The Old Game

In the year since he returned to power in France, the image of Charles de Gaulle, statesman, had half erased the image of Charles de Gaulle, temperamental Free French leader of World War II. Last week the world's memory was sharply refreshed. In a move that caught his allies flatfooted, De Gaulle denounced a longstanding agreement that obligated France to put one-third of its Mediterranean fleet under NATO command in time of war.

Like most of his famous World War II gestures of defiance, De Gaulle's action was calculated to inflict a minimum of real pain but a maximum of bureaucratic annoyance upon his allies. The actual force involved--some 30,000 tons of naval shipping, including a single aircraft carrier--was militarily insignificant, plays little part in NATO's Mediterranean war plans, which turns around the U.S. Sixth Fleet and its powerful nuclear punch. For public consumption, virtually every Western foreign office took a stiff-upper-lip attitude. So did NATO's General Lauris Norstad (whom De Gaulle dismisses as a military johnny-come-lately).

But in the back rooms, allied resentment ran deep. If France could pull its ships out of NATO unilaterally, asked NATO officers, what was to prevent Bonn from one day deciding to deny NATO the twelve West German divisions that are the keystone of NATO ground strength? "The French aren't acting like allies," snapped one Western diplomat. "If everyone can come and go as he pleases, we don't have an alliance." Actually the French had previously pulled out pledged NATO divisions to fight in Algeria without a by-your-leave, and on other occasions--including the U.S. transfer of the Sixth Fleet during the Quemoy crisis--NATO had not been too scrupulously notified. What mattered this time was that De Gaulle was not pleading a necessity, but intending a rebuff. His ministers were almost apologetic in having to deliver it to allies. (Even ultranationalist Premier Michel Debre privately argued against De Gaulle's action.) De Gaulle was plainly 1) miffed at U.S. abstention during the last U.N. vote on the Algerian revolt, 2) determined to be admitted, along with Britain, as a senior partner in the Western alliance.

As usual, officialdom in Washington and London protested De Gaulle's timing most of all: in the middle of the Berlin crisis, it was essential, they said, to convince Russia of Western unity. But this was not an argument calculated to sway a man who had never hesitated in World War II to put pressure on Britain and the U.S. at precisely the time when it would have maximum effect.

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