France Shakes the Foundations

In Washington, some U.S. foreign policy experts--at least in private--called it a cheap grandstand play without any substance. British diplomats spoke darkly about "bankruptcy and isolation. " From Brussels, there were discreet mutterings by Eurocrats about "another blow to the concept of unity." In Paris, the conservative, pro-government daily Le Figaro warned that the Common Market was on the brink of a "European Waterloo. " The cause of the comments was France's decision, forcefully defended at the Washington Energy Conference by Foreign Minister Michel Jobert (TIME, Feb. 25), to seek its own solution to the oil shortage. Last week, as repercussions from the French "go it alone"performance continued to rumble through Western Europe, TIME'S chief European correspondent William Rademaekers sent this analysis:

Crises are nothing new to Europe, particularly in recent months. But the Jobert position was significant precisely because the Community has been recently battered with problems that seem to have no solutions, or more accurately, without any political will to help solve them. Coming after the unseemly scramble for special oil deals in the Middle East, the sudden French decision to float ihe franc, and the deadlock on a regional fund to assist the poorer areas of Britain, Ireland and Italy, the haughty French behavior seems to have shaken the Community to its very foundations.

Where there was once at least a lingering, guarded optimism about the Community's future, there is now general skepticism. An increasing number of pro-Europe diplomats question whether the Community will ever be able to handle crisis situations. They also ask whether France will ever accept the fact that Europe is now far different than it was in the era of De Gaulle. If Jobert's performance in Washington was familiar, it was also shortsighted. The French now need the Common Market more than it needs France, so there is little persuasive power in a threat to walk out. Since the enlargement of the EEC, the French veto has lost much of its sting and has become more an annoyance than anything else. Perhaps the most egregious French miscalculation, however, was its belief that West Germany and Britain would be willing to sacrifice their own national interests for a greater Community interest--as defined by France. It is becoming increasingly clear that Bonn and London are as determined as France is to pursue national priorities and are not necessarily eager, under current political conditions, to push ahead for unity at all costs.

It is this single factor more than any other that has isolated France. Both West Germany and Britain indicated in Washington that they consider the Atlantic community the keystone of European unity. "Germany was given the choice between Europe and the U.S.," said a French television commentator, "and Germany chose the U.S." The Germans, as well as the other members of the Community, have directly challenged the French concept that what is good for France must necessarily be good for Europe.

The French flair for saying no has dominated the headlines, but it is the French dilemma that has greater long-range importance. Under De Gaulle, France acted a role in world affairs that went far beyond its size and power. It was France that made the first overtures of detente to the Soviet Union, and the French ambassador to Peking acted as an intermediary for American rapprochement with China. De Gaulle was both the architect of the 1963 treaty that formalized Franco-German rapprochement and the archrival who successfully kept Britain out of the Common Market for a full decade.

Certain Idea. Eventually, however, his diplomacy was overtaken by events.

The U.S. and the Soviet Union dominate the diplomatic scene today more than ever, not only in Western Europe but even in what was once an area of French initiative: North Africa and the Middle East. If overtures from Paris to the Arabs seem to be deliberately not coordinated with the U.S., it is because France is determined to check the "superpower condominium"--Jobert's phrase for a U.S.-Soviet hegemony that carves up the world without reference to the rights of other countries. This approach not only protects France's interests; it preserves De Gaulle's "certain idea" of France's unique position.

Diplomatically, France would seem to be trapped in its remembrance of things past. Still, it would be wrong to brush off Jobert's behavior simply as Gaullist tunnel vision. French President Georges Pompidou has shown himself to be a highly pragmatic politician. Since coming to power in 1969, he has alienated a substantial number of the Gaullist faithful by reversing France's position on a number of crucial issues --notably on monetary policy, where Pompidou is attacked for being "too dependent" on the dollar, and military policy, where there is now some creeping cooperation between France and the other members of NATO.

There is little doubt that Jobert's intransigent stance in Washington was orchestrated by Pompidou himself. What the ailing President wants, Paris observers believe, is to revive the particular role that France once played in the Mediterranean area. "If France is to be a modern country," Pompidou has said, "she must be allowed to maintain her position vis--vis foreign countries, to remain an independent state, having her own policy and what I shall call her influence, or rather, to use an expression I like better, her presence."

France's special interest in the Mediterranean was very much on Pompidou's mind long before the oil crisis and the Middle East war. He seems to believe that America, by its very presence in that area, overwhelms French diplomacy. Pompidou no longer claims a special relationship with Southeast Asia or Latin America, as De Gaulle did. But he finds France blocked in its own backyard, where its geography and history should give it a natural advantage. He is, in sum, dead serious about a lack of interest in cooperating with the U.S. in the Middle East, and he wanted Jobert to make that point clear in Washington.

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