The French Way (20 page)

Reagan relented when it became clear that his administration had gone too far. The sanctions had disrupted the alliance: the Europeans had, for once, stood together and defied the embargo in order to honor their contracts. But the way Reagan lifted sanctions in November 1982, connecting this action with an announcement of renewed consultation over transferring strategic materiel and credits, antagonized the Elysee. In a huff Mitterrand refused to return Reagan's phone call about the matter and the French formally disassociated themselves from the
announcement. Cheysson could not restrain himself: “We signed the [NATO] Washington Treaty,” he exploded, “not the Warsaw Pact.”
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The irony of the pipeline affair, as Anthony Blinken has pointed out, was that Reagan's policy had made adversaries out of his European allies, who in turn supported the Soviets.
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At the heart of these disputes was the heavy-handed anticommunism of the Reagan administration that slighted West European interests and advice. Given their extensive trading with East Europeans, given the likelihood sanctions would impose further suffering on the Polish people, and given their hope for detente, the French and many other West Europeans were not eager to face down the Kremlin or risk an all-out trade war to fight communism.

In the eyes of the French, Reagan and his policies were, at first, unwelcome. After nearly a year in office they thought he was nearly as great a threat to world peace as was Leonid Brezhnev.
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Almost two years after he came to the White House over half of the French had a bad opinion of U.S. policy in world affairs. To be sure, the most potent naysayers lodged on the left including two-thirds of those supporting Mitterrand's own Socialist Party.
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Despite the government's new Atlanticism there was public outrage, above all, because the Reagan administration proved unwilling to assuage French grievances over America's high interest rates and the elevated exchange rate of the dollar while the dispute over the Soviet pipeline only intensified feelings that the United States was ignoring French and European economic interests and trying to rule by fiat. In 1982 the most common adjectives applied to the U.S. government were “interfering,” “arrogant,” “insufficient” and “inconsistent.” There was little difference between right and left, with almost as many supporters of the RPR finding the Americans “arrogant” as did Socialists.
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When the G7 gathered in Williamsburg, Virginia, in the spring of 1983 the principal issues were inflation, global economic recovery, and American interest rates. Paris had advised Washington to confine the summit to such economic topics, but Ronald Reagan insisted on adding
a resolution on security that presented a solid Western front to stop Moscow from obstructing the arms limitation talks at Geneva. He also wanted to add Japan, which in theory could become a target for the SS-2os, to the alliance under the rubric of “global security.” Mitterrand took strong exception and, to Reagan's dismay, critiqued his resolution word by word. “Global” was inaccurate since, he reminded his host, “the Atlantic Alliance is not universal.”
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If Japan were to be included, the French president argued, solidarity had to be limited to the Euromissile danger. In the background was the French fear that Reagan's proposal for “global security” would bring France so close to the alliance that the Soviets could legitimately insist that the force de frappe be counted in the arms talks; French nuclear forces could then be negotiated away by the superpowers. Mitterrand whispered, “If I don't stop this text, France won't have any nuclear weapons in ten years.”
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He held firm, vetoing any communique that might endanger the French deterrent, and creating a tense scene at Williamsburg: Reagan in frustration threw his pencil on the table; he later admitted, “I got angry.”
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Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl tried to persuade a testy Mitterrand to compromise, and Reagan's security adviser, unbeknown to Mitterrand, threatened one of the latter's aides with breaking all military relations with the French, including assistance in developing nuclear weapons, if they refused to sign.
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Isolated, Mitterrand gave in, but not before he had softened the language of the resolution so that it created some space between France and “global security.”
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The French president, according to his aides, was “furious”: he called the Williamsburg Summit “a trap” and later openly railed against Reagan's behavior as “more dangerous and more unpredictable” than he had ever believed.
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To the press Cheysson described the talks as “lively” rather than acrimonious, but his answers to journalists' questions exposed the intensity of the disagreements.
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Mitterrand's team came to view such summits as perilous because France was often put in a minority position and had either to give in to the Americans or be treated as an obstreperous ally. According to Hubert
Vedrine, “For France, each year, under Reagan, the G7 is
Apache Canyon”
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He likened the Reagan White House to a “bulldozer” and found Reagan himself to be unsophisticated and prone to telling anecdotes rather than to serious negotiation. Yet Vedrine believed it was a mistake to underestimate “the former actor's powerful charisma,” his deep convictions, his pragmatism, and his intuitive sense of the American people.
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Jacques Attali, another member of the Elysee team, was more severe. He was not seduced by Reagan's optimism and happy talk, which only concealed “the extraordinary emptiness of his conversation” punctuated by stories about his career in movies and silly jokes. During summits, Attali observed, the American president could only “read from tiny note cards that he took from his left inside coat pocket” which usually ended with a question.
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To French diplomats Reagan seemed unable to develop coherent arguments and preferred to extract information from others.

Figure 4. Smiles conceal bickering: Presidents François Mitterrand and Ronald Reagan at the Williamsburg Summit, 1983. Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library.

Williamsburg demonstrated the precarious position in which Mitterrand had placed France: by crossing the Atlantic he had put at risk French independence, especially in security matters. He could not square the circle by trying to close the gap with NATO yet stay aloof. Nor could he satisfy his own backers. Many socialists remained skeptical and the French Communist Party, his governing partners, attacked the Williamsburg Resolution, accusing Mitterrand of aligning France with the United States.
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While the heads of state quarreled—mostly behind doors—at their summits, the French public warmed toward Reagan and the United States. The balance of opinion shifted rather dramatically from negative to positive at the end of Reagan's first term. Between December 1982 and June 1985 the overall favorable opinion of the United States jumped from 48 percent to 70 percent and remained near this high level until 1987.
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And this improvement contrasted sharply with diminishing confidence among both the British and West Germans in the same period.
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Similarly “good” rather than “bad” opinions of U.S. global policies advanced smartly from 1982 to early 1984 and
progressed further by late 1985; in fact, they improved among all age cohorts, occupations, and political parties as well as both genders.
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The mid-1980s were the halcyon days of the Reagan administration in France. In 1987, among eight West European countries, France, along with West Germany and Italy, ranked highest for holding favorable views—as well as the fewest unfavorable views—toward President Reagan.
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Among those expressing positive attitudes, Reagan was accepted as friendly, trustworthy, and inspirational.

Explanations for the heightened popularity of U.S. policy and President Reagan in the mid-1980s are several. Some of these have been discussed in chapter 1, like the eye-catching performance of the American economy after 1982. There was also the gradual abatement of some controversies, like those over Central America and the Soviet pipeline. At the same time Reagan's assertiveness, accompanied by his affable ways, seemed to please those in France, especially on the right, who had grown anxious about the Soviets. The apprehensions that greeted Reagan in 1981-82 subsided once he demonstrated firmness without belligerence. Mitterrand contributed by trying to cultivate Reagan and by putting a smile on relations with Washington, and this was topped off by his state visit in 1984. In a small way he mollified dissent from the left. Finally, there was the Gorbachev factor: in 1985 the Soviet leader initiated a relaxation of Cold War tension, and this improved the image of not only the USSR but also the United States because Reagan seemed to be amenable to a sincere pursuit of nuclear arms control; this pleased that large body of French opinion that continued to favor detente.

During 1985-86 the meltdown of the Cold War created a new situation for Franco-American relations. In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev took charge in the Kremlin and adopted a far more conciliatory stance toward the West, including expressing interest in resolving the dispute over the Euromissiles and scaling down the nuclear arsenals of the superpowers. At the same time Ronald Reagan took up the cause of nuclear disarmament and the construction of an antimissile defense as
ways of ending the danger of an atomic Armageddon. He also championed the “double zero option,” which proposed the elimination of all intermediate missiles instead of deploying American launchers to balance the SS-2os. “How should France respond to these initiatives?” became the question.

As the Cold War entered a new phase socialist domination of the French government ended; in 1986 the Right won the legislative elections and Mitterrand had to partner with Jacques Chirac as his prime minister. “Cohabitation,” as this power-sharing was dubbed, undercut the consensus on foreign policy. Differences between the socialist president and the Gaullist premier made headlines—but, in the end, the Elysee prevailed.

The American bombing of Libya exposed both the insouciance of the Reagan administration toward currying French support and the loss of consensus in Paris. It also showed that the French people were more disposed toward backing the United States over taking the fight to terrorists in the Mediterranean than was the Mitterrand team.

On the night of April 14-15, 1986, American F-iiis based in the United Kingdom, along with carrier-based aircraft, bombed several sites along the Libyan coast and killed, among others, the adopted daughter of its president, Mu'ammar al-Gadhafi, and nearly hit him. Reagan wanted to strike a blow against a notorious sponsor of international terrorism and to retaliate for Libya's alleged involvement in the bombing of a West Berlin nightclub that had taken the lives of two American servicemen and wounded hundreds. The French agreed with the goal of removing Gadhafi: they had clashed militarily with Libya over Chad and would have liked to see an end to Gadhafi's terrorist activities, which threatened them even more than they did the Americans. But Paris was not consulted about the operation and worried, once informed of Washington's intentions, that a mere show of force would put at risk France's relations with the Arab world while failing to remove Gadhafi from power.
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Reagan told Chirac he intended to kill Gadhafi, but the French prime minister expressed his doubts about
such a mission.
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Advisers in the Elysee also worried about making Gadhafi a martyr to the Arab world.
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The Quai d'Orsay joined in expressing skepticism about the operation and worrying about the safety of French hostages in Beirut. Chirac and Mitterrand agreed to refuse to cooperate with the U.S. government.

The European allies were informed, rather than consulted, about the action and the French government was officially asked to allow use of its airspace less than two days before the raid. Mitterrand balked, and denied the Americans fly-over rights, forcing the F-iiis to travel almost twice as far to hit Libya. In general, West Europeans were unimpressed by the strike, seeing it as an ineffective, Rambo-like gesture by Reagan. Most governments shunned it, and Spain also refused use of its airspace. In the end only Margaret Thatcher, against the will of the British people, openly backed the attack.

The snub from Paris touched off another anti-French spasm in the United States. Not only did the Republican administration blame France for making American pilots fly a more dangerous route but Democratic leaders in the U.S. Congress openly expressed their disappointment with their ally. In the press and on television the French were vilified: American tourists planning European vacations were advised to skip France. On the
Tonight Show
Johnny Carson threw a pie at an actor portraying a Frenchman while on French television Vernon Walters, the special envoy who had toured European capitals in behalf of Washington's plan, complained of the country's ingratitude while reminding the audience of the aid the United States had given them after World War II. Some in the French press took exception to this vilification. One weekly retaliated by invoking the well-known American inferiority complex: “Could they be jealous of our culture, our sophistication, our taste, our subtlety?”
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