This paradox remained at the core of France’s international policies in the last two decades of the Cold War period, most notably during the 1970s. French foreign policy gave increasing signs of satisfaction with the established order during the presidencies of Georges Pompidou (1969-74) and Valery Giscard d’Estaing (1974-81). Indeed, in some important ways, the status quo could be seen as increasingly favorable to France’s security and "rank." On the West-West level, relations with the United States were now exempt from the drama of the Gaullist period. The Cold War stalemate guaranteed the maintenance of the US commitment to the defense of Europe. At the same time, the country’s claim to independence and non-alignment justified France’s distinctive position within the Atlantic alliance. (The French position in the Euromissile debate at the end of the decade was an illustration: Paris could support the deployment of US missiles in Europe in response to Soviet SS-20s without having to accept these missiles on French territory.)
On the East-West level, Franco-Soviet ties, against the backdrop of the evolution of detente, were now a permanent factor in France’s international posture. Pompidou and Giscard were willing to institutionalize the bilateral relationship beyond what de Gaulle had been prepared to accept and to maintain, to the extent possible, close contact with Soviet leaders. This orientation was much to the liking of Soviet officials: relations with post-Gaullist France were clearly an important asset for Moscow throughout the 1970s. While Pompidou was careful to avoid creating the impression of a Franco-Soviet "special relationship," Giscard proved ready to go quite far in that direction in spite of the deterioration of East-West relations at the end of the decade. His controversial meeting with Leonid Brezhnev in Warsaw in the spring of 1980 in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was an illustration of his strong desire to maintain an ongoing relationship with the Kremlin.
Last but not least, although the FRG had become a pivotal power as a result of its growing economic weight and political role in East-West relations, the confirmation of the European status quo now seemed to offer a long-lasting solution to the German question. The French, therefore, seemed willing to accept the stable balance of power. Accordingly, Pompidou maintained a somewhat ambivalent attitude toward Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik (which he welcomed as a German variant of detente, although it aimed to achieve longterm German national unity), and Giscard went even further, tacitly accepting the reality of Germany’s division. In short, France, in the 1970s, could denounce the consolidation of the established order while enjoying its advantages.
Still, continuity with the Gaullist revisionist design prevailed over the temptation of accommodation. The objective of overcoming the system of "Yalta" remained a key element in France’s rhetoric and policies in the 1970s and 1980s. True, de Gaulle’s far-reaching vision of a Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals was now replaced by a more modest approach. Yet the French concept of East-West relations remained fundamentally revisionist: hence the increasingly supportive French attitude vis-a-vis the project of a Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which the Pompidou administration officially championed in the fall of 1969. Of course, the French realized that the Soviets’ foremost objective in the CSCE was to consecrate the European political and legal status quo and the division of Europe. French diplomacy - like that of other Western allies - was therefore adamant that borders should not be recognized as inviolable as a result of the Helsinki negotiation (a key Soviet aim) and that their peaceful change should be allowed. Moreover, Paris remained watchful that the pan-European process not hinder prospects for an autonomous West European entity, which remained France’s long-term priority for severing the grip of "Yalta." French officials were also active in promoting the newly established European political cooperation, or EPC, as an instrument for coordinating West European diplomacy into the CSCE framework. Yet in the context of the 1970s, the CSCE was seen in Paris as the best instrument to undercut the blocs, especially in the East, where it was hoped the CSCE would contribute to the loosening of the Soviet grip. The French therefore insisted that the Helsinki process should bring together individual nations rather than organized blocs, and that issues of culture as well as freedom of opinion be included in Basket III of the conference. Moreover, French diplomats helped devise the three-basket formula of the CSCE, a schema that aimed at keeping pressure on Soviet diplomacy throughout the negotiation by making the conclusion of the deliberations conditional on substantive progress in human rights and economic and cultural exchange as well as security. In 1975, Giscard was the first Western leader to accept the Soviet proposal to hold the final meeting at the heads of states level, thus opening the way to the Helsinki summit which, as seen from Paris, marked the apogee of detente in Europe.
France's continued rejection of the bipolar logic in East-West relations during the 1970s was classically illustrated by Paris's refusal to participate in the negotiations on mutual and balanced force reductions (MBFR) and by its defiance of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), which the French regarded as a Soviet-American attempt to establish a condominium over the divided continent. French diplomacy, meanwhile, also pursued its long-term revisionist course within the Western alliance. Although Pompidou had tried to revive the idea of European strategic autonomy, it had remained a distant goal since the 1960s. Yet at the end of the 1970s, Giscard, together with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany, resumed efforts toward this goal, as illustrated by their willingness to step up Franco-German political-military cooperation in the framework of the Elysee Treaty. With the erosion of detente after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a more assertive Western Europe was again seen as a possible mediator between an aggressive Soviet Union and an overly reactive United States. In the long term, the French and the Germans might thereby help to ease the bipolar confrontation. French public opinion continued to support this aspect ofGaullism. While de Gaulle's policies a decade earlier had been at times hotly debated, by the end of the 1970s a much-famed "national consensus" by and large prevailed among the political class and in the wider public on the importance of an independent foreign and security policy, an autonomous Europe, and an end to blocs dividing the continent.
As seen from Paris, the events of the late 1980s were in line with the foregoing. A few years after his election in 1981, Francois Mitterrand found himself presiding over Europe's exit from the East-West conflict. A socialist and a longtime opponent of de Gaulle, Mitterrand had come to espouse de Gaulle's vision, declaring in 1981: "all that contributes to the exit from Yalta is good."250 Although Mitterrand had adopted a strongly pro-Western stance in the "new" Cold War after 1979 - his January 1983 speech in the Bundestag in support of the deployment of US missiles was a defining moment - the French president proved eager to engage Mikhail Gorbachev after he came to power in March 1985 and to take the lead in a "new" detente. At the same time, he and Chancellor Kohl nurtured Franco-German cooperation and European integration (the main objective, starting in 1988, was economic and monetary union). By 1989, against the background of rapid changes in the USSR and in Eastern Europe, France’s international policy sought to overcome Yalta progressively and establish a new European order in line with France’s long-term Gaullist vision. Democratization in the East and integration in the West, Mitterrand believed, would gradually allow Europeans to overcome the East-West divide and end the dominance of the superpowers.
This progressive scenario for the end of the Cold War was clearly outpaced by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dramatic developments that followed. Yet the French by no means attempted to slow down, let alone impede, these events, as often argued. In spite of brief misunderstandings in the fall and winter of 1989-90, Mitterrand and Kohl quickly determined to use German unification as an opportunity to make a decisive step in European unification. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty and the creation of the European Union were therefore the real endpoint of France’s policies at the conclusion of the Cold War and was the logical outcome of four decades of Franco-German reconciliation and European construction. These had been the two central objectives of French policy throughout the period; they constituted the groundwork for the kind of "European" Europe that had been at the center of the Gaullist vision since "Yalta.”
World History
