José Alejandro Marchena 6048269 Masterscriptie Geschiedenis van de Internationale Betrekkingen Docent: Niek Pas Tweede Lezer: Rimko van der Maar 18800 woorden French-Argentine Relations between 1964-1981: French State and Non-State Actors involved in Argentine Political Upheaval INDEX INTRODUCTION 2 1. 1957-1962 The Third Way and the French Mission. 6 1.1-Troisième voie, Tercera Posición. 6 1.2-The French Mission 1955-1962. 10 2. 1964-1970 The American Challenge and Adapting GR. 14 2.1-AMX 13/30. 16 2.2-OAS, traditionalist Catholics and French Colons. 19 2.3-El Cordobazo: Conclusion of the 60's. 22 3. 1970-1975 Gaullist Pompidou, Perón's last term. 25 3.1-French Business, applying GR, Perón and International Events. 28 3.2-Gérard Pied. 30 4. 1976-1981The Dirty War and French Influence. 35 4.1-Giscard d'Estaing and the End of the Junta. 35 4.2-Human Rights Defenders, Exiles and Island Disputes. 37 CONCLUSION 46 Bibliography 49 1 INTRODUCTION On 18 may 2003, French journalist Marie-Monique Robin interviewed Argentina's last dictatorial president Reynaldo Bignone in Buenos Aires, who ruled the country between July 1982 and December 1983.1 Robin was researching the French army's influence in teaching the Argentine military various counter-insurgency tactics of warfare, the findings of which she would later turn into a documentary and publish through a book. Bignone responded in the affirmative when he was asked about the French military influence in Argentina in the seventies: Je dirais même que le processus de réorganisation nationale lancé par le gouvernement militaire, en mars 1976, est une copie de la bataille d'Alger. La seule différence, c'est que vous êtes intervenus dans une colonie, tandis que nous, nous l'avons fait dans notre propre pays. Sinon, nous avons tout repris des Français : le quadrillage du territoire, l'importance du renseignement dans ce genre de guerre, les méthodes d'interrogatoire... Il ne faut pas croire, nous avons combattu avec la doctrine et le règlement dans la main...2 This doctrine Bignone spoke of concerns a collection of courses that took place and publications that were spread by a French military mission roughly between 1957 and 1963. Many Argentine historians using Argentine sources claim that this French doctrine of Guerre Révolutionnaire (GR) gave the Argentine army the theoretical basis and practical knowledge to carry out the Dirty War between 1976 and 1983. A look into French diplomatic primary sources will show us in this article that French involvement in the Argentine political crisis in the sixties and seventies ran deeper than just GR. The purpose of this article is to widen our knowledge on French involvement relating to the increased political turmoil in Argentina in the period 1964 and 1983. In this introduction we will discuss the contemporary relevance of the Dirty War, followed by a detailed view of the academic relevance this topic has in our understanding of both French and Argentine history. We can then briefly discuss the historiography of French-Argentine relations concerning the Dirty War and its shortcomings. These shortcomings can guide us into formulating research questions that will be answered in this article. The primary sources used in this article are all found at the French diplomatic archives of La Courneuve in Paris and consist of French embassy and diplomatic documents between Argentina and France. The documents chosen concern embassy issues, migration, foreign policy, Argentine national policy, military and political relations. To what extent should governments use controversial counterinsurgency techniques in asymmetric warfare? How far must democratic governments go to cooperate with dictatorial regimes in order to defeat a common enemy? These questions are relevant for political scientists and policymakers up 1 Marie-Monique Robin, Escadrons de la Mort, l'École Française (2004) 316. 2 Ibidem, 317. 2 until today. The recent publication of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program by the Senate Intelligence Committee of the United States has rekindled public attention and disapproval on the use of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” or torture in times of war.3 History has taught us that controversial war tactics can have long-lasting consequences. More than thirty years have passed since the end of the Argentine Dirty War in 1983, yet many continue to experience its aftermath up until this day. Various sources give different estimates concerning for example the eventual discovery of mass graves and the number of forced disappearances, ranging from 8.000 to 30.000.4 In contrast, news of the French army's influence in the Dirty War received almost no attention when Robin showed her documentary and published her book detailing her investigation in March 2004. The book she published contains interviews with former soldiers and high-ranking officers that passed through French courses and participated in the Dirty War, all of which corroborate the importance of GR in the Argentine army. She could only comment on the apathie générale and denial shown by French politicians and the press.5 French officials claimed that Argentine generals would obviously blame the French for the counterinsurgency tactics of the Dirty War in order to avoid personal responsibility. France also took many refugees, and that French officials participating in the Dirty War did this out of personal choice. French-Argentine relations present a very good example in order to answer the questions mentioned above. A moderate number of Argentine historians such as Daniel Mazzei, Samuel Amaral and most notably Mario Ranalletti have studied the way in which France developed GR and popularized it within the military sphere in Argentina. Their research has contributed firstly to our understanding of decolonization. The aforementioned historians agree on the importance of the French battles in Indochina and Algeria and how French officials tried to clarify the French defeat in these wars.6 These officials and their civil servants, Ranalletti summarizes, combined anti- communism, religion and social sciences in developing the theory of GR and interpreting the many conflicts in the Third World in the fifties.7 In practical terms, French officials such as Roger Trinquier turned their aim towards conquering the “hearts and minds” and the “complete destruction of the enemy's clandestine activities whose purpose is to impose their will unto the population”.8 Another contribution of the study of GR concerns our understanding of the Cold War and the role of the Third World as the principal region during this period. Some Western historians such as Odd 3 Lee H. Hamilton, 'It's Time to end Torture', Huffington Post (01-14-2015) 4Argentines Argue over how many were Killed by Junta, Latin-American Herald Tribune (accessed 07-01-2015) 5 Robin, Escadrons, 395. 6 S.Amaral, 'Guerra Revolucionaria: de Argelia a la Argentina, 1957-1962', Investigaciones y ensayos, Nr 48 (1998) 175., D. Mazzei, 'La Misión Militar Francesa en la Escuela Superior de Guerra y los Origenes de la Guerra Sucia, 1957-1962', Revista de Ciencias Sociales, Nr 13 (1998) 110. M. Ranalletti, Du Mékong au Río de la Plata. La Doctrine de la Guerre Révolutionnaire “La Cité Catholique” et leurs Influences en Argentine, 1954-1976 (2006). 53. 7 Ranalletti, Du Mékong. 104. 8 Amaral, 'Guerra', 179. 3 Arne Westad describe how for most of the Cold War Asia, Africa and Latin-America were at the center of the various conflicts taking place as a consequence of the emergence of new states. This led towards much competition between the two superpowers of the Cold War.9 French-Argentine historians have shown that smaller western powers such as France also participated in these conflicts. These researchers have studied the doctrine's spread within the Argentine military and the way in which it contributed to the origins of the Dirty War. Political scientist Gabriel Périès is more concerned with the immediate effects of GR and singles out the “Plan CONINTES” of 1960, created by the Argentine army and put to use by the democratic government of Arturo Frondizi.10 This plan roughly translated to the strategy of military intervention within the country in the event that the state were to collapse because of revolutionary movements. Mazzei claims that the French military mission gave the Argentine military the theoretical, methodological and even semantical tools that guided the Argentine dictatorship in its repressiveness throughout the seventies against potential communists.11 Ranalletti expands on French non-state actors influencing the Argentine military by including French extreme-right organizations. He explains the disrespect of human rights in Argentina not only as a consequence of GR but also as being caused by the effect of the Cité Catholique, which we will expand on later in this article.12 This combination threw the Argentine army into a “microclimat de psychose anticommuniste” putting them under the impression of carrying out a “Nouvelle Croisade”. Continuing the focus on non-state actors is Ranalletti's analysis of French migration to Argentina in the years of the Algerian Revolution.13 Ranalletti analyses that by 1963, the French and Argentine governments had signed a deal to help with the transfer of a large number of French Pied Noirs to Argentina, though apparently many French paramilitary terrorists managed to take advantage of this deal and the benefits it entailed. The historiography of the French influence in the Dirty War so far does not to show the reasons for the French government to direct its attention to Latin America and Argentina in particular. Argentine historians have used Argentine sources to study what we can describe as the reception of French influence. The first goal of this article is to show the reasons for French state and non-state expansion in this region of the world, the strategy France used and the competition it encountered.