government's decisionmaking process. There were several cases where Balladur received deserved credit: the final success of the GATT negotiations is the most emphatic of these. International compromises on agricultural prices and on the "cultural exception" were widely seen as victories for French (i.e., Balladurian) negotiating strategy, though some observers believed that American negotiators had decided to give the French a few victories to make the overall accord possible. Otherwise, the French, as well as several other governments who semiclandestinely supported French positions, threatened to block the entire agreement.
Mitterrand at one point seemed to think that Balladur was taking unearned credit for Operation Turquoise, the French humanitarian intervention in Rwanda in the summer of 1994. Originally, Balladur, along with Defense Minister François Léotard, had in fact been skeptical, while Mitterrand, following the strong lead of Foreign Minister Alain Juppé, prevailed in the discussions.
Why were three speeches necessary at the ambassador's meeting rather than a single main speech by the president? The fact that there were three speeches was as important as the content. The conservatives wanted the facts of cohabitation to be acknowledged. The show of cohesion, with a few disagreements, such as the moratorium on nuclear testing, reaffirmed France's constitutional order and the capacity of a cohabitation government to organize France's defense and foreign relations.
The two cohabitations were thus very different. In 1986-88, personality and policy clashes produced the lowest common policy denominator. In 1993-95, the highest common denominator often prevailed instead. "Cohabitation," for all its ungainliness, thus turns out to be a flexible set of rules, rather than a recipe for head-on collision. Lines of authority and influence shift regularly without constitutional crisis, and government ministers can emerge with new power and authority. In the usual configuration of security policy, the lead is taken by the duo of president and prime minister, with the president clearly in the driver's seat. In Mitterrand's 1986-88 cohabitation with Jacques Chirac there was a foreign policy triangle with the Mitterrand/Chirac battle deciding everything, and Jean-Bernard Raimond, a civil servant serving as foreign minister, merely carrying out instructions.
Conversely, in 1993-95 the situation was a three-way (and more) game of foreign policy. Above all, the very active and respected foreign minister, Alain Juppé, now prime minister, acquired a real power of initiative and a margin of discretion.
The Rwanda intervention is an important example of this. The French decision finally to send a humanitarian military mission had been Juppé's idea. He had taken soundings internationally and resolved that France had to act alone, when no other government would get involved. Juppé also knew that President Mitterrand had more than one reason to endorse a French intervention. One was France's history of relations with Rwandan governments, not to say French responsibility for the deadly current situation because of its arming and financing of the Hutu-led government. A second reason was Mitterrand's personal political relationships with Rwandan leaders and a record of involvement of his two sons in dealings there, the object of widespread rumors. Once the foreign minister and the president were in sync, Prime Minister Balladur had to go along. François Léotard was also reluctant about the Rwanda mission, but the defense minister doesn't decide foreign policy against the foreign minister, especially when the president's inclination is weighing in the balance as well.
An important question for the next phase is who, the president or the prime minister and the government, will have the last word, and in what subjects, in deciding France's policies regarding the 1996 intergovernmental European Union conference, which will update the Maastricht Treaty. Constitutionally, is the organization of the EU a matter solely of high presidential authority? Or, as is plausible, are EU decisions, which are neither totally foreign nor domestic policy, a grey area of shared presidential and prime ministerial competence? Since the recent presidential elections produced a conservative president who, with the existing conservative majority, reestablishes the heretofore usual Fifth Republic system, the answer seems clear. Nevertheless, President Chirac is likely to take into account Prime Minister Juppé's views and, through Juppé, the cabinet's.
In recent months, rifts with the United States over policy in Bosnia have convinced many British leaders that the United Kingdom has, or is developing, a security stake in Europe outside NATO. The British seem, for example, willing to take the Eurocorps more seriously, when as little as 6 months ago this was not the case; participation in European military cooperation has developed or accelerated in all three branches of the U.K. armed forces.
The first French-British military cooperation involved coordinated nuclear submarine patrols of NATO territory in 1993. It was also the simplest cooperation to mount and the most symbolically important, since nuclear missile submarines are the most invulnerable and potent element of nuclear deterrence. One might see this as the beginning of a long-range plan for a European doctrine for French and British nuclear forces, as discussed above.
With regard to army cooperation, in September 1994, France and the United Kingdom signed their first bilateral agreements linking army forces with foreign mission goals, which involved the French Rapid Action Force (FAR) and the British Field Army. The latter is made up of about 157,000 troops, consisting of all the land-based units in England capable of being deployed abroad. The FAR consists of about 45,000 troops in four divisions. The agreement implies exchanges of units, joint training, and joint exercises. The "twinning" (jumelage) charter was signed in Tidworth, England, by General Philippe Morillon, commander of the FAR, and General Richard Swinburn, commander of the British Field Army. Morillon was the main instigator, building on the considerable French-British cooperation fostered when he was in command of the Blue Helmet U.N. troops in Bosnia in 1992-93. The need for multilateral crisis forces is patent. In March 1995, one of the first joint working experiences involved simulated military exercises on maps, which will necessitate debate of military doctrine and tactics.
In late November 1994, it was announced that France and Britain would create a joint air command. Meeting in Chartres, President Mitterrand and Prime Minister John Major said the point was really to consolidate existing agreements rather than to make some new institutional leap forward. Both leaders were at pains to say that bilateral relations, especially in security affairs, were much better than they had been for years. In the background of the air command agreement and the earlier accord on army forces was an implicit tradeoff in which the United Kingdom was accepting France's desire for more European defense, while French discomfort with the German CDU-CSU parliamentary study on EU structure indicated that France could be a British ally opposing excessive federalism in the Union.
The agreement established a French-British EuroAir Group, with about a dozen officers to plan joint rapid response peacekeeping and humanitarian air operations. Successful French-British experience in Bosnia, at the organizational level if not in actual peacekeeping, had been a stimulus to this undertaking. The group, with a French general at the head, will be based in High Wycombe, England. The site, the location of a NATO air command, is a further French gesture toward the British. John Major stressed that Britain's greater commitment to European defense should not be seen as contrary to NATO, which, in the usual language, "must remain the bedrock of Western security structures." Mitterrand commented that creating the joint air command showed that pragmatic progress was possible even when principles were still debated, which reflects his longstanding strategy on European integration as a whole. The two governments also agreed on a joint initiative to train and provide logistical support for a proposed African peacekeeping force that the Organization of African Unity (OAU) has agreed to establish, albeit without enthusiasm.
Finally, a working group was set up to study possible British participation in producing a European long-range military transport aircraft, the Future Large Aircraft, on which France is already working with four other EU countries--Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. For the French, a British decision to join this Airbus consortium project and eventually to buy the plane when ready in the early 21st century would be a key test of U.K. future commitment to a serious European defense as provided for in the Maastricht Treaty.41
As for the basis of French-British cooperation in nuclear and strategic defense, in the year 2000 the two states will together field an operational force of between 500 and 1,000 warheads at any given moment.42 Given their quantity and quality, and given the American and Russian reductions, it will be, to say the least, a credible deterrent against any major competing force. (The grim Soviet Cold War quip about the French deterrent was prescient: "If the force de frappe is a joke, for us it is increasingly less funny.") This new credibility implies, as Bruno Tertrais notes, two major innovations:
Overall, British policymakers seem gradually to be letting go of the increasingly illusory special British-American relationship in defense and security matters. The government of John Major has had to recognize that American policy no longer takes so much care about consulting with Britain (which was simply ignored in several recent American decisions) and that the Clinton administration has stepped back from substantial and costly new involvements in post-Cold War European security problems.
On the other hand, the Clinton administration has, as opposed to Bush-Baker European policy, been compatible with post-Cold War French thinking: relaunch of momentum for an independent European security structure, combined with continued if reduced U.S. engagement on the continent. By the same dialectical logic, the Clinton administration security policy has been a positive influence in the emergence of a French-British axis undergirding a European defense. If France wants a primary European defense partner, for several years to come it can only be Britain.
The dormancy of the much younger CSCE (now the OSCE) was never so total as that of the WEU in the 1960s and 1970s, and it lasted only a few years, as opposed to the WEU's four decades of slumber. The OSCE's hope of invigoration is to become an umbrella organization for pan-European security, not a military alliance with an effective decisionmaking process but an overarching forum for security negotiations and peacekeeping. The OSCE's virtue is that it ranges from Vancouver to Vladivostok, containing the North American NATO countries as well as Russia, plus the former Soviet bloc countries of eastern Europe and Russia's "near abroad" former Soviet republics. The OSCE's defect is, of course, precisely the consequence of its virtue--inclusiveness. With 53 members and a decisionmaking rule of unanimity, anything the organization does will be only the lowest common denominator of agreement.
In terms of conflict resolution and peacekeeping, the December 1994 52-nation meeting in Budapest was the occasion to sign an agreement aimed at building a stronger organization specializing in preventive diplomacy, conflict resolution, and peacekeeping.
The primacy of NATO's role in guaranteeing security for western Europe is to be understood as in no way affected by the soft emphasis on OSCE. It is a question of how to deal with problems outside the NATO area. OSCE activation has been supported, at least with lip service, by the United States and NATO allies. Since it already includes NATO members and the former Soviet bloc countries, it can debate without raising difficult questions of new memberships in NATO (though Russian objections to rapid NATO expansion were a main point of conflict at the December 1994 meeting). On the other side, Russian policy is vaguely trying, with little chance of success, to subordinate NATO to the OSCE. This would give it not veto power but some right of oversight over the Atlantic alliance. One of the points about which Presidents Clinton, Mitterrand and other NATO leaders, were clear at the December 1994 meeting was precisely that no outside country, namely Russia, would decide who is and is not going to be a member of NATO.
The new security function of an activated OSCE is to avert or dampen quickly future conflicts in eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics, Bosnia being the obvious example. The OSCE would play a larger role in mediating conflicts, protecting embattled minorities and providing peacekeepers to work in areas like Georgia, Chechenya, and Nagorno-Karabakh. The December meeting's one practical decision was in fact to mount an OSCE operation in Nagorno-Karabakh.43
American officials said that upgrading the OSCE's role should make NATO expansion less politically controversial by signaling to Russia that the NATO allies mean to include them in future European security arrangments. In the OSCE, Russia is, with the United States, a dominant power, and thus to emphasize the OSCE is to demonstrate, believably or not, that western plans for post-Cold War European security arrangements are not anti-Russian. The OSCE's inclusiveness also means that increasing its importance would involve no new dividing line in Europe. And obviously a stronger OSCE is intended not only to reassure Russia, but also to constrain its ambitions by creating a European-based security forum to which Russia, as a consequence of membership, would be accountable. True, Russia (and every member country) has a veto in OSCE, but voting is not the most important aspect of participation.
At the December OSCE meeting, the Russians, though they had been briefed on the plans for NATO expansion, were surprised by the U.S. timetable--that a study of practical requirements for expansion should be ready within a year. It seems that France, as well as Germany and Britain, were also caught unawares by American insistence on moving ahead so quickly with expansion. Dislike of having one's hand forced was responsible for the hard talk from President Yeltsin and for Foreign Minister Kozyrev's unexpected refusal to sign Russia's Partnership for Peace agreement. After all, the Eastern European former Soviet bloc states are themselves the most enthusiastic advocates of NATO expansion. Russian opposition to eastern European autonomy would have seemed an unacceptable throwback to the bad old days of the Cold War.44
The major Western European powers (France, Britain, and especially Germany) hoped to mollify Russian sensibilities by stressing that "intensive partnership" with Russia and Ukraine would accompany NATO expansion, avoiding what Yeltsin at the meeting called the risk of creating "new poles of opposition." President Mitterrand, Chancellor Kohl, and Prime Minister John Major all were at pains to emphasize that no one wants to see any new fault lines drawn in the European landscape.
One mitigating factor is that NATO's expansion is mixed up with EU expansion, which Russian policy finds less difficult to accept. Russian interests can benefit from economic growth and direct aid generated by EU expansion, whereas NATO's expansion involves power and reputation, which seems much closer to a zero-sum game, another defeat for Russia.
However this may be, the proposal in itself re-emphasizes how French security thinking is moving toward multilateralism, burden-sharing and cost limitation, not only in European security but also in traditional French African responsibilities.
The multinational African peacekeeping force proposal was floated in the wake of the belated, unilateral French intervention in Rwanda in summer 1994. The unexpectedly successful French effort to create safe zones for fleeing refugees had seemed a risky burden and an awesome task. The French clearly want to avoid finding themselves alone in any such future crisis.
But France could not avoid taking a lead. The enterprise went remarkably well for the French, in the sense that initial international suspicion of neocolonialism, and the Tutsi accusation that the French were out to protect their former Hutu proteges, were quickly muted. Not least important, there were few French casualties and the operation in Rwanda was widely agreed to be a success, which earned the French some moral credit. It was clearly humanitarian and it required only a small contingent, soon withdrawn in favor of U.N. forces. But the long-run French responsibility in the Hutu-Tutsi slaughter, and in the future of Rwanda as a whole, remains a somber issue.
In fact, nowhere has the conflict between progressive-sounding rhetoric and reason of state in President Mitterrand's foreign policy been more apparent than in Africa. Mitterrand arrived in office with a Socialist and tiers-mondiste (Third-World orientation) record of calling for an end to France's neocolonial relationships with French-speaking African states. Particularly detestable was the heritage of Gaullist-Giscardist dealings with African dictators.
One of Mitterrand's first international sallies as president was the Cancun conference on Third World development (October 1981). He gave a grand speech, calling for more and less self-interested aid from the North. By creating new markets and trading partners, prosperity in Third World economies would be good for the developed countries also. Incentives would increase for potential immigrants to stay home, and customers for Northern exports would have more money to spend. At least theoretically, Mitterrand's Cancun declaration was an astute combination of economics and morality.
However, a year or two into Mitterrand's first term, his refusal of traditional French ways of doing business in Africa had to be relaxed. His first minister for cooperation, Jean-Pierre Cot, resigned in protest, moving on to a prominent position in the Socialist European Parliament group. Another sign of Mitterrand's turnabout was a nepotistic appointment, a few years later, of his inexperienced son, Jean-Christophe, as the Elysee's African policy advisor. There ensued a range of questionable dealings and relations by the son which damaged his father's reputation. Upon leaving his father's employ in 1988, the son pursued a range of private business dealings in Rwanda and other African states in which his family name was certainly not irrelevant.
In the end, François Mitterrand's African policy was one of his main personal commitments and his main downfall in international affairs. It is possible, nevertheless, still to defend French action in Africa, if only as the best that could be made of a bad business. In William Pfaff's judgment,
It is true that in some respects Europe has never left Africa. France's presence in Western and Central Africa still evokes hostility from American and British commentators and many non-Francophone Africans, and there undoubtedly is much to criticize in a policy whose ruling principle has been stability above all else. However, the overall judgment must also be that French Africa for more than three decades has been the Africa that worked, the place where life for ordinary Africans has been markedly better than where the old colonial powers, as one commentator put it, "absconded with no forwarding address." France today is probably the only European country that might, if invited, consider a major commitment to the rehabilitation of a former colony. It would be better if the European Union as an institution, which insists it wants an international role for "Europe," would collectively assume such responsibilities in cooperation with Africans in an effort to arrest the continent's decline.45
The 50 percent devaluation of the Central African Franc (CAF) carried out in January 1994 indicates that even here, in the national "back yard," a French retreat is underway. A hard decision accepted by the 13 African Francophone governments, it has provoked a new beginning of economic growth, about 5 percent on average, after several years of negative growth.46 The financial amputation was extremely painful. No longer willing to finance its role of neocolonialist patron, the French state, by devaluing the CAF, slashed its subsidy of African government budgets, hitting both state subsidy of consumption and all aspects of government spending. On the one hand, Francophone African living standards were suddenly cut drastically, mainly of the less well off and the poor, because the price of daily purchases had depended on an overvalued CAF. But the devaluation also limits the extent to which France's subsidy of the CAF has indirectly subsidized African wars, the Tutsi-dominated CAF-supported government in Rwanda being only the most recent case yet.47
The beginnings of new economic growth in francophone Africa have fostered criticism of the lag in French African policy in the 1980s. Devaluation of the CAF should have occurred in the middle of the 1980s, when the collapse of raw materials prices stopped growth. France has a heavy responsibility in this costly delay, because while France was encouraging economic austerity in the zone (as in France itself), French policy simultaneously signalled the contrary by continuing vast subsidies to African government budgets and by paying their World Bank debts. This safeguarded the position of French business in the various francophone countries, but it also underpinned dictatorial governments.
The IMF and the World Bank finally censured this lack of political courage in French policy when it made devaluation of the CAF a condition for new aid. The Balladur government, with Mitterrand's approval, accepted the IMF-World Bank condition; the result was very hard on African consumers. Francophone African governments, however, saw total aid jump from 6 billion francs in 1993 to 17 billion in 1994, to which significant debt rescheduling was added. Nevertheless, the francophone African economic situation remains tenuous, to say the least, and putting the franc zone economically and financially on a stable footing will be a long-term process. And, above all, as Le Monde editorialized, "So long as [the francophone states] are characterized by weak government, development will remain delicate."48
At the Franco-African Biarritz summit, President Mitterrand was asked to sum up the results of his African policies over 14 years. Mitterrand replied, with evasive precision, "I am not leaving office with the sentiment of a failure in Africa." This meant, he said, that "the job of African development is so huge, so long term, and with such obstacles, that no single government or country is responsible." There was no failure, in other words, because the goal was never success. It was a skillful, unsatisfying response, leaving room only for discussion of specific cases. Mitterrand, on the most dramatic issue, repeated his denial of French responsibility in the Hutu-organized massacres of Tutsi tribesmen in Rwanda. Yet he sounded less categorical than previously, as if he wanted to recognize that others might see greater French responsibility than he, as France's president, could admit.
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