As France Sees It

Charles de Gaulle's insistence that NATO forces get off French soil has not only distressed his 14 NATO allies but confused a good many people who find it difficult to follow the general's sometimes Byzantine reasoning. Last week, replying to an unsuccessful censure motion by opposition Deputies who disagree with De Gaulle's tactics, French Premier Georges Pompidou delivered the most lucid exposition to date of the De Gaulle attitude toward NATO. Its remarkable contention: NATO is a U.S. device that in effect spares U.S. and Russian territory in any nuclear conflict by inviting a nuclear exchange "between the Atlantic and Poland's eastern border--that is, in Europe, a Europe destined for destruction."

As reason for this startling charge, Pompidou cited France's keenly held belief that nations act only in their own interest: "Sentiment does not dictate policy when it is a question of going to war. If America, which did not enter --and I am not criticizing it--the last war until it had been directly attacked, is engaged today in Europe, who does not see that it is primarily its own evident interest?" In fact, said Pompidou, the U.S. is in Europe out of necessity. "How else can you explain that it is allied not only with us but with Germany, which was its principal enemy 20 years ago, and against Russia, which was then its principal ally?"

Flexible Response. The heart of the matter, as Pompidou saw it, is that France has had no real say in NATO decisions. The only major decision that the NATO council ever unanimously reached, he said, was the adoption in 1957 of the concept of massive and immediate atomic retaliation against any Russian attack--a strategic concept that France still strongly supports. Yet the U.S. has since shifted to the Kennedy-McNamara concept of a more flexible military response that does not necessarily begin with nuclear attacks on the enemy's territory. By that unilateral action, charged Pompidou, the U.S. has effectively imposed its new strategy on NATO even though "perhaps a majority of the allied military chiefs" still favor massive retaliation. It also makes matters, in Pompidou's view, more perilous for Europe.

With NATO troops, missiles and warheads situated on its territory, said Pompidou, France runs the danger of being attacked in the event of a conflict between the U.S. and Russia "for reasons having nothing to do with France and its obligations to the alliance. None of that would force us to declare war, but it would make us a target for atomic bombs." In fact, Pompidou believes that the U.S. concept of flexible response might well turn Europe into a battlefield for U.S. and Russian weapons and thus "limit the area for atomic war to spare Russian and American territory. What we have against this doctrine is that it is specifically conceived as a function of the American geographical situation." The U.S. might get 15 minutes' notice of any missile attack, he added, but for France "the alert will be given by the bombs."

Too Proud. Anyway, said Pompidou, NATO has been something of an empty shell, since not the alliance but the U.S. atomic arsenal is what has effectively guaranteed the peace for the past 15 years. Therefore, talk of integration of NATO forces is useless because no one is willing to integrate the only force that really counts, the atomic arsenal. "The U.S. has always kept 95% of its nuclear force out of NATO and kept absolute control of the other 5%." Because the U.S. thus controls the use and distribution of all NATO's nuclear arms, said Pompidou, NATO can never be truly European. "What's a European commander in chief without nuclear arms? A supernumerary. We are too proud to be content with that role."

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