The Secret Life of France

by Lucy Wadham

  Less than two weeks before Kennedy’s talks with Macmillan in Nassau, the former secretary of state Dean Acheson gave a speech to a group of students at West Point that was – and probably still is – a pretty accurate summary of the American view: ‘Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role. The attempt to play a separate power role, that is, a role apart from Europe, a role based primarily on a “special relationship” with the United States, a role based on being head of the Commonwealth [is] about played out.’

  By the time he came to the negotiating table, Harold Macmillan must have been smarting with wounded pride. He already knew that Kennedy had decided to scrap Skybolt. Britain – who had cancelled ‘Blue Streak’, her own ballistic missile programme – had been left high and dry by the Americans.

  Kennedy and Macmillan talked for three days. By the time they emerged, blinking, into the Caribbean sunshine, Kennedy had agreed to provide Britain with the far more advanced, second-generation Polaris missiles instead of Skybolt. In exchange, Britain would honour her commitment to provide the Americans with a strategic base at Holy Loch, Scotland.

  De Gaulle, who had received Macmillan at Rambouillet two days before his trip to the Bahamas, had hoped to engage him in a nuclear partnership with France. In his eyes, the only impediment to this would be Britain’s continued nuclear alliance with America. After all, the goals of these two old men, at the head of two defunct empires, were the same – to claw back some prestige and independence in the world – and, as they both knew, only nuclear fire could do that.

  After the Rambouillet meeting, de Gaulle told his secretary of state, Alain Peyrefitte, ‘England’s back is broken,’ an impression that was only confirmed five days later, when Macmillan left Nassau. De Gaulle did not see the Anglo-American agreement as a victory for Macmillan, who had rather brilliantly steered Kennedy round to offering the Polaris missiles. As far as de Gaulle was concerned, the fact that Polaris offered a better defence for Britain than Skybolt, and at a very low financial cost, was irrelevant. He thought first as a soldier, then as a politician. As soon as the British accepted Polaris, the RAF would lose its strategic-deterrent role¶ and, for de Gaulle, this was an unacceptable price for a sovereign nation.

  *

  It is impossible to understand French foreign policy – which so often appears just contrary and intractable – without understanding her particular role in nuclear history. Indeed, French national pride has become inextricably linked to her perceived independence in the world – an independence to which, without her nuclear might, she could have had no pretension.

  Even after her humbling defeat in the Second World War, France – whose scientists had, before the war, put her at the head of the atomic race – would never give up her ambition for nuclear self-sufficiency. On 18 October 1945, almost a year before the Americans created their Atomic Energy Commission, de Gaulle set up the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique (CEA), nominating as its director the physicist Frédéric Joliot-Curie, who, with his wife, Irene, had won the Nobel Prize for their work on artificial radiation and nuclear fission. The fact that Joliot-Curie was a card-carrying communist would not endear him to the Western world’s scientific community, but it did not deter de Gaulle. He shelved his mistrust of communists, for Joliot-Curie had proven his credentials. In 1939 he had the insight to order 6 tons of uranium oxide from the Belgian Congo and nearly all of the available heavy water from Norway, and send them to England for safekeeping.

  From 1945 onwards, de Gaulle’s nuclear policy was backed by a broad political consensus. Despite the widely held view that the general drove France’s nuclear programme single-handedly with the sheer force of his obsession for sovereignty, all parties within the volatile Fourth Republic (with the notable exception of the pro-Soviet Communist Party) stood firmly behind the nuclear programme. This explains why it advanced apace even while the general was not in power. It gathered momentum after the humiliation of Suez, when the victorious advance of the British–French–Israeli expeditionary force was brought to an abrupt halt by the Soviet threat of a nuclear missile attack. In a note to Prime Minister Anthony Eden, Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin had warned: ‘If this war is not stopped, it carries the danger of turning into a Third World War.’

  After the wake-up call of Suez, both Britain and France understood the necessity of owning a convincing nuclear capability if they were to play any significant role on the world stage. To this end, Britain turned to America, paving the way for the Nassau Agreement, while France resolved that, as soon as she could, she would end any reliance on the superpower for her foreign policy – a decision that would lead to her gradual but ineluctable withdrawal from NATO in July 1966.

  Of his nation’s remarkable feat of acquiring total nuclear independence, de Gaulle said, ‘We owe nothing to the Americans except trip-ups.’

  This was, of course, not fair. As Yves would explain to me that afternoon over tea, de Gaulle had a lot to thank the Americans for, though he could not admit this publicly. One of his key military advisers, a former RAF pilot called Pierre-Marie Gallois, had, as far back as April 1956, brought de Gaulle about 20 kilos’ worth of NATO files containing all the details of the US military’s strategy of ‘massive retaliation’. These files – which de Gaulle helped Gallois carry to the lift when the briefing ended in the early hours of the morning – were brought to him at the suggestion of the deputy Supreme Allied Commander Allied Forces Europe, General Lauris Norstad, a man at the time sympathetic to the French position. Norstad came to regret his decision to share this precious information when it became clear that France’s goal was to set up an independent nuclear force at odds with both NATO strategy and American interests.

  *

  Listening to Yves on the subject of Cold War nuclear proliferation, the apparently contrary nature of French policy makes perfect sense. The historian Linda Colley, in her brilliant study of British nationhood, Britons: Forging the Nation, observed that the countries making up the United Kingdom – formed at the beginning of the eighteenth century – managed largely to find their sense of national unity by rallying around their hostility towards the French. I have always been struck by the fact that the French do not return this hostility. Where anti-British sentiment does occur in France, it seems feeble in comparison (stemming, perhaps, from some unhappy romantic experience on an exchange trip to Brighton, or from an unpleasant encounter with a football supporter on the loose in France during the World Cup). It does not have the depth or conviction of manufactured mythology, like the British hatred of the French, still dutifully upheld by the tabloids. If one had to find an equivalent cultural antagonism in France, it would have to be towards the Americans.

  ‘America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilisation,’ said Georges Clemenceau. This savage remark reflects the nature of French anti-American sentiment, even today. Yves’s comments about American ignorance of History betray a similar prejudice.

  Intellectual snobbery lies at the heart of the French sense of self. Her education system, her so-called meritocracy – based not on birth or money but on academic achievement – indeed her whole society is constructed around rationalist principles that many French people believe are the opposite of American values. As most French people see it, France is secular, while America is religious. France values Learning and Culture, while America values Power and Money.

  After May ’68, American capitalism became the target of a generation of French intellectuals. Since then, anti-American sentiment has so infused France’s mainstream press that no one seems to notice it any more. It reached its apogee in September 2001, when a series of editorials, after offering the requisite condolences, went on to argue that America had deserved the attacks on the World Trade Center, or at least, had it coming to her. Jean-Marie Colombani, chief writer and publisher of Le Monde, wrote a piece on the day after the attacks entitled ‘We are all Am
ericans’.|| The analysis that followed was rather more equivocal in its support than the title.

  ‘The reality is, surely, that of a world without counter-powers, physically destabilised and dangerous, as a result, in the absence of any multi-polar equilibrium. And America, alone in her power, in her hyperpower … has ceased to draw the peoples of the globe to her; or, more exactly, in certain parts of the globe, she seems no longer to attract anything but hatred … And perhaps even we ourselves in Europe, from the Gulf War to the use of F16s against Palestinians by the Israeli Army, have underestimated the hatred which – from the outskirts of Jakarta to Durban, via the rejoicing crowds of Nablus and of Cairo – is focused on the United States … Couldn’t it be, then, that America gave birth to this devil?’

  Nowadays, French anti-American sentiment is expressed through the more covert form of anti-globalisation. This includes a resistance to unbridled capitalism, a defence of regional (as opposed to national) identity, but also a championing of all peoples or nations perceived to be victims of oppression. It also seems, quite often, to act as political camouflage for anti-Israeli sentiment (embedded within Colombani’s critique of America is an attack on her support for Israel). This position can, in some cases, spill over into an expression of anti-Semitism.

  As my own small experiences with Nathalie and la bande had already shown me, the anatomy of French anti-Semitism is varied and complex. You will find it in the oddest places. José Bové, hero of the French anti-globalisation movement La Fédération Paysanne, moustachioed cheese-maker, champion of cultural diversity and GM vandal, managed to get himself arrested while on a trip to Israel. On his return he suggested in an interview on French TV that Mossad was behind the recent wave of attacks against French synagogues.

  ‘Who profits from the crime? The Israeli government and its secret services have an interest in creating a certain psychosis, in making believe that there is a climate of anti-Semitism in France, in order to distract attention from what they are doing.’

  Anti-Semitism seems impossible to wipe out in France. It shifts and mutates, changing shape with each new generation. Today, it can be found lying just below the surface of Bové’s otherwise quite legitimate struggle against cultural hegemony. It can also be found lurking beneath the widespread contempt for the current president.

  Nicolas Sarkozy talks without difficulty about his father’s Hungarian origins, frequently referring to himself as the son of an immigrant. He never, on the other hand, invokes his mother’s Jewish roots, as if to do so in a nation whose anti-Semitism is ever-present and unresolved would be too risky.

  During a visit to one of France’s rioting suburbs (euphemistically referred to by the press and by politicians as ‘difficult’) Sarkozy was, as usual, bombarded with abuse from angry youths, many of whom were Muslims of North African origin. The French TV crew covering the incident failed to report the exact wording of their abuse. France’s fifth channel, France 5, claiming poor sound quality, chose to subtitle the real chant, ‘Sarkozy, Filthy Jew!’ as ‘Sarkozy, Fascist!’

  That a TV editor would run the risk of making an edit so politically loaded and so clearly tendentious is as baffling as the strange omertà that seems to surround Sarkozy’s Jewish heritage. The media clearly plays a continuing role in upholding the myth of France as a liberal, enlightened and tolerant nation. I have often met with incomprehension or resentment when I have compared France’s immigrant suburbs to America’s black and Hispanic ghettos. Still obsessed with the idea of equality through rapid integration, France will not own up to the seriousness of the problems she is facing in these non-ghettos of hers.

  Traumatised by the history of her own intolerance, France takes cover behind the myths inaugurated by her Revolution. In the name of equality, it remains unacceptable in France to refer to the Jewish or Muslim or Arab component of a person’s identity. The message is: we are all equal by virtue of the fact that we are all French. (Some, however, are clearly more French than others.)

  Even my own children baulked when I asked them if any of their friends were Muslim.

  ‘What kind of a question is that, Mum?’

  For them, my question was politically suspect. I could not convince them that it is only when a culture or a religion is regarded as intrinsically inferior that it becomes taboo to mention it.

  It is interesting to note that Sarkozy’s enemies, unwilling to refer to his Jewish roots, refer instead to his partiality to America. Hence the rather limp and bizarre insult frequently used against Sarkozy – ‘Sarko, l’Américain’. The subliminal message underlying this label is not only that the president is pro-Israel (and therefore deaf to the plight of the Palestinians and, by extension, all Arabs), but also quintessentially un-French. Like de Gaulle before them, many French people consider America to be a kind of anti-model. If called upon to find a country whose values are most opposed to their own, most of the French people I have met would not say Cuba or Burma or North Korea or even England. At the top of their list would be the United States of America.

  Of the United States, Hubert Vedrine, former socialist foreign minister in the Mitterrand government, said: ‘The first characteristic of America, which explains her foreign policy, is that she has considered herself since her birth as a chosen nation whose role is to enlighten the rest of the world.’

  The most striking thing about this remark is that it could so easily be applied to France. Indeed it seems that most French anti-American sentiment stems from rivalry between two cultures that are not embarrassed to offer universal moral lessons. Both nations consider themselves the first democracies. France never misses an opportunity to describe herself, particularly in international politics, as ‘the nation of human rights’, while America has no qualms about naming a military offensive ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’.

  *

  By favourably comparing the British to the Americans in their understanding of the past, my good friend Yves was referring to the Britain that he encountered as a spy back in the eighties. This was a society – or the vestiges of a society – that no longer exists. Since Margaret Thatcher’s quiet revolution, Britain has moved closer and closer to America and her total and unswerving commitment to consumerism. One of the consequences of this choice has been the effect it has had on our sense of history.

  When Blair finished what Thatcher had started and rid the nation of the taboo surrounding the making of money,** he paved the way for a society that lives in a perpetual present, turned towards a near and endlessly alluring future. Reflected and glorified by our mass media, this peripatetic motion towards commercial gratification blocks out the past and makes it irrelevant. The annoyingly prophetic Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations of nineteenth-century America could quite easily apply to contemporary Britain: ‘[They] cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die, and yet are in such a rush to snatch any that come within their reach, as if expecting to stop living before they have relished them. They clutch everything but hold nothing fast, and so lose grip as they hurry after some new delight.’

  In clinging to an archaic, quasi-socialist cultural model, France has not fully embraced consumerism. It is still difficult, despite President Sarkozy’s personal wish to be able to go shopping on a Sunday, to find a shop open in France on the Lord’s Day, or even at lunchtime. In Paris, as well as the provinces, most local shops close between one and three or four in the afternoon. The French still feel either guilty or slightly bored about the business of accumulating money. They still believe that the accumulation of knowledge affords greater status than wealth. Debt is widely perceived as a little sinful. France’s very backward banking system has never really come round to credit. Even before the 2008 credit crunch it was always very difficult to get a bank loan in France. Overdrafts are strongly discouraged, and to qualify for a mortgage buyers must prove that their annual income covers their debt three times over. Never having fully embraced the concept of personal loans (only the State,
like the monarchy before it, is allowed to get into debt), France, whose budget deficit has dropped since the crash, below that of Britain,†† now finds herself surprisingly buoyant in the current storm.

  In spite of all of Sarkozy’s efforts to show them the way, however, the French make poor consumers. Not enough of them read newspapers and so the media cannot gain enough traction to attract the advertising to feed the machine. They do not get into debt and so they tend, in a very old-fashioned way, to buy what they need. In this kind of environment all-out consumerism cannot thrive.

  In this relatively slow and archaic society, History is still relevant, even to the young. Ask a French teenager what they think of when they think of the Second World War and you will get a fairly clear answer. They will probably mention the persecution of the Jews, Marshal Pétain, German soldiers on the streets. Some of them will invoke a great-uncle who joined the maquis, for family stories of collaboration are less likely to have been passed down than Resistance stories.

  Ask the same question to a British teenager and his or her references will probably come from television docudramas or American cinema (Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbor, Schindler’s List).

  As one English secondary-school teacher of history explained to me, ‘History has to be dumbed down and glamorised a little for British kids. A fifteen-year-old’s perception of the Second World War would be unlikely to involve family links or be personalised in any way, but rather focused on Hitler and the Holocaust – celebrity and scandal.’ In a culture dedicated to the next thing – the next film, the next handbag, the next holiday, the next mortgage payment – there is no room for the past. Put simply, France still has time for History.

  Perhaps the reason for Blair’s baffling foreign policy decisions can be found here. Perhaps when it was time to weigh up History (in this case, his own nation’s memory of her experiences in the Middle East) against the Here and Now of American capitalism (with the shimmering mirage of oil concessions), Blair was simply dazzled. This would explain the complete loss of his faculties when in the presence of the former leader of the free world. The conversation that immortalised Britain’s vassalage to America, recorded during the G8 conference in St Petersburg in July 2006, when both parties thought that the microphones were switched off, can still be heard on You Tube. Imagine the scene: Bush seated, popping food into his mouth and chewing loudly like some bored monarch, while Blair stands over him, stammering his diplomatic suggestions, all of which are ignored. The French took no pleasure from the spectacle. From my experience, people were shocked. For to them, British dependency on America only heralds France’s own inevitable submission to the dominant model.