Sarkozy v. de Gaulle

Yesterday's New York Times printed an op-ed piece by Roger Cohen, generally complimentary about Nicolas Sarkozy of France, and asserting that Sarkozy has departed from de Gaulle's vision:

"Only in recent weeks has the distance traveled come into focus: France, reintegrated in 2009 into the command structure of NATO, spearheading the United Nations-backed NATO military operation in Libya; providing armed muscle to the U.N. forces in Ivory Coast; and giving its pacifist-trending ally Germany a lesson in 21st-century Atlanticism.

Adenauer and de Gaulle must be turning in their graves. Here was Germany standing wobbly with Brazil, Russia, India and China — and against its closest allies, France and the United States — in the U.N. vote on Libyan military action. And here was France providing America’s most vigorous NATO support.

This was a dramatic inversion of postwar roles. It revealed the drift of a navel-gazing Germany unprepared to lead despite its power and impatient with Adenauer’s Western anchoring. It also demonstrated France’s break under Sarkozy from the posturing Gaullist notion of a French “counterweight” to America. These are seismic European shifts."

I believe it more accurate to say that Sarkozy has come closest of any French leader to fulfilling and completing the vision of Charles de Gaulle.

From the outset of de Gaulle's efforts to defeat Germany by establishing a Free French government in England, de Gaulle sought equal status with England in the alliance with the United States. He understandably resented being excluded from the US-UK "special relationship." Beyond his personal pique, it is fair to say he doggedly pursued membership in this club because it was in the interest of France.

On D-Day, he succeeded in having French forces under a French general land at Normandy, and French bombers supporting the invasion. He succeeded against great odds in persuading the allies to have a French sector in the occupation of Germany, Berlin, Austria and Vienna.

When NATO was created, the US was given the position of Supreme Allied Commander, Europe and England received Deputy SACEUR. In fact, England received the deputy positions all the way down the chain of command. It is a well-understood principal of military organization that it is the deputy commander who actually runs things.

De Gaulle didn't give up. In September, 1958, de Gaulle proposed to President Eisenhower and to Prime Minister MacMillan that the three countries band together in defense of the free world, coordinating efforts on a global basis under an expanded NATO focus to include the Middle East, Africa, Indian Ocean, and the Pacific, as well as Europe. Eisenhower and MacMillan rejected the idea.

Only after his concept was rejected and after the new Kennedy administration in December 1962 offered to sell Polaris missiles to Great Britain, did de Gaulle move ahead with plans to withdraw from the NATO integrated military structure and develop an independent French nuclear capability, the so-called "force de frappe.".

Now, with French reentry into the NATO integrated military structure, expansion of the NATO area, NATO operations in the Balkans in the 1990's (including French aircraft), participation by French forces in NATO operations in Afghanistan, and NATO operations in Libya, we are finally seeing the fruition of de Gaulle's 1958 vision.