SECURITY & DEFENCE
The thinking behind France’s NATO rapprochement
Autumn 2008
There’s a good deal more to France’s decision to rejoin NATO’s military structure than meets the eye, explains Benoît d'Aboville. As a former French ambassador to NATO, he sets the move in the context of his country’s new defence white paper
France’s announcement that it intended to return to NATO’s integrated military structure by 2009 was greeted with polite satisfaction in most of the alliance’s capitals, but not surprise. There are two reasons for this; the first is that since its return to the Military Committee in 1994 France’s position within NATO has allowed for full participation in the military and political activities of the alliance, and the second is that the whole notion of “integration” has changed.
When the Warsaw Pact existed, NATO troops were positioned in such a way that any attack would collectively involve most of the allies. The whole Central Front was structured in a tightly coordinated way, and even France was involved in NATO planning through a set of special agreements with SHAPE.
The end of the Cold War and the transformation of NATO into an “expeditionary alliance” has made de facto “integration” largely irrelevant; each member’s contribution to NATO operations is decided in the capitals, with or without the involvement of the national parliament, on an ad hoc basis.
In the 1970’s and 1980’s NATO was built on an industrial model, with its central headquarters overseeing the management of its many national subsidiaries. Today, NATO looks more like an open financial fund where each partner assess the risks and benefit of its participation and hopes that it will enjoy a fair share of the global return. Conferences on forces generation have become like any “tour de table” organised to convince investors through a combination of peer pressure and individual manoeuvring.
This profound change in NATO’s role has been matched by a parallel rise in the French role within NATO. On the military level it is worth recalling some key figures:
• France’s participation in NATO-led operations has been consistently high ever since the 1999 Kosovo campaign. On average, between 2,000 and 3,000 French soldiers have been involved at any given moment, making France either the third or fifth largest contributor, depending on which year one takes. This commitment to NATO’s operations has been on top of its other military commitments, either in coalition (Operation Enduring Freedom-OEF), with the EU (Bosnia, Congo, Chad-Darfur etc...) with the UN (Haiti, Lebanon) or at a national level (Ivory Coast, Central African Republic). Out of a total 11,500 French soldiers deployed on operations so far this year, roughly 30% have been serving with NATO, made up of 2,000 troops in Kosovo and more than 3,000 in and around Afghanistan. France has at the same time been one of the military mainstays of the Nation Reaction Force (NRF) ever since its inception.
• France is the fifth largest NATO budget contributor, and a leading participant in various NATO investment programmes.
• Since 2004, both within the NATO military structure itself and in liaison missions to various parts of the NATO HQ, some 200 French military personnel hold operational positions.
The obvious question, then, is why should the French government that took office last year seek to change a situation that has been a satisfactory compromise the other NATO allies could live with and which allowed France to make a full military contribution to the alliance?
On NATO’s side, there is no obvious institutional imperative for changing the present situation, and France’s absence from the Defence Planning Committee (DPC) has not presented a problem. On the nuclear side, the French independent deterrent’s contribution to allied security has been recognised since the alliance’s Ottawa Declaration of 1974, and France will not be joining the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) that determines NATO's nuclear policies.
In terms of French politics, there are no insistent domestic pressures to rejoin NATO. Earlier this year, a debate in the National Assembly about reinforcing the French ISAF contingent highlighted a broad agreement about NATO's involvement in Afghanistan, although it should be said that there is scepticism right across party lines about the value of a purely military solution.
There has been tough questioning by politicians on both the right and the left about the political benefits for France of the proposed new NATO move, given that at a military level there will be no great changes in France’s ability to contribute to the alliance’s operations. So far, though, discussion about the NATO rapprochement has been rather low key, for number of reasons:
In the first place, the official decision has been postponed until the next NATO summit in April 2009, so that it comes after the current French Presidency of the EU and when a new American administration has taken over in Washington.
Secondly, nobody in France disputes the obvious: NATO and the world have completely changed since France left the integrated structures. Today’s global threats demand greater European as well as NATO solidarity, and the alliance’s successive enlargements mean that the most EU members are now also NATO members.
Thirdly, there is a widely shared view that complementarity between the European defence project and NATO is a goal well worth working towards. As President Nicolas Sarkozy has put it, France taking its full place in NATO could allay some of the fears expressed by the alliance’s newest members in Central Europe. The idea that France has been attempting to create an alternative to NATO through the European defence project has for years been no more than a stupid “canard”, but being stupid has never prevented it from flying in a circle!
The most important reason of all, though, is the recognition in France that in this time of a rapidly evolving strategic landscape, it is important to contribute to the changes in the transatlantic structures that France and many of its allies see as desirable and necessary.
The much broader objective than the issue of France’s position within NATO is that of getting rid of the flaccid atlanticism that so often prevails in NATO circles. There is a widespread recognition of the need to renovate the transatlantic relationship, and that this will involve both the alliance and the EU. France’s new attitude towards NATO should be seen as contribution to the building of a new transatlantic relationship, a means to an end rather than an end in itself.
This is one of the reasons why the French rapprochement with NATO has been deliberately presented as a move that should be discussed with other countries, not least our European partners. The whole process is therefore very different from the discreet and confidential attempt made in 1990-1991 and the more public discussion of 1995-1997, both of with led nowhere because of the bureaucratic in-fighting in Washington.
As well as seeking to build a new transatlantic partnership and involving France’s European allies along with Washington, the new process makes explicit reference to the further consolidation of ESDP. There has been open opposition to ESDP in Washington and in some other NATO capitals as far back as the early 1980’s, but that has since largely evolved since into a reasonable acceptance of a process which could reinforce the military contributions of the Europeans while not threatening NATO. The St Malo Franco-British initiative in 1998 was a milestone, and President George W. Bush’s declaration at NATO’s Bucharest summit in the spring of this year was a further welcome sign that the theological debate about the political monopoly of NATO on European security issues is behind us.
There is now a growing intellectual and political consensus in both NATO and EU circles that the process of expanding the ESDP’s role in many areas that bear directly or indirectly on security issues should be a factor for strengthening rather than weakening NATO.
At the heart of the year-long review that in mid-2008 saw the publication of France’s new White Book on National Security and Defence has been the conviction that, given the rapid realignments of international power relationships, the challenges of proliferation and emerging news threats, like the possible consequences of climate change the need is to focus on adapting both homeland defence and strategic military capacities.
In France’s own case, a number of decisions have already been made. There will be a renegotiation of the security agreements with partner countries in Africa and our forces there and in the Gulf will be repositioned. France will maintain its nuclear deterrent, while also making new proposals for arms control in light of the upcoming nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) review conference. There will be a strengthening of investment in military space, and further development of intelligence and anti-terrorist capacities. Needless to say, France is also reinforcing the expeditionary capacities of its armed forces.
France’s new strategic approach stresses that, just like its European partners, its forces have to adapt further to the new dimensions of military operations overseas and asymmetric warfare. Hence the need for major investment in force protection, accompanied by or highlighting the importance of political legitimacy of overseas operations, to take into account the new regional powers with which we will have to deal for peacekeeping missions.
Meanwhile, there is obviously an urgent need to close the gap within all European forces on strategic transportation and tactical air mobility. This means substantial investment and a much greater degree of intra-European cooperation.
The ISAF mission in Afghanistan has more than confirmed the importance of better coordination of civilian and military role in stabilisation and reconstruction actions, an area where the EU has a major role to play because it has already developed the tools so there is no reason for NATO to try to duplicate them.
The clear shift in the international strategic balance towards Asia in no way reduces the need for the Europeans to maintain an active political and military presence in the Middle East, not just for trade and energy reasons but also because any future problems in Asia will have direct repercussions in this area.
The risk of major armed confrontation with Russia in the years ahead is minimal, but military intimidation as well as political and economic pressures will still be part of the uneasy European relationship with Moscow.
The most important signal that the new course of French strategic policy could address to NATO is therefore not about the number of new posts for French officers in NATO’s various structures – indeed, Paris considers that the present structure is overweight and should be seriously slimmed down – but, rather to drive home three messages: French forces will maintain a robust capacity for overseas military operations in the framework of NATO-led operations, although not exclusively so. That France is eager to contribute fully along with other partners to transforming NATO into a less bureaucratic and more agile organisation, focussing on its military core functions. It also believes there should be no different categories of NATO allies, and that furthermore the alliance should not attempt to duplicate the functions of other organisations, but instead should cooperate with them. Lastly, there is a strong wish in Paris that the alliance should adapt to the challenge of transforming the transatlantic relationship, taking into account the new importance of the EU’s role.
Sceptics may still say that all this is a hopeless task, given the history and nature of NATO. But most people no longer think that is the case and believe it's worth a serious try if we want to avoid the alliance gradually deteriorating into some kind of “OSCE in uniform” and eventually ending up as just another talking shop for western democracies and like-minded countries.