Bernard E. Brown

Elite Attitudes and Political Legitimacy in France

I N THE SUMMER OF 1964, a team of American political scientists undertook a survey of elite opinions in France and Germany, with particular reference to problems of European integration and arms control. A total of 147 members of French elites and 173 West German leaders were interviewed by four American political scientists in Germany and three (including the author of this article) in France. The results of these interviews were reported and analyzed in the recently published book by Karl Deutsch, Roy C. Macridis, Lewis J. Edinger and Richard L. Merritt, France, Germany and the Western Alliance: A Study of Elite Attitudes on European Integration and World Politicsl and in several reports by the Yale University Political Science Research Library. This Yale Project was one of the most exciting and important collective ventures in the field of comparative politics in the past decade. Whatever questions may be raised about methodology, the fact that seven American political scientists were able to interview, and have intelligent discourse with 320 members of the French and German elites is itself a memorable accomplishment. Publication of the study has provoked a healthy and critical reaction, and polemical argument has already begun to swirl about the findings.2 Interviewing members of a political elite necessarily is quite different from surveying mass opinion. Knowledgeable and powerful people-at least in France-are outraged by the suggestion that answers to complex questions should be reeled off and then copied down by interviewers. It is not possible to conduct a meaningful elite interview in this way. As Richard L. Merritt points out, all interviews

God and Man in the French Riots

Abstract During the French riots in October–November 2005, the cry of Allah Akbar (“God Is Great”) resonated in some neighborhoods. Was the Republic being defied by militant Islam? Most French specialists on urban problems assert that Islam had nothing whatever to do with the riots. The chant was launched by conservative clerics, they point out, who were brushed aside subsequently. The fault lies with the native French, they continue, who have failed to welcome Muslims and other emigrants from the third world. However, other French observers have suggested that Muslims share at least some of the blame for the relative failure of the integration process compared to success with previous waves of immigration. They believe that there have emerged in France two nationalisms, or separate senses of communal identity (native French and Muslim). French Muslims are both integrating and rebelling, in what proportion is not yet clear. Developments in France mirror global relations between the West and Islam. The overriding conflict of the postcold-war world is being played out and can be studied to good effect in the country that hosts the largest Arab-Muslim population of the Western world.

NATO and De Gaulle's Ghost

ABSTRACT The April 2009 decision of President Nicolas Sarkozy to return France to the integrated command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was vigorously opposed by the left. After his election as president in May 2012, François Hollande asked Hubert Védrine, former minister of foreign affairs, to evaluate the French experience in NATO and to recommend whether or not to remain in the integrated command. In November 2012, Védrine submitted his recommendation: that a French (re)exit from the integrated military command “is not an option.” Among his findings: NATO will remain an Alliance around the leading military power in the world, the United States, with which the French “share fundamental values”; the effort of the past 25 years to create a common European defense has been disappointing or merely symbolic; the value of partnering with either the United Kingdom or Germany has been limited; and, for more than 40 years, no European country has joined in the French line of autonomy within NATO. Gaullism cannot be identified with any specific tactic. In seeking to promote French interests within the Alliance, the spirit of Gaullism lives on.

NATO Goes Realistic

ABSTRACT The two pillars of the Atlantic Alliance are the United States and the European Union (EU). In 2011, France and the United Kingdom went to war in Libya entirely outside the defense structures of the EU. It was also the first time a major military operation was carried out by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that was not under the leadership of the United States. This article presents reasons why the EU was totally absent in Libya and why it does not necessarily portend “Europeanization” of the Alliance. The fundamental problem in organizing transatlantic relations is the asymmetrical relationship between the United States and Europe.

What Is the New Diplomacy

he era of sovereign states is dead. No longer can states by themselves control capital movement, currency flows, immigration and crime, and the exchange of information via the Internet. They are being displaced by forces from below (international civil society), from above (regional organizations such as the European Union and the United Nations), and at the side (multinational corporations). In the “new diplomacy” prestige is measured by human security, not military strength. Single superpower hegemony is giving way to multilateralism and the rule of law. So argue a host of prominent actors on the international scene today. In a video address to the 1999 Seoul International NGO Conference, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan paid tribute particularly to the contribution of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to international policymaking. He suggested that just as “a healthy and democratic state is the product, not the creator, of a strong civil society,” in the community of nations the United Nations needs NGO partnerships “whether in devising grand global strategies or working in the smallest villages and townships.” One need only look, he said, at “the Ottawa Convention banning landmines, the Statute of the International Criminal Court, or the Cologne decision of the G-7 on debt relief” as milestone accomplishments of “decisions taken by governments under the impulse of tireless work by NGOs. This is the new reality,” he concluded, “and this is the new diplomacy.” The two political leaders most responsible for the first “milestone accomplishment” mentioned by Annan have been eager to explain and justify their actions. The writings and pronouncements of Lloyd Axworthy, former Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, who led the fight against antipersonnel mines, and Boutros Boutros-Ghali, United Nations Secretary General from 1992 to 1997, taken together, provide an authoritative theory behind the “new diplomacy.”

Ordeal of the European Union

ABSTRACT The European unity movement has always been a political as well as an economic project. Political objectives have included: eliminating areas of poverty and diminishing the appeal and threat of communism through economic and defense cooperation; solving the “German problem” (integration of the German economy into Europe, yet preventing German domination); completing the economic foundation by introducing a common currency; and helping to stabilize newly independent East European states. Controversy has always been present over the final goal of European unity: a full-fledged federal state capable of playing the role of a Great Power or a federation of nation-states with more limited missions. The underlying question: Is there a European “people” sufficiently cohesive to support a central state with an executive power independent of the political leadership of member states?

Geopolitical Islam: Recalculating

ABSTRACT Appraisals of geopolitical Islam within the Western political class are being recalculated constantly. This essay presents two models, each grounded in and illuminating policies now being followed in the United States and Europe. The Obama administration is the point of reference, hence labeled here as “Team A.” The views and alternative policies of its critics both domestically and in Europe are called “Team B.” Special attention is given to President Obama and his chief adviser on counterterrorism, John O. Brennan; former Prime Minister Tony Blair; and a report released in September 2010 by the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC (presented to the public by former CIA director R. James Woolsey). Differences between American and European perceptions reflect their distinctive political cultures.

Europe's Muslims: A Foreign Policy Issue

Abstract Some 15 to 20 million Muslims now reside permanently in Western Europe, which has led some observers to speak of a veritable “revolution.” In this article it is suggested that “mutation” might be a better term than “revolution”; the possibility that Muslims will dominate all of Western Europe (creating “Eurabia”) is remote; discrimination against Muslims undoubtedly exists, but other factors contribute to the difficulty of integration—including construction of a separate identity that reinforces an ethnic fracture within European society. The cultural and political links between Muslims in the West and their coreligionists elsewhere raise issues that are high on the agenda of global diplomacy.

A Constitution for Europe

A comprehensive analysis that explains why voters in the Netherlands and France rejected the Constitution for Europe in recent referenda. In an insightful secondary analysis that compares the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 with the Brussels Convention that began in 2002 in terms of procedure and substance, the author introduces another telling dimension that helps to explain why the U.S. Constitution was ratified and why the Constitution for Europe was judged to be a lost cause once specific European voters rejected it.

Europe's Rise NATO's Demise?

T he North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) may be a relic of the past. So declared U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen before a stunned group of NATO defense ministers during the European Union (EU) summit in Nice (France) in December 2000. According to press reports, Secretary Cohen read his impassioned speech from notes that he had jotted down during the day’s proceedings. After a long moment of silence, the assembled defense ministers burst into applause, as if to say that the warning was appropriate and would be heeded. They approved a declaration that NATO remains the “basis” (an ambiguous term) of the collective defense of its members. What was the cause of Secretary Cohen’s agitation? The problem, he said, was posed by the emergence of a European defense policy and rapid reaction force. If the Europeans planned to deploy their future armed force through an open and cooperative relationship with NATO, he said, then the United States would “remain committed.” But if the European defense evolved as a competing institution, then NATO could become a “relic.” Warning signals are blinking everywhere. Now retired General Wesley Clark, supreme allied commander Europe (SACEUR) during the war in Kosovo, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February 2001 expressed deep concern over the future of the alliance. NATO is now at a crossroads, he said, formed by a convergence of a “changing European environment” and a changing U.S. strategy. The thorniest problem is caused by the need to work out a new relationship between the EU and NATO. Among the questions General Clark raised are these: Will EU defense policy be formed within or independent of NATO? Will NATO be part of discussions from the outset? Under what conditions will NATO be brought into EU plans, and who will be in command of whatever forces are deployed? We are entering a risky transitional period that may last for several years (the minimum time required for the Europeans to create a defense force) or even longer. NATO celebrated its 50th anniversary in April 1999 at a summit in Washington attended by the heads of government or foreign ministers of all 19 members as well as more than two dozen members (minus Russia) of NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP). All participants—with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, and U.S. President Bill Clinton in the forefront—rallied around NATO’s flag, offering enthusiastic tributes to the alliance as it conducted a war in the Balkans. Within little more than a year after the Washington summit, the atmosphere at NATO went from triumphalism to apprehension of an impending breakup. Can NATO once again adapt to new circumstances, as it did so successfully at the end of the cold war? Before trying to answer, it is necessary to take a closer look at the European Union and NATO and their past relationship.