On 27 August 2007, before the Fifteenth Ambassadors Conference, French President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy evoked the necessity of rethinking the relationship between France and NATO, thereby reopening the debate concerning France’s re-integration into NATO’s military structure. From a foreign perspective, France’s status when it comes to NATO can seem anachronistic, even esoteric. Why does France insist on maintaining its own specificity towards this organisation? This attitude is often identified as distrust towards the United States, and can make reassuring words uttered in France concerning the compatibility of the European defence project and NATO seem doubtful. This often leads to irritation with the French attitude - a critical, almost grumpy attitude - which sees us opposing a good number of projects concerning the evolution of the Atlantic Alliance. Finally, the last critique: this distance towards the Atlantic Alliance would be detrimental to the dialogue between NATO and the EU. So what is going on? Why does France behave like an implacable Gaul resisting the Roman Empire - much like the comic strip-inspired Asterix - in its interactions with the Alliance? In fact, one cannot understand France’s specificity without revisiting the origins of the French withdrawal from the military structure and without taking into account the difficult, albeit not necessarily conflicting, relationship between France and the United States.

France withdrew from NATO’s integrated military structure on March 7, 1966 while remaining a member of the Atlantic Alliance. At this time, facing the strategic nuclear balance between the United States and the USSR, the Americans looked to escape Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), by developing the strategy of graduated response. Applied to Europe, it meant that in order to avoid a strategic nuclear exchange between the US and the USSR, the Americans accepted that a conflict involving tactical nuclear weapons could unfold in Central Europe. The strategic concept behind French nuclear deterrence was diametrically opposed as it envisaged using nuclear weapons from the very beginning of a conflict with the USSR, in order to stop if possible a massive conventional attack. As a result France felt that it was necessary to leave the committee governing NATO’s nuclear plans, and as NATO’s defence concept coupled the employment of conventional forces with nuclear forces, it was equally necessary for France to withdraw entirely from the permanent military structure.

Since the end of the Cold War, the question of France’s relationship with NATO has come up several times. During the same period however, France has also favoured the construction of European defence, which it sees as a constituent element of European policy, the foundations of which have been in place since the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. France’s European partners believe that collective security, because of the presence of the United States, should continue to be a matter for the Atlantic Alliance and what was to become the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) should confine itself to crisis management, or what are called the “Petersberg missions”.

France’s first attempt to return to NATO’s integrated military structure took place between 1995 and 1997 at the initiative of President Jacques Chirac. This attempt was a failure however when faced with the American refusal to grant the French, NATO’s South Regional Command in Naples. The episode was followed by the Saint Malo declaration, which resulted in a clear acceleration in the construction of European defence. From December 1998 through December 2003, the European Union thus doted itself with autonomous capacities for conducting military operations through the creation of security and policy-making authorities, as well as military structures, and elaborated its own European security concept. Since January 1 2003, 19 military and civilian-military operations have been led within the ESDP framework. Sometimes these operations are lead by operational planning using NATO’s chain of command, thanks to a mechanism called “Berlin plus” (which are, militarily speaking, the most important operations).

Similarly, since 1998 France has progressively re-invested itself in NATO without reintegrating fully into the organisation. This reinvestment was due primarily to the fact that exterior military operations multiplied during the post-Cold War period, and France was thus brought to participate in NATO led operations due to the role it wanted to play on the international scene. The necessity for “interoperability” meanwhile imposed even further rapprochement. French political resistance to NATO seemed therefore to present less of an interest.

Today, France is present in a large number of NATO structures, with two exceptions: the nuclear planning group and the committee for defence planning, which is responsible for operational and strategic planning (which is to say capacity planning for intervention-type scenarios). Finally, France does not participate in the permanent command chain, which constitutes the bulk of the integrated military structure. On the other hand, France has actively participated in the Allied Command Transformation, created during the 2002 Prague Summit and has supplied troops to the NATO Response Force (NRF), which functions on the basis of a rotation of standby forces. This investment means that France has represents the 3rd largest contributor of NATO forces and the 4th largest financial contributor.

The question of France’s status within NATO has been posed explicitly in the White Paper on Defence and National Security, whose appointed committee is due to present its work to the President of the Republic in Spring 2008. Related to this question are many others however: that of the future of NATO, that of the future of European Security and Defence Policy, that of the relations between the EU and NATO, and finally the question of how the status of France in NATO relates to all the issues above.

It is today officially proclaimed that there is no longer any competition between NATO and the EU. One asserts in fact that the more relevant question is that of a necessary cooperation in the field. This is true in Afghanistan, with the EU police force deployed in Kabul, but also in Kosovo with regards to the European Union’s police assistance mission and NATO’s KFOR operation. Taking into account these necessities, France has made several proposals to its NATO partners in the autumn of 2007, so as to reinforce the links between the EU and NATO. This initiative would tend to demonstrate that France no longer wants to block NATO, for which it had so often been criticised.

This does not keep a certain number of questions from being put forward concerning the future of European defence and NATO:

Some consider that the long-term objective of the European Union is to create a system of common defence, which means that the EU would one day be competent in matters of collective security. Even if this project doesn’t seem credible today in military terms, it is in some ways inscribed in the ‘genes’ of the European Union, which is a political construction. Considering that it is moving in such a direction, this implies that the EU shouldn’t confine itself to security missions that are predominantly civilian, despite this seeming to be more and more the case. Considering equally that some ‘necessary duplication’ with NATO is required if one wants more rationality and efficiency within EU operations, this implies the creation of an operational planning cell, even if it is to be slight.

Do we consider NATO as a sort of global security agent or do we consider article 5 as the heart of the Atlantic Alliance? Whether one favours one or the other, the policies in terms of enlargement will not be the same and the non-military means to which NATO can turn will not be the same either. The United States, as a member of NATO, with its imposing military weight, and with its military budget representing 60% of the military expenses of all other NATO countries combined, has a strong impact the global image of NATO. For questions of political opportunity, it is without any doubt necessary in certain cases to turn to the EU instead of NATO, even if the operations will be predominately civil or predominately military.

Today, it is easy to see that the debate taking place in France concerning the return to NATO is political rather than technical. Since 1966, not a single French political party has thought that the particular status of France towards the Atlantic Alliance has handicapped the organisation in any way, a critique that is yet commonly made in other European countries. In fact, since 1967, the Ailleret-Lemnizer agreements have structured contacts between major states in the event of a conflict in Central Europe. Moreover, throughout the Cold War, France was on the side of the Atlantic Alliance and no one should forget François Mitterrand’s speech in the Bundestag supporting the deployment of Pershing II and cruise missiles during the Euromissiles affair.

This is a political debate once: the question concerning France’s influence at the heart of NATO. For some, a return of France to NATO would allow our country to have a larger influence within the organisation. For others, this argument is of negligible value, and to this end they recall the 1999 Kosovo operation where France, in spite of its status, defined the limits of the NATO air strike by refusing to target the bridges of the Danube and the ports of Montenegro.

This is a political debate twice: the rising distrust of European partners towards ESDP, as a result of our status towards the Atlantic Alliance. This argument carries evidently more weight because France cannot hope to create a European defence alone, and it must convince its European partners. French politicians are very sensitive to this argument, even though they themselves cannot do much to change the situation.

This is a political debate third and foremost: What would be the political interpretation of a French return to NATO. This is an important argument that should not be neglected and which concerns the historical culture of the French people. The exit from NATO was undertaken in 1966 so as to allow a certain level of autonomy in French politics where it concerned the United States. The return to the organisation might be perceived as an alignment with American politics, made all the more complicated by recent US-led coalition failures in Iraq. This is ultimately the argument of former French Minister of Foreign Affairs Hubert Védrine, who guarded President Sarkozy against a non-negotiated return to NATO in the very early days of his presidency.

Today, the debate is well underway in France concerning the question of reintegration. Many people consider this to be a political question, instead of thinking of it as an issue which would allow for better efficiency within the Alliance. Reinforcing the political role of the organisation as a result of French reintegration, would moreover not necessarily be welcome by some Frenchmen. In reality, there is without a doubt consensus in France, that with or without NATO, the most important issue is the ability to reinforce European defence capabilities. That is to say, for example, creating the conditions whereby other Allies and partners would accept the creation of an operational planning cell and a permanent chain of command for EU operations. What this would mean more generally is the establishment of an equilibrium, which would be to the profit of the Europeans, and constituting as such a true renovation of NATO. Finally, some would argue that the main difference between those on the right or the left of the political spectrum in France, is that tenants on the right believe that such a change is possible in the current political climate, while those on the left mostly believe that the United States and others will never accept the development of ESDP, and that the political cost of reintegrating would be much greater than the expected benefits.