FRANCE
80. A further element that will play in this debate
will be France's role within an enlarged and reformulated NATO.
French defence policy has been in the process of major reorientation
since the end of the Gulf conflict in 1991. French politicians
have long accepted the need to embrace a reformed NATO as a pre-requisite
to effective security in contemporary Europe. Indeed, intense
French concerns with security in the Mediterranean, and Southern
European, theatres has increased its stake in a successful evolution
of the Alliance to help France address those issues. In addition,
Paris is keen to further develop its role in peacekeeping and
humanitarian intervention, where the use of NATO assets is difficult
to avoid.[172]
If this suggests, however, that there is no objective reason why
France should not re-enter the Integrated Military Structure and
resume its place as a full Alliance member, then it underestimates
the symbolic importance to Paris of making such a move. Prior
to 1997, such re-integration was regarded as inevitable and French
politicians actively fed such a perception. The dispute over command
of NATO AFSOUTH in the autumn of 1996, however, proved to be a
considerable setback and something of a humiliation to President
Chirac. Its aftermath has effectively ruled out any early formal
re-entry of France into the IMS or the Nuclear Planning Group.[173]
Earlier French enthusiasm for a reformed NATO has cooled since
the beginning of 1997 and a France that is 'in, but not integrated'
into NATO, in the words of the French Defence Minister Alain Richard
in 1997, seems to be the limit of what Paris is now prepared to
offer.[174]
However, we would welcome France formally re-entering NATO's Integrated
Military System whenever it feels it is prepared to do so.
81. In strictly military terms, however, this problem
may be more apparent than real. The Committee was told in Paris
and Brussels how keen French defence ministry officials were to
set in place procedures and mechanisms that would improve its
armed forces co-operation within the NATO structure, and France
remains fully involved in the planning for Combined Joint Task
Forces which almost certainly represent the most likely framework
in which NATO forces will be deployed over the coming few years.[175]
Not least, France has taken a leading role in deploying to FYROM
to establish the extraction force for potential operations in
Kosovo, and France promised what would be the second largest contingent,
after that of the UK, in the force that would be drawn together
to enforce any successful agreement in Kosovo. However, France
may still be attached to a view that the development of the ESDI
is more about separate development of European defence than reinforcement
of the transatlantic Alliance. Political problems between French
and American perceptions of NATO's future are likely to remain
for some time to come, and have the potential to cause the Alliance
major problems. In a military sense, however, the process of operational
planning continues on a generally convergent course and France
is of, if not in, the IMS; though the speed of progress may be
affected by political disputes.
172 Ev p 117 Back
173 Meeting
at IFRI, Paris, 19 January 1999 Back
174 Ev
p 118 Back
175 Meeting
at MoD, Paris, 19 January 1999 Back
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