Mitterrand's Foreign Policy; Continuity and Vulnerability
| Published date | 01 October 1983 |
| Date | 01 October 1983 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.1983.tb00076.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
MITTERRAND'S
FOREIGN
POLICY:
CONTINUITY AND VULNERABILITY
PHILIP
G
CERNY
The foreign policy
of
the
Fifth
Republic
has
been inextricably intertwined over the
past quarter of a century with the process of regime consolidation
and
development
in France, a country which after
the
Second World War experienced rapid
onv version
to an advanced industrial society.
were dominated by the right-wing coalition which controlled the state until May 1981.
However, that style
and
substance, concerned
as
it
was
with
French independence from
superpower hegemony and the Cold War bloc system, appealed broadly to a cross-class
alliance within French public opinion. This included even the Communist left,
and
helped to lay the foundation for political legitimacy as the state
was
stabilised and
the economy modernised (a process itself stimulated and shaped by state
dirigisme).
Furthermore,
that
very legitimacy was closely bound
up
with a presidential authority
at
the centre
of
the governmental apparatus, that invested the President of the
Republic
with
a special and salient charge to represent and pursue the 'national
interest'. Thus when Francois Mitterrand
was
elected President
on
10 May 1981, followed
by the victory of his Socialist Party in parliamentary elections
a
month later, he
had
to
integrate and balance the foreign policy
aims
of the left
with
a strong, con-
sensual legacy underpinning
his
own power both at home and abroad
-
all
in
a context
of
economic recession
and
conflicts of interest greater
than
those facing his predecessors.
In
this
context, foreign policy style and substance
~~~~~~~ities
and
Ambiguities
The foreign policy
of
any government
in
France is elaborated within the framework
of
broad
principles
and
orientations developed under the presidency of de Gaulle in
the
1960s.
These orientations, like those developed
in
the 1790s in the
United
States
by
George Washington, (which shaped American foreign policy-making for
a
century
and
a
half) are structurally important in the long-term context of French political deve-
lopment in the
Fifth
Republic.
institutional authority of the presidency,
the
ascendancy of new elites
,
a commitment
to
economic modernisation
at
home
and
a
distinctive approach
to
foreign alliances
through a constitutional balance of forces aligned
with
underlying long-term trends
of
social change. De Gaulle, for whom foreign policy was
a
central preoocupation, thus
played the role
of
a
'founding
father' in French political life,
and
this very real
ideological legacy constrains governments of both the right and the left. The foreign
policy stance of the current Socialist govern~ent confirms
this
analysis.
phrase of Leo Hamon's, to attain
in
a
world of dependencies, the maximum feasible
autonomy to choose between and to manipulate the different and often conflicting forms
of
dependence and interdependence to which France
is
normally subject. This
'
indepen-
dence' has been symbolised for all French governments since
1958
by
the development
of
the
independent French nuclear deterrent
(FNS);
decolonisation
and
the attempt to
build
a
special relationship of cooperation
with
the
Third
World beyond the immediate
orbit
of the superpowers; the demand for greater political and strategic influence
within
the Atlantic Alliance
and
(after the 1966
NATO
crisis, when France
withdrew
because these demands were not met) the refusal to participate formally
within
an
integrated
NATO
command structure. In
addition,
the attempt to
build
special relation-
ships
with
the
East (the policy of detente
with
the
USSR
in
the
mid-l960s,
the recog-
nition of
China
in
1964,
cultural and economic exchanges
with
Eastern Europe, etc.) and
the desire to protect national interests
within
the
European Community
(the
Luxembourg
Agreement
of
1966)
while developing
a
mode
of
'intergovernmental' cooperation
at
the
European level have become
part
of
the
living
folklore of French politics. They
constitute
at
the same time the expression of national sovereignty on the external
This
is
because
they
link the consolidation of the
The core oftheGaullist legacy is the notion
of
independence,
or,
to
adapt
a
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