French Security Policy In Transition PDF Download

This report seeks to identify the various pressures on the famous French "defense consensus" and to ask how France has been adapting to those pressures so far. Based on extensive interviews with French officials and analysts over the past 12 months, the report places evolving French security policy into its postwar context and attempts to determine the extent to which traditional French thinking about European security has changed, and to identify those areas in which it has not changed. Section 2 reviews the main elements of French security policy since the early 196Os and examines the geopolitical, diplomatic, and fiscal pressures that many believe will force France to modify its long-standing approach. Section 3 analyzes French policy over the past 2 years in three key dimensions: the Atlantic Alliance, the European security identity, and France's global military role in the wake of the Persian Gulf War. Section 4 assesses the prospects for near-term change in French security policy and analyzes three of the most plausible scenarios that could follow the legislative elections scheduled for 1993. Section 5 concludes by examining the implications of French policy for French-American relations and offering some recommendations for U.S. policy toward France. Despite momentous geopolitical changes in Europe since lae 1989, the basic elements of French security policy have not changed much, as revealed both in France's relations with Europe and NATO and in its response to the Gulf War. The study finds that a major reorientation of security policy is unlikely in the near term. It is not in America's interest to marginalize or isolate France by focusing solely on its Atlantic allies in Europe. While immobilism is more likely than major change in French-U.S. relations, the United States should not oppose attempts to create a European security and defense identity, and it should do more to show France that the rejuvenation of NATO is not meant to replace everything els7