Nicolas Sarkozy and NATO

Nicolas Sarkozy and NATO Ryan Hendrickson President Nicolas Sarkozy’s announcement that France seeks to reintegrate into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s military command is welcome news to an Alliance in challenging times. Many analysts have portrayed NATO as an organisation with profound policy differences during the presidency of George W. Bush. Moreover, NATO faces a growing insurgency in Afghanistan that will be difficult to defeat. Since President Bush came to office, broad transatlantic differences have surfaced between the United States and much of Europe, yet within NATO Headquarters, many of the more significant debates have been between the United States and France. In this context, Sarkozy’s interest in France’s heightened military integration has both valuable symbolic as well as practical significance for NATO’s future. This essay provides a brief summary of France’s recent history with NATO, and follows with a discussion of the potential gains that may result with Sarkozy’s proposals. France’s Evolution in NATO At NATO’s inception, France was one of Europe’s leading advocates for an Alliance that pledged American strategic and military interests explicitly to Europe. Although historians note that French views in 1948 and 1949 were shaped primarily by its fears of a resurgent German military rather than potential threats from the Soviet Union, France was still a critical founding member in encouraging this new military Alliance.1 After its creation, diplomatic relations between the NATO Allies were never as rosy as some post Cold War analysts suggest, although the common threat of the Soviet Union served as the catalyst for some degree of strategic cooperation.2 NATO’s most profound Cold War crisis that continues to have relevance today came with French President Charles de Gaulle’s call in 1966 for the removal of NATO’s political headquarters from France within one year’s time, and for France’s departure from the Alliance’s integrated military command. These demands, which resulted in the creation of NATO’s Defence Planning Committee – a military planning body that can operate without explicit French approval – has shaped France’s relationship with NATO since this time. Many analysts have examined France’s relations with NATO during and after the Cold War, most of which maintains that France continued to exercise considerable independence from the Allies since De Gaulle’s unilateralism.3 Notably, French President Jacques Chirac, however, made important advances to improve relations between France and the Allies in 1996. Yet when the Allies met at NATO’s 1997 Madrid Summit to discuss membership enlargement, French differences with many of them were significant, and were only resolved after last hour diplomatic efforts. Moreover, during NATO’s bombing campaign against Slobodan Milosevic in 1999 – Operation Allied Force – France was more willing than others to veto military targets that Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) Wesley Clark had selected. French military leaders have since criticized what they perceived as American military dominance of the operation.4 Thus, despite Chirac’s overtures, French independence was still alive and well. After the 11 September 2001 terrorist strikes on the United States, the Allies coalesced to invoke North Atlantic Treaty Article 5, indicating robust Alliance support for America’s challenge to address global terrorist movements. This transatlantic support, however, evaporated rapidly over the next year with President George W. Bush’s movement to war with Iraq. At NATO, these differences culminated in February 2003, when Secretary-General George Robertson failed to successfully utilize the Alliance’s silence procedure in an effort to gain consensus: Belgium, France, and Germany openly spoke out against American foreign 1 policy interests in Turkey. Later, Robertson turned to the Defence Planning Committee to help resolve this crisis.5 Since 2003, debates within NATO have followed along similar lines. In Alliance discussions in 2004 and 2005 over NATO’s role in Iraq and Sudan, the intra-Alliance discord is best described as policy differences between France and the United States.6 In 2006, differences over the placement of training operations for the NATO Response Force (NRF) pitted France against the U.S.7 While European opposition to the Bush administration’s policies toward Iraq shaped much of the transatlantic dialogue, at NATO it has often been France that has frequently quarreled with the United States on major strategic as well as tactical aspects of Alliance operations, which makes Sarkozy’s calls for change all the more novel and welcome. Sarkozy’s Rapprochement and Demands Given the Gaullist legacy evident in French foreign policy and the recent debates between France and the United States in Brussels, President Sarkozy’s calls for change potentially represent a meaningful break from the past. In September 2007, Sarkozy announced that France sought to fully reintegrate into all facets of NATO’s organisational structure.8 To be sure, one should not over-emphasise the degree of France’s ‘absence’ from NATO’s internal debates since 1966 as noted above. Nonetheless, for an Alliance that suffered considerably in the weeks leading up to the war in Iraq, and with NATO’s ongoing and ostensibly long- term challenge in Afghanistan, France’s call for a new relationship has important value to an Alliance in need of a political boost. Sarkozy later clarified his position on reintegration, noting that he sought American approval for an independent defence capacity for the European Union, and for France to obtain military leadership positions ‘at the highest level’ within NATO’s military command structures.9 Although these calls come with some potential risks to the Alliance, for a number of reasons Sarkozy’s calls should be welcomed. Courting Sarkozy French Input… For a variety of reasons the Allies should do as much as possible to respond reasonably to Nicolas Sarkozy’s requests. First, it must be recognised that France plays a major role in global security and has the ability to project force like few others in the Alliance. At the present time, France has approximately 13,000 troops deployed in a variety of security and peacekeeping operations. The breadth of France’s international presence speaks to its capability and willingness to project force beyond its borders (see Table 1). The relevant point is that in an era when so many of the Allies struggle both politically and financially with force projection, France has demonstrated its ability to conduct an array of operations abroad. One especially notable operation was its leadership of the European Union’s Operation Artemis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2003, which according to a number of measures, would have never happened without French leadership.10 On another potentially important measure of national defence capabilities, military spending levels, France is also considerably different from most of the Allies. It has consistently spent more than 2 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on military expenditures, which is a goal that all of the Allies agreed to at NATO’s 2002 Prague Summit. As Table 2 indicates, France has maintained this spending level since 2002 and Sarkozy has reiterated his interest in continued spending on modernised defence forces. Although the measure of 2 per cent of Gross Domestic Product has its analytical limitations since countries could still spend and invest wisely with smaller defence expenditures, it is nonetheless striking how different France is from others on this measure. For example, in 2 2005 Germany spent only 38 billion dollar on defence, or 1.4 per cent of its GDP. Belgium devoted a mere 1.1 percent of its GDP to military expenditures, or 4.2 billion dollar. Among Europe’s NATO Allies, only Bulgaria, France, Greece, Romania, Turkey, and the United Kingdom spend at or above the 2 per cent level. Within Europe, apart from the United Kingdom, France spends more in absolute dollars than all others.11 Indeed, in an era when investments in defence capabilities and force projection are viewed as critical measures for meeting current and future security challenges, France stands above many, and thus is and will be increasingly well-positioned to conduct global security operations. This gap in military spending and capabilities between France and most in Europe remains a real concern among both Americans and Europeans, but also speaks to the potential role for France within NATO and its attractiveness to the Allies in future security operations.12 Under Sarkozy, France has indicated its willingness to play a larger role in Afghanistan.13 Thus, when French political will matches with Alliance interests, France is positioned to make significant contributions to NATO, which benefits all members in current and future operations. …and Demands Apart from the potential utility of France’s military to the Alliance, which it is already demonstrating on a number of fronts, Sarkozy’s demands that run parallel to its reintegration into NATO represent only a minimal risk to the Alliance. His first concern, that the European Union works to develop an autonomous military capability, squares well with NATO’s needs. As has been suggested many times before by NATO’s current and previous Secretaries- General, the European Allies need to spend more on defence. If the principle of a militarily stronger EU serves as a catalyst for higher defence spending, then NATO stands to benefit as well. Moreover, with now 27 EU members, it is increasingly difficult to envision the European Union engaging in military operations that are not widely supported across Europe, and thus implicitly, by the United States.14 Given that some EU members are more closely aligned with the United States than others in Europe, it is difficult to see an EU mission that would not square with American interests.

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