AFTER MITTERRAND

For France in the Mitterrand era, 1960s-style Gaullist policies of maximum feasible national independence and autonomy were impossible. Gaullist thinking of a 1960s style became increasingly counterproductive to the main goal of Gaullist policy: serving the national interest.

In the Mitterrand years it became clear that to follow de Gaulle's example, rightly understood, means not to be "Gaullist" in the anachronistic sense of sticking, whatever the consequences, to the policies of the 1960s. To be inspired by de Gaulle is to be gaullien, which means, along with a high national ambition, precisely not to be bound to outworn schemas and shibboleths. De Gaulle's Gaullism was, as Stanley Hoffmann long ago defined it, "an attitude, not a policy."

François Mitterrand, on this distinction, has been the most gaullien of France's leaders since de Gaulle.49 His European policy derived from a genuine "great ambition" for France, in which European integration and security are parts of an overall design. This does not necessarily mean any particular structure but an overarching intuition of how best to achieve France's national interests. In other words, circumstances have changed so as to make a much more integrated "Europe" necessary to the French national interest than was the case in the 1960s. To recognize and draw the proper conclusions from this fact, this is gaullien insight that neo-Gaullists of today--Jacques Chirac or others--may or may not have.

This does not mean that virtually any successful policy for France would be gaullien. Misguided policies may be "successful" in the sense of working but producing bad consequences. Much of Mitterrand's "socialist" economic experiment of 1981-82 could, for example, be put in this category. What is at issue in the distinction is the difference between the statesman and the mere politician, between, on the one hand, a genuine vision of France's higher interests in the new European order and, on the other hand, a preoccupation, conscious or not, with elections and popularity.

The French are still French, and French foreign and security policies are still capable of unpleasantly surprising even France's closest allies. But Americans, in the post-Cold War situation and a quarter-century after de Gaulle, can understand more easily than in the past that French foreign policy attitudes are the result of France's particular position in international relations, combined with the national ambition to matter, to exist in the international system.

Mitterrand's gaullien insight was that deeper forms of European integration, contrasted with de Gaulle's concentration on intergovernmental cooperation and on alliances as diplomatic elevators, could magnify French means, and thus reduce the gap between means and ends, even as the process changes the ends themselves.

Given German economic and financial power in post-Cold War Europe, only a French-German tandem can lead in terms of both ambition and constancy. This is why the gaullien mentality is ruffled when an American president singles out Germany as the U.S. "partner in leadership." Germany, in the French calculation, cannot be the first power in Europe except in partnership with France, which will be thereby also the first power.

Mitterrand's legacy is, in short, to have taken French geopolitical thinking a necessary step beyond de Gaulle's legacy. De Gaulle might well have approved, for, as he said, everything depends on "the circumstances," and these have changed.

Nevertheless, the French often still seem unsure of themselves, sometimes including even Mitterrand himself. There is still, even after Mitterrand, a question about French self-confidence, about how strong France can be, how much of a player French policy wants to be internationally, and how large an ambition the country's political, economic and cultural elites want to cultivate. And in this regard, de Gaulle's memory is a factor of permanent stimulus and intimidation in French politics. François Mitterrand's heritage is not only success and failure, but also a demonstration that a gaullien policy attitude still is possible.

"La dissuasion, c'est le president, donc moi" (Deterrence is the president, thus me). This famous Mitterrand phrase, in all its gaullien sense of responsibility, or arrogance, symbolized French deterrence strategy in the Mitterrand years, 1981-95. Will Mitterrand's successor fill the same bill? It is quite possible that as future presidents struggle with the job, François Mitterrand's legacy will look increasingly impressive.