Foreign policy of Charles de Gaulle


The Foreign policy of Charles de Gaulle covers the diplomacy of Charles de Gaulle as French leader 1940-46 and 1958-1969, along with his followers.

Status of France 1940-44

Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his top aides Foreign Minister Anthony Eden, and Chief of the Imperial General Staff General Alan Brooke in 1940-41 moved quickly to establish a base de Gaulle in London. Control of the overseas French Empire was seen as the central issue, In the British government was prepared to use military support to help de Gaulle regain control. De Gaulle set up a shadow government, including a French National Council and a Resisttance movement inside both Vichy France and German-con trolled France. To establish his own leadership over like-minded Frenchmen, de Gaulle began broadcasting to France using BBC facilities. De Gaulle was especially keen to set uop a Resistance movement inside France,However, many top British officials, as well as Roosevelt and sometimes even Churchill, still hoped for an understanding with Vichy France under Philippe Pétain. De Gaulle was totally opposed to any such relationship. Friction with Churchill's government continued to the end of 1942, centering around plans for the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa. On that matter the United States played the dominant role. Roosevelt continued to recognize the Vichy government, with Ambassador William D. Leahy in residence in Vichy. The embassy was finally closed when Germany seized control of Vichy France in late 1942.
In June 1941, British and Free French troops invaded Syria, then part of the Vichy overseas empire and uses a base by Nazi elements. Churchill decided to give Syria independence as a gesture to mollify Arab nationalism. De Gaulle strongly objected as he needed it for his base of operations in the Middle East. At one point Churchill was ready 108 to 11to remove de Gaulle as head of the Free French. De Gaulle had no choice except to acquiesce in an independent Syria. ref>Woodward, British Foreign Policy in the Second World War pp 108-111.
The command situation in North Africa was especially complex, with Roosevelt preferring François Darlan, The senior Vichy official who happened to be in for Algeria when the invasion took place. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied commander on the spot recognized Darlan as commander of all French forces in the area and recognized his self-nomination as High Commissioner of France for North and West Africa on 14 November. In return, on 10 November, Darlan ordered all French forces to join the Allies. His order was obeyed; not only in French North Africa, but also by the Vichy forces in French West Africa with its potentially useful facilities at Dakar. After Darlin was assassinated in December 1942, Roosevelt preferred General Henri Giraud. Roosevelt had met with de Gaulle in Washington, but never hid his distrust and distaste. De Gaulle In turn never forgave the Americans for this humiliation.

Postwar planning

De Gaulle and the Free French were largely excluded from the postwar planning by Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, and ignored by the U.S. State Department. It was humiliating. The Americans and to a lesser extent the British distrusted de Gaulle's usefulness and leadership of France. De Gaulle was not invited to summit meetings at Tehran, Yalta or Potsdam. At the Casablanca Conference on 24 January 1943, Giraud was present but de Gaulle at first refused but then accepted an invitation. Roosevelt and Churchill between themselves drafted an agreement on how liberated France would be governed. They agreed on a merger between Giraud's Algiers Imperial Council and de Gaulle's London-based French National Committee. However Roosevelt's original draft called for General Giraud to be in charge. Churchill secured major changes that gave responsibility to the French National Committee under de Gaulle. In 1945 France was given one of the five seats on the UN Security Council, with a veto, as well as a zone of Germany. Nevertheless it was kept from actually taking a leadership role regarding the UN or Germany. The French were angry at not being invited to Potsdam, but they did fairly well in the end.

Algeria 1958

The May 1958 seizure of power in Algiers by French army units and French settlers opposed to concessions in the face of Arab nationalist insurrection ripped apart the unstable Fourth Republic. The National Assembly brought him back to power during the May 1958 crisis. De Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic with a strengthened presidency, and he was elected in the latter role. He managed to keep France together while taking steps to end the war, much to the anger of the Pieds-Noirs and the military; both previously had supported his return to power to maintain colonial rule. He granted independence to Algeria in 1962 and progressively to other French colonies.

French West Africa

French conservatives were disillusioned with the colonial experience after the disasters in Indochina and Algeria. They wanted to cut all ties to the numerous colonies in French Sub-Saharan Africa. During the war, de Gaulle had successfully based his Free France movement and the African colonies. After a visit in 1958, he made a commitment to make sub-Saharan French Africa a major component of his foreign-policy. All the colonies in 1958, except Guinea, voted to remain in the French Community, with representation in Parliament and a guarantee of French aid. In practice, nearly all the colonies became independent in the late 1950s, but maintained very strong connections. Under close supervision from the president, French advisors played a major role in civil and military affairs, thwarted coups, and, occasionally, replaced upstart local leaders. The French colonial system had always been based primarily on local leadership, in sharp contrast to the situation in British colonies. The French colonial goal had been to assimilate the natives into mainstream French culture, with a strong emphasis on the French language. From de Gaulle's point of view, close association gave legitimacy to his visions of global client grandeur, certified his humanitarian credentials, provided access to oil, uranium and other minerals, and provided a small but steady market for French manufacturers. Above all it guaranteed the vitality of French language and culture in a large slice of the world that was rapidly growing in population. De Gaulle's successors Georges Pompidou and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing continued de Gaulle's African policy. It was supported with French military units, and a large naval presence in the Indian Ocean. Over 260,000 Frenchmen worked in Africa, focused especially on delivering oil supplies. There was some effort to build up oil refineries and aluminum smelters, but little effort to develop small-scale local industry, which the French wanted to monopolize for the mainland. Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gabon, and Cameroon were the largest and most reliable African allies, and received most of the investments. During the Nigerian Civil War, France supported breakaway Biafra, but only on a limited scale, providing mercenaries and obsolete weaponry. De Gaulle's goals were to protect its nearby ex-colonies from Nigeria, to stop Soviet advances, and to acquire a foothold in the oil-rich Niger delta.

Politics of Grandeur

Proclaiming that grandeur was the essential to the nature of France, de Gaulle initiated his "Politics of Grandeur". He demanded complete autonomy for France in world affairs, which meant that it has its major decisions which could not be forced upon it by NATO, the European Community or anyone else. De Gaulle pursued a policy of "national independence." He twice vetoed Britain's entry into the Common Market, fearing it might overshadow France in European affairs. While not officially abandoning NATO, he withdraw from its military integrated command, fearing that the United States had too much control over NATO. He launched an independent nuclear development program that made France the fourth nuclear power.

Hostile to Anglo-Saxons

He restored cordial Franco-German relations in order to create a European counterweight between the "Anglo-Saxon" and Soviet spheres of influence. De Gaulle openly criticised the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. He was angry at American economic power, especially what his Finance minister called the "exorbitant privilege" of the U.S. dollar. He went to Canada and proclaimed "Vive le Québec libre", The catchphrase for an independent Quebec.

Partial withdrawal from NATO in 1966

De Gaulle's vision called for a strong, independent France, armed with nuclear weapons, expecting that his vigor and weapons would enable Paris to deal with Washington on equal terms. Europe should emancipate itself from America and become a third force in the Cold War where it could rally neutral nations and perhaps reach a détente with the Soviet Union. NATO stood in the way of these goals. De Gaulle protested at the strong role of the United States in NATO. He considered the "special relationship" between the U.S. and the UK to be too close and too detrimental to the French role in Europe. The existing NATO situation gave the United States a veto power a nuclear weapons and thus prevented France from having a fully independent nuclear force of its own. In a memorandum sent to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan on 17 September 1958, he proposed a tripartite directorate that would put France on an equal footing with them. He also wanted NATO's coverage to expand to include French Algeria, where France was waging a counter-insurgency and sought NATO assistance. De Gaulle's ideas went nowhere, so he began the development of an Force de dissuasion. He refused to sign the 1963 agreement against underground nuclear testing. In 1963 he vetoed Britain's entry into the EEC. No NATO countries followed his lead. In July 1964, de Gaulle presented West Germany with a clear choice: "Either you follow a policy subordinated to the US or you adopt a policy that is European and independent of the U.S., but not hostile to them." West Germany rejected de Gaulle's ultimatum by pledging total loyalty to the U.S. ending his plan for leadership of Europe. In 1966-67 he withdrew France from NATO's military structure—which required an American to be in command of any NATO military action. He expelled NATO's headquarters and NATO units from French soil. The 15 NATO partners did not ignore De Gaulle's threats. Instead they worked to more closely cooperate with one to neutralize his countermeasures.
France officially remained a NATO member and finally in 2009 President Nicolas Sarkozy ended France's estrangement from NATO, closing the Gaullist chapter. James Ellison explains why Western Europe rejected de Gaulle's vision:
In de Gaulle's very long-term perspective, all that really mattered was the nation state, not ideologies that come and go such as communism. That is the good relationship of the French state and the Russian state had a higher priority than petty issues such as socialism and capitalism. Breaking through the polarization of the Cold War would allow France to assume a major leadership role in the world. The polarization was furthermore illegitimate, since France had been excluded from Yalta and the other episodes in which the Cold War had been established in 1945-47. By now, he was confident, there was no risk of a European war, and the Soviet Union had so many internal troubles that it was ready for détente. It had split bitterly with China and the two were now engaged in a global battle for control of local Communist movements. His diplomats opened informal discussions with Romania, Bulgaria and Poland. Moscow, however, was so alarmed at de Gaulle's suggestion that the Soviet satellites should show some independence of their own. When Czechoslovakia did show independence, Moscow and its client states invaded and crushed the new government there in 1968. Détente was dead as were de Gaulle's grandiose plans.

Evaluations

French scholar Alfred Grosser has evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of de Gaulle's foreign policy. On the positive side, the highest praise goes to a restoration of French grandeur in rank in world affairs, a return to a historic ranking. The French themselves are especially pleased with this development. As Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville told the National Assembly in 1964: France has resumed her position in all sectors of world affairs." There is little dissent with this conclusion inside France, even from de Gaulle's old enemies. However, the rest of the world looks at the claim with some amusement, as de Gaulle has not restored the diplomatic reputation of Paris in Washington, London, or Moscow nor in Beijing, New Delhi, Tokyo, Bonn and Rome. West Germany remained much more closely aligned with the United States in major world affairs, especially regarding NATO. When Soviet control of Eastern Europe collapsed in 1989, the United States led the effort to reunite Germany, despite serious French doubts. Secondly, France did establish its independence of the Anglo-Saxon powers – especially the United States, and also Great Britain. De Gaulle's anti-American rhetoric did indeed rub Americans the wrong way, and give some encouragement to intellectuals hostile to Americanism. His pulling the French military out of NATO was basically a symbolic action, with few practical results. It did mean that NATO headquarters was relocated to Belgium, with the result that French generals gave up their voice in NATO policy. Most historians conclude that NATO grew stronger, and de Gaulle had failed to weaken it or lessen American dominance.
As long as de Gaulle was in power, he successfully blocked British entry into the European Union. When he retired, so too was that exclusionary policy. Grosser concludes that the enormous French effort to become independent of Washington in nuclear policy by building its own "force de frappe" has been a failure. The high budget cost came at the expense of weakening France's conventional military capabilities. Neither Washington nor Moscow pays much attention to the French nuclear deterrent one way or another. As a neutral force in world affairs, France does have considerable influence over its former colonies--Much more than any other ex-colonial power. But the countries involved are not powerhouses, and the major neutral nations at the time, such as India, Yugoslavia and Indonesia, paid little attention to Paris. He did not have a major influence at the United Nations. While the French people supported and admired the foreign policy of Charles de Gaulle--at the time and in retrospect--he made it all himself with scant regard to French public or elite opinion.

Historiography