THE GEOPOLITICS OF FRANCE: Maintaining Its Influence in a Changing Europe S e p t . 1 3 , 2010 This analysis may not be forwarded or republished without express permission from STRATFOR. For permission, please submit a request to [email protected]. 1 STRATFOR 700 Lavaca Street, Suite 900 Austin, TX 78701 Tel: 1-512-744-4300 www.stratfor.com The Geopolitics of France: Maintaining Its Influence in a Changing Europe Editor’s Note: This is the 14th in a series of STRATFOR monographs on the geopolitics of countries influential in world affairs. Geographically, the continent of Europe is a busy place. It is riddled with features that impede the formation of any large political entity. Mountain ranges inhibit trade and armies alike while peninsulas and islands limit the ability of larger powers to intimidate or conquer smaller ones. Because of such features, it isn’t as much of a surprise that Europe has never united under a single government as it is that anyone has ever tried. That is because there are two other geographic features that push Europe together rather than pull it apart. The first is the North European Plain, an expansive stretch of lowland extending from the Russian steppe in the east to the Pyrenees in the west. This region is blessed with the densest concentration of navigable waterways in the world. The combination of a fertile, easily traversable coastal plain with seven major rivers guarantees both agricultural surpluses and the ability to move them easily and cheaply. The plain is perfect for trade, communication and technology transfer — and from those activities the accumulation of massive amounts of capital. Consequently, Northern Europe is home to the densest concentration of wealth in the world. The second feature — the Mediterranean Sea — plays a similar role to the continent’s south. Maritime transport on the Mediterranean is far simpler than oceanic transport in Northern Europe; the North Sea is one of the world’s stormiest bodies of water. But mitigating that advantage is the simple fact that much of the southern side of the continent lacks a robust coastal plain. So while Southern Europe is still rich by global standards, it is a distant second by the high standards of Northern Europe. The two regions have very little to do with each other geographically, and their relative isolation has spawned a raft of differing political, social and economic cultures. Mix the geographic features that inhibit unification with the features that facilitate trade and communication and Europe becomes a very rich, very violent place. None of Europe’s rivers naturally interconnect, giving most European nations their own independent capital base. But these rivers are all close to each other, and most flow across the North European Plain to empty into the Atlantic, ensuring constant interaction. It is a recipe for wars of domination, a simple fact born out in centuries of European history. 2 © 2010 STRATFOR Austin, TX 78701 Tel: 1-512-744-4300 www.stratfor.com Yet there are three places on the Continent where this pattern of fragmentation does not hold. The first are the Seine and Loire river valleys, whose upper reaches are so close together, separated by only a narrow stretch of very flat land, that the two have always been integrated — the only such multi-riverine system in Europe. The region therefore gains the economic and trade benefits of the North European Plain without suffering significant division. The second and third places where the fragmentation pattern does not hold are the Garonne and Rhone river valleys. The Garonne’s head of navigation is at Toulouse, only 150 kilometers from the Mediterranean, but the river flows west across the North European Plain to the Atlantic rather than east to the much closer Mediterranean. The Rhone is one of the relatively few European rivers that both empty into the Mediterranean and serve as a trade corridor to Northern Europe (the Danube 3 © 2010 STRATFOR Austin, TX 78701 Tel: 1-512-744-4300 www.stratfor.com empties into the geographically constricted Black Sea). As such, the Garonne and Rhone serve as the sole natural connections between the plain and the Mediterranean. The one thing these three geographic exceptions have in common is that they all have long resided in the political entity known as France. Only France is both a Northern and Southern European power. It is the only European power — despite its seeming isolation near the Continent’s western end — that can attempt to project power in any portion of the European theater. But the key word here is “attempt.” While France stands out in its unique access, it lacks — especially today — the size to dominate. Consequently, France is nearly always engaged but is only rarely ascendant. The Geography of France France is bound by the Alps in the southeast and the Pyrenees in the southwest, the Mediterranean Sea in the south and the Atlantic in both the west and north. In the east, France is bound by the river Rhine and the low mountains of the Ardennes, Vosges and Jura. Mountain chains, rivers and seas therefore enclose France at all points save for one: the North European Plain. Access to the plain gives France its most important geographical feature. Because it is at the terminus of the plain — or its beginning, depending on one’s perspective — France has the advantage of having to defend itself only on one lowland front and from the sea. However, it is at the 4 © 2010 STRATFOR Austin, TX 78701 Tel: 1-512-744-4300 www.stratfor.com same time subjected to the same threats, opportunities and temptations that the North European Plain offers: It can be drawn into thinking that the road of conquest is clear ahead or to ignore the threats coming down it at its great cost. The lowlands of the plain enter France at Flanders in the extreme northeast, where the Belgium-France border abuts the Atlantic. The plain then continues west past the Ardennes — the heavily forested hills at the southern border of France and Belgium — before curving southwestward via the Beauce gap, the aforementioned flat lands between the upper reaches of the Seine and Loire. Finally, the plain flows into the Aquitaine region in extreme southwestern France where it meets the Pyrenees Mountains, ending at the natural boundary of the Iberian Peninsula. Internally, aside from the Massif Central in the southeast, France is a country of relatively low-lying terrain with occasional hills. It is interspersed by a number of slow-flowing rivers, most of which are open to transportation with little or no modification and which historically have been connected by canals to facilitate commerce. The territory with the greatest of France’s advantages — navigable rivers, warm climate, sufficient rainfall, good drainage and fertile soils — is the Beauce region. The area’s limestone soil, rich in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium and thus providing natural fertilizer, and warm climate made possible by the North Atlantic Drift make it the most fertile land in Western Europe. It has been the basis of French agricultural power for centuries and holds nearly all of the country’s agricultural land. Today it is also the most integrated — via a robust transportation infrastructure — with the rest of Europe. The Beauce region is therefore the French core. At its extreme northern border, where the rivers Marne and Seine meet, lies Paris. Paris itself was founded on an island in the Seine, Ile de la Cite (the current location of the Notre Dame Cathedral), an easily defensible location that commands control over the land route between the last major curve of the Seine to the north and the river Marne to the south. Whoever controls Paris therefore controls transportation from the Beauce region to the rest of Europe via the North European Plain. Paris is also close enough to the Atlantic — connected by the Seine — to benefit from oceanic trade routes but far enough away to be insulated somewhat from a direct naval invasion. In fact, Paris is as far north as it is (the French at times flirted with moving the capital to southern Orleans, which is almost dead center in the Beauce) in order to keep a close eye on both Viking raids from the Atlantic and the once independence-minded Normandy and to complicate any English attempts to establish a permanent base of operations on the south side of the English Channel. 5 © 2010 STRATFOR Austin, TX 78701 Tel: 1-512-744-4300 www.stratfor.com In comparison with its continental neighbors, France has almost always been at an economic advantage because of its geography. Germany has relatively poor agricultural land and paltry access to the Baltic Sea and is blocked from the Atlantic by the British Isles. Italy has the fertile Po valley but is blocked by the Alps to the north and trapped inside the Mediterranean. Spain suffers from mountainous terrain, poor agricultural land and relatively useless rivers. Russia lacks reliable maritime access altogether as well as a reasonable climate. France has therefore been able to parlay its geography into enormous economic advantage, particularly in agricultural production. Prior to the advent of industrialization, this gave France enormous advantage over its continental rivals. 6 © 2010 STRATFOR Austin, TX 78701 Tel: 1-512-744-4300 www.stratfor.com The History of France Phase I: Centralization (843-1453) The Beauce region of France has always been the core of the French state because of its fertile land and strategic location on the North European Plain. Political power in the region only temporarily migrated southward during the time of Roman rule, but it quickly returned to the north when Franks invaded from the northeast.