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Forced to Choose - France, the Atlantic Alliance, and NATO -- Then and Now (Hardcover, New)
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Forced to Choose - France, the Atlantic Alliance, and NATO -- Then and Now (Hardcover, New)
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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.
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