France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 (40 page)

Read France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954 Online

Authors: William I. Hitchcock

Tags: #History, #Europe, #France, #Western, #Modern, #20th Century, #Political Science, #Security (National & International), #test

BOOK: France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944-1954
12.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
Page 189
hower administration, without support from the Congress or the British, refused to be drawn into the conflict. By the time the Geneva conference opened on April 26, the French at Dien Bien Phu were only a week away from capitulation, and France's empire in Asia stood on the brink of liquidation.
51
As the delegations began to arrive in Geneva for the international discussions on East-West relations in Asia (the Korean question had been placed on the agenda alongside Indochina), the French bargaining position looked bleak. Publicly committed to defending the territorial integrity of Vietnam  the nationalist Vietnamese had insisted on explicit French guarantees on this issue  the French nonetheless faced the prospect of losing the entire north to the Vietminh once the besieging forces from Dien Bien Phu fell upon Hanoi and Haiphong in the Red River Delta. Unless Bidault, the leader of the French delegation, struck a deal swiftly, before a worsening of the French military position, the entire French Expeditionary Force in northern Indochina would be in mortal danger.
Yet as the negotiations got underway, Bidault proved slow to tackle the much larger political problem of how to get France out of Indochina. He refused to negotiate directly with the Vietminh, and within France, critics charged that Bidault did not really want a political solution at all, but still hoped to persuade the United States to give greater support to a continued French war effort. In fact, Bidault was making halting progress. Secret talks between French military representatives and the Vietminh leadership had begun in late May in Geneva, during which both sides began to explore the prospect of a temporary partition of Vietnam, allowing for disengagement of forces and the sponsorship of elections within a short period of time. But these overtures remained unknown to the French Assembly, which began to clamor for more visible action in Geneva.
52
On June 9, a debate on Indochina policy opened in the National Assembly, and the parliamentarians heaped abuse on the Laniel government. The Socialists and Communists criticized the lack of progress in Geneva and called for an immediate end to the fighting. The ex-Gaullists blamed the government for the slaughter at Dien Bien Phu and the continuing sacrifices of French soldiers in a war Paris did not intend to prosecute. Though Bidault, rushed in from Geneva, gamely defended his negotiating strategy, Pierre Mendès France delivered the coup de grâace. Mendès France, who had long opposed the war  more vehemently than many of the Socialists who now rose in favor of withdrawal
 
Page 190
 launched a violent attack on Bidault, first for his dilatory tactics in Geneva, then for his efforts to bring the United States into the war, an outcome that by antagonizing China could lead to a general war in Asia. Not content to vilify Bidault's Indochina policy, Mendès France condemned the whole coterie of politicians who had served in the revolvingdoor governments since 1946, failing to deliver on promises or provide leadership for the country. "France does not deserve this," he cried from the tribune of the Assembly.
53
Mendès France struck a chord. On June 12, the Laniel government lost a vote of confidence, having been deserted by the Radicals and URAS (ex-Gaullists) who joined the Socialists and Communists in bringing the government down. The consequences of the wretched defeat at Dien Bien Phu had finally hit home.
Following the best parliamentary tradition, President René Coty called upon the man who had done most to unseat the previous government to create a new one. Mendès France, who narrowly missed becoming premier in June 1953, was not optimistic about his chances of securing the required votes. His broad criticism of the system had earned him few friends, and when the Communists announced that they would vote for his candidacy  the first time they supported any candidate since 1947  other parties were briefly scared off. But Mendès France executed two swift and brilliant maneuvers that led to a groundswell in his favor in the Assembly. He renounced the Communist support, stating that he would not count their votes in compiling his majority. Then, he set himself an ultimatum. He would achieve peace in Indochina within thirty days or resign. In a stroke, he had recaptured the initiative, and on June 12, he swept to power on a vote of 419 to 47, with the MRP and a few Independents abstaining. Subtracting the 99 Communist votes, Mendès France just cleared the 314-vote hurdle.
54
Gouverner C'est Choisir
There has grown up in recent years a considerable body of adulatory scholarship concerning the short and productive premiership of Pierre Mendès France. In the often dreary history of French politics in the 1950s, in which effective political leadership was so seldom evident, Mendes France stands out as one of the few men to have spoken frankly and acted decisively. Yet from the point of view of France's foreign policy, the new premier followed very closely the path already blazed by his two Christian Democratic predecessors, Schuman and Bidault. He moved quickly to capitalize on the progress Bidault had made in Geneva
 
Page 191
and within a month achieved his promised settlement of the Indochina war, securing a cease-fire and a temporary partition along the seventeenth parallel. When he turned his attention to the EDC, the solution he engineered on German rearmament reflected the constant French search for advantage over Germany. Mendès France did not favor the EDC itself  the complex mechanism on which so much fruitless energy had been expended  but kept the goal of a balanced and integrated Franco-German relationship clearly in his sights throughout his turbulent premiership.
55
Mendès France, who acted as not only prime minister but foreign minister as well, spent much of June and July working toward the settlement in Indochina. But the EDC problem did not remain quiescent. No sooner had he formed his government than the international pressure on the new premier to get the EDC through the parliament without serious modifications began to mount. The trio of Benelux foreign ministers, Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium, John-Willem Beyen of the Netherlands, and Joseph Bech of Luxembourg, played an especially active role. On June 23, Bech, claiming to speak for the other two, launched into the French ambassador to Luxembourg, decrying France's duplicitous behavior toward the EDC since 1952, and stating that though he recognized the pressing problems in Indochina, European issues were no less important. Without a prompt passage of the EDC, he said, France might face "a new Dien BienPhu, this time in Europe, with consequences still more tragic than the first." Spaak, an ardent European and strong backer of the EDC, invited Mendès France to Brussels for a conference on the subject. When he refused due to the Indochina negotiations, the clearly agitated Spaak went to Paris to express his views directly to the premier. He told Mendès France that the Benelux countries, and probably Germany, would not accept any new negotiations on the EDC treaty until after the French Assembly ratified it in its present form. If ratification failed, Belgium, for one, would urge the prompt entry of Germany into NATO. Mendès France told Spaak that in its present form the EDC stood no chance in the French Assembly and that some modifications, probably concerning the supranational aspects of the treaty, would be necessary if the EDC were to pick up votes from the center and right. Spaak at least managed to secure Mendès France's commitment to go to Brussels in August to discuss such alterations with the other five EDC powers.
56
The United States and Britain too kept the pressure on Mendès France. In the last week of June, Churchill and Eden traveled to Wash-
 
Page 192
ington to meet with Eisenhower and Dulles, where they laid the groundwork for a joint Anglo-American position should the EDC collapse. In such an event, the two powers would seek the prompt restoration of German sovereignty without French cooperation, and would propose a new framework for a German contribution to western defense. To this end, the leaders agreed to establish a working group to outline possible alternative scenarios for German rearmament. Though French ambassador Henri Bonnet did not know the full content of these talks, he reported on the growing wave of support for an alternative solution to the EDC, one that would represent the defeat of France's long campaign to control and contain German influence in Europe.
57
Mendès France was rather perplexed and annoyed at the behavior of his partners. In a long telegram to the relevant diplomatic posts, he made clear the problem he faced. There was, he believed, no chance of getting the treaty passed in its present form. Yet he himself believed that a final rejection of the treaty would be a calamity for the Western Alliance. Thus, the treaty must be amended so as to secure some votes from those on the center and right who up to now had balked at the treaty's supranational features. Until these amendments were worked out by the French, the other EDC nations ought to be supportive rather than engage in public recriminations. Spaak's precipitous call for a conference, as well as Adenauer's own public pronouncements about his hostility to any new changes, were certain, in Mendès France's mind, to do more harm than good for prospects of the treaty within France. In mid-July, Mendès France told Dulles, then in Geneva to participate in the last stage of the Indochina conference, that there was no majority for the treaty. It therefore had to be altered or rejected. That was the choice that lay before the concerned parties.
58
Precisely what amendments could break this impasse remained unclear, even to the premier. In early July, he asked the Gaullist defense minister Pierre Koenig to sit down with a pro-EDC cabinet colleague, Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury, to search for common ground between their positions. Their talks were totally unproductive, and instead Mendès France turned to the Quai d'Orsay to find a compromise solution to present to the other EDC nations.
59
In the first week of August, the Quai was a beehive of activity. The anti-EDC forces, led by the secretary-general of the Quai, Alexandre Parodi, and supported by Mendès France's long-time adviser Georges Boris and the legal counsel for the Foreign Ministry André Gros, sought to start from scratch with a new treaty. They believed the EDC should be replaced by a seven-
 
Page 193
nation coalition of national armies  the EDC Six plus Great Britain  that would have very limited supranational features, mostly in the areas of common arms production, and that would be placed within the framework of NATO. Some of the restrictions against German independence would be held over from the EDC. This scheme found some support in London, and in fact closely resembled the British-sponsored plan agreed to at the end of the year.
60
Mendès France, however, evidently believed that he had to honor the commitment made to the EDC by French governments since 1952 rather than jettison the plan altogether. He rejected Parodi's "little NATO" approach in favor of modifications to the treaty as it stood. Working from ideas presented to him by Bourgès-Maunoury, Jean Guérin de Beaumont, an Independent Republican who held the post of secretary of state for foreign affairs, and Philippe de Seynes, head of Mendès France's Quai d'Orsay cabinet, the premier sought a series of additional protocols that might postpone some features of the treaty and strengthen national control over the EDC's Commissariat. The key was to find changes that were not so sweeping as to require the reopening of ratification procedures in the member states, yet substantial enough to pick up some votes on the right in parliament from deputies who decried the loss of national control over the army.
61
The Brussels conference opened on August 19, and here Mendès France unveiled his proposals for amending the EDC treaty. The protocols suggested changes in seven areas: that the United States and Britain should reconsider their commitment to leave troops on the continent of Europe, or in the case of German reunification, member states would be free to reconsider their commitment to the treaty; that for a period of eight years, any member state could unilaterally suspend any decision of the EDC Commissariat; that promotion would be carried out by national military establishments for a four-year period; that EDC forces would only be integrated in forward areas  that is, Germany  but not in rear areas, so that no German troops would be stationed on French soil; that French voting power would always be equal to German regardless of the size of their military contribution to the EDC; that France would have a larger role in the military production of EDC munitions and weaponry; and that Article 38 of the EDC treaty that called for the creation of a European Political Community as a corollary to the defense community would be dropped altogether. According to a Quai memorandum, these amendments would provide for "a gradual and prudent application of the treaty in order to avoid any sudden con-
 
Page 194
vulsions in the military establishments and economic conditions of the member states."
62
The response from the other Brussels conferees, each of which knew the gist of the protocols before the opening of the conference, was uniformly hostile. The U.S. State Department thought the proposals unacceptable, but let the Benelux countries do the work of pressuring Mendès France at the conference. They, in turn, informed the French of their irreducible opposition to the protocols, which introduced new discriminatory measures against Germany, undermined the integrative features of the EDC, and postponed its coming into force for almost a decade. Significantly, only the British thought the proposals worth exploring.
63
The Brussels conference was an unpleasant experience for Mendès France. His counterparts totally isolated him; Adenauer refused to meet with him until the last day of the conference; Dulles sent him doomladen telegrams, speaking of a "great crisis" should France continue to demand such outrageous concessions; and special envoy Ambassador David Bruce worked behind the scenes, at Dulles's urging, to intimidate the premier by asking Spaak to call a meeting of the United States, Britain, Benelux, and Germany that would determine how best to secure German sovereignty and rearmament without French participation.
64
In the midst of this crisis, Alexandre Parodi, shocked by the hostility that met the French premier and perhaps eager to the see the conference fail, wrote a memo to Mendès France denouncing the pressure tactics of the EDC partners and urged firmness. "You are being subjected to the strongest, most manifestly concerted, and the most indiscreet pressure that I have ever seen brought to bear on a French government," Parodi wrote. ''If you accept, public opinion will know that you have given in to a maneuver designed to intimidate you. . . . If you do not accept, then we shall have a crisis, for the Americans are not bluffing. But at least we shall know where we stand. And we hold far too many essential positions, both in Europe and in Indochina, for anyone to try to get around us." Moreover, Parodi went on, at least France shall be out of this impasse, and able to renegotiate a better framework for a German contribution to western defense. Added to the acrimony generated at Brussels, Parodi's words were vital in bringing the premier around to the view that France would be better off without the EDC, even if its failure opened up a new crisis in the Western Alliance. After three fruitless days, Mendès France left Brussels, angered, hurt, and determined to see the EDC killed off as quickly as possible.
65

Other books

Claimed by Jaymie Holland
Shadows of the Ancients by Christine M. Butler
The Vows of Silence by Susan Hill
Henry of Atlantic City by Frederick Reuss
Insufficiently Welsh by Griff Rhys Jones
Night Hunter by Vonna Harper
To Rescue a Rogue by Jo Beverley