Cogan examines the origins of French frustrations with NATO.
Cogan examines the France-NATO problem, going back to its origins in 1945-1952, when a weak France, obsessed by the threat of Germany and jealous of the ascendancy gained by the British during the war, sought security guarantees and assistance from the United States. However, in the process, France put itself in a position of dependence under the NATO integrated command to a degree that later governments of a resurgent France felt compelled to challenge—and are still doing so today.
Post-World War II France was to disappoint the hopes of such American statesmen as Dean Acheson and George Kennan, who looked to it to take the lead in Western Europe in the face of a growing Soviet threat. Dogged by the humiliation of the wartime occupation, obsessed by fear of a resurgent Germany, jealous of the British ascendancy gained during the war, and dominated by an intellectual class almost wholly given over to the prevailing antifascism (and, therefore, philo-sovietism) of the postwar, France would take 20 years to live up to its promise as the motor of Western Europe. Though it was perhaps inevitable that France, falling on the western divide of the Iron Curtain, would join the U.S. camp, it did so with a loss of sovereignty, symbolized in NATO's integrated command. This was a situation which Charles de Gaulle, after his return to power in 1958, would seek to undo. His successors have continued this quest to this day.
Cogan explores the Gaullist argument that the North Atlantic Alliance and NATO are two distinct movements against a background of ever-increasing threats—or perceived threats—by the Soviet Union, culminating in the North Korean invasion of 1950. The French, desperate to emerge from a position of wartime inferiority, willingly abandoned hopes of building a defense of Europe by Europeans alone. France threw itself into the arms of the United States, partly to escape the onerous tutelage of Great Britain. In 1951, when the NATO integrated command was put in place, the French wound up with very little—not even a major subordinate command. Frustration and, ultimately, withdrawal from the NATO military structure were the results. This is a major examination of contemporary international relations and Western European defense policy for scholars and researchers alike.
Introduction
"The Russian Hope" and its Disappointments
The Attempt at a Renewal of the Entente Cordiale
The Turn toward Europe: The Brussels Treaty and the Western Union
The Turn Toward Washington: The North Atlantic Treaty
The Alliance Produces an Organization: NATO
NATO Produces an Integrated Command
The Return of the Supreme Commander
Epilogue
Reviews
[A]merican policy makers would certainly profit by studying Cogan's excellent account of the challenges and dilemmas faced by their predecessors.—Political Science Quarterly
Endorsements
A splendid, carefully nuanced study, [this book] sheds new light not only on the early history of NATO but on strains within NATO in the post-Cold War era.—Ernest R. May^LCharles Warren Professor of American History^LHarvard University
Charles Cogan's examination of France's ambivalence toward the Atlantic alliance illuminates the sources of many of the problems France has with American leadership of the alliance in the 1990s. He has made an authoritative and objective contribution to NATO historiography in a relatively neglected area of NATO's formative years.—Prof. Lawrence R. Kaplan^LKent State University^LAuthor of ^INATO and the United States: the Enduring Alliance^R
As NATO reorganizes itself, and France and the United States struggle to impose their competing interests and visions on the Alliance, the story of France's role in NATO's creation takes on new significance. Replete with fascinating anecdotes and citations, thoroughly researched, and clearly written, [this work] makes valuable reading for anyone interested in these issues, then or now. Fifty years later, these events have a resonance and meaning that current decision-makers would be unwise to ignore.—Dr. Philip Gordon^LEditor, Survival
