France's reintegration into NATO is a potentially harmful move resulting from the submission of France's Atlanticist right to Washington's ambitions. In a world more than ever integrated, France should return to Charles de Gaulle's independent, multipolar position rather than bow to Sarkozy's dreams of alignment with Obama. By doing that the French could help lead America back to reason outside the outmoded NATO structure. Adapted from the source document.
This article seeks to provide a constructivist account of Canadian foreign policy, linking identity and policy, through the concept of strategic culture. It focuses on Canada's dual ethnocultural identities (Anglophone and Francophone) and the bicultural and Atlanticist strategic culture that stems from it. It argues that this strategic culture helps explain France's significant importance (together with the United Kingdom and the United States) in defining the normative boundaries of Canada's multilateralism and legitimacy to use of military force abroad. Adapted from the source document.
This paper begins by reviewing some of the theoretical issues to be canvassed in any consideration of trade and foreign policy. The empirical core of the paper is a description of the many recent proposals to enhance transatlantic relations, it then turns to consideration of a puzzle : why has this resurgence of Atlanticist fever in trade policy happened now ? Finally, in the conclusion, it discusses whether the Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFIA) is meant to be an objective of policy in its own right, or an instrument used in pursuit of some other objective. The paper concludes that TAFTA is not significant for trade policy, but it is for foreign policy.
U.S.-French Relations After Kosovo, by Steven Kramer U.S.-French relations suffer from a lack of mutual trust based on two centuries of difficult history. In addition, U.S-French security interests do not coincide. Although both nations believe in the importance of playing an active role in global security and cooperate effectively in specifie cases like Kosovo, their long term goals are different. The United States wishes to perpetuate an Atlanticist security System; France advocates greater European independence. No solution to the debate over ESDI will occur without a breakthrough in U.S.-French relations, but past expérience indicates that no such breakthrough is likely to take place. The future of U.S.-French relations will probably resemble the past, conflict over doctrine, cooperation over concrete issues.
Former French minister of foreign affairs Hubert Vedrine makes a truly eloquent case for a "powerful Europe." Energized by the margin of his reelection, George W. Bush certainly has no intention of changing his foreign policy. Yet the Moslem world is increasingly wary of the West in general & Russia is again tempted to follow an authoritarian path. This means that EU member states need to agree on common objectives & on the means needed to achieve these objectives. The question is whether they will prove capable of overcoming their differences & deploying the means needed to have a tangible impact on global issues. Hubert Vedrine believes they will, so long as the Atlanticists understand that a "powerful Europe" in no way means an enemy of the United States, & so long as the pacifists admit that power is imperative to impose a peaceful approach to the planet's problems & preserve all that Europe has gained in tomorrow's world. Adapted from the source document.
Abstract The stake in the Berlin blockade crisis (1948-49) was far more than the fate of a western enclave, which was annoying for the Soviet Empire. When he started this trial of strength, Stalin was trying to reopen a quadripartite negociation on the German question as a whole, and thus to prevent the creation of a German Federal Republic, integrated with the West, in favour of which the western powers had already decided. At first, this new policy towards Germany met with much opposition in France. Georges Bidault, who was French Foreign minister up to July 1948, had to manœuvre between his Western partners and the French Parliament. When he had been succeeded by Robert Schuman and when Stalin's plans had failed, thanks to the Berlin airlift, there was no more obstacle to the birth of the German Federal Republic and to the adoption by France of an «European» and atlanticist policy.
Abstract The difficulties, which Britain had to face when she wanted to join the EEC, have their roots in the shortcomings of her European policy since 1945 ; «atlanticist» and hostile to supra-national organisations, the British were not attracted by the plans for European integration, and they withdrew from the Messina conference (november 1955). The Free Trade area project was intended as an engine of war against the EEC, but it failed in that respect and EFTA rather became a burden to Britain. Negotiations for a rapprochement of CEE and EFTA were brought to a halt by General de Gaulle's first veto (november 1958), a forgotten, but significant episode. In 1959-60, H.M.G. and Whitehall made a thorough reassessment of british policy (specially through the «Lee committee»). This led to the application for entry into the EEC in July 1961, but its timing and form were rather clumsy. The decision belonged to de Gaulle, whom the British vainly tried to coax by offering some «nuclear bargain». They were in a weak position and not properly supported by the U.S.A. Actually, de Gaulle had decided to veto the british application, before the Kennedy-Macmillan encounter in Nassau. The author is critical of British diplomacy, its procrastination and its illusions.
The work led by Dorval Brunelle is a selection of eighteen papers presented in 2010 at the International Symposium of the Institute of International Studies of Montreal (IEIM) under the theme 'Rethinking the Atlantic'; conference with one of the objectives was to provide an alternative perspective on the complex interactions between various actors coexisting in the interior of the Atlantic area in the context of redefinition of the geopolitical and geo-economics has international scale. In other words, the book is part of a renewed perspective of knowledge about the Atlanticist vision of yesterday is no longer adapted to the geostrategic, current political and economic context. The factors involved include the rise in power of China and Southeast Asia as well as transmission ratio of trade intersecting North-South/South-South that would have added in recent years to transatlantic exchanges and those made along both the eastern and western borders. The book thus offers a resolutely Tricontinental approach founded on a generally enlarged Atlantic area would be bordered to the west by the Americas and east through Africa. This orientation allows to consider alternative possibilities for reflection on the Atlantic transversality, which is full of unsuspected synergies and provides opportunites codevelopment particularly adapted to the current environment and global issues such as social cohesion, sustainable development, the climate change, biodiversity, maritime security, migration, terrorism and trafficking of all kinds (p. 1). Adapted from the source document.
Against the background of the latest vehement discussions in West-Germany on the implementation of the NATO twin-track-decision this article analyses the current concepts of security and détente presented by the main political forces as well as their historical dimensions. The Christian Democrat/Liberal government pursues a pragmatic Atlanticist security policy, which is based largely upon Adenauer's principles such as exclusive definition of West German interests in the framework of the Alliance, rejection of one-sided disarmament and nuclear disengagement. Nevertheless, the government Kohl has adopted the main instruments of the new "Ostpolitik" in order to establish the calculability of West German policy in East and West. Détente is no considered as a political aim in itself. The Social Democrat concept of a security partnership with the East is strongly influenced by the principles and methods underlying the new "Ostpolitik". This concept aims at the creation of a denuclearized zone in Central Europe in order to facilitate a real détente between East and West. An optimistic view or détente appears to be an essential element of the political identity of the SPD. The ideas of the Greens and the "Peace Movement" - unilateral disarmament, creation of a denuclearized zone, renunciation on "first Use" - are variations of the pacifistic concepts already developped in the 1950's. The main reason for the formation of the "Peace Movement" is a change in West German political culture involving above all the younger population.
International audience ; Street naming was a Cold War issue for villages and towns throughout France. Political parties, especially the Communists, saw street names as a way to reach out to people's hearts and minds. Over the 1950s although the authorities tried to restrain the East-West conflict from spreading to the public sphere, partisan sympathies found expression in place names. As a matter of fact cartographic distribution of street names clearly shows that one part of France was leaning to the USSR whereas the other part felt closer to the USA. In the 1960s as state control was being relaxed local authorities were allowed more latitude. Yet even if this made it possible for the Communist party to promote Soviet ideals, notably through Yuri Gagarin's popular figure, there was a growing atlanticist trend among local politicians to choose US personalities for place names. ; Dénommer des noms de rue a été un enjeu de Guerre froide dans les villes et villages de France. Les partis politiques, et en particulier le parti communiste, ont utilisé ce moyen pour toucher les sensibilités. Dans les années 1950, l'Etat s'est efforcé de limiter la visibilité du conflit entre l'Est et l'Ouest dans l'espace public. Ceci n'empêcha pas l'expression de sympathies. La cartographie des toponymes laisse voir une France coupée en deux : une partie admirait plus l'URSS et l'autre les Etats-Unis d'Amérique. Dans les années 1960, le contrôle de l'Etat se relâche et offre plus de latitude aux édiles locaux. Le parti communiste utilise la figure populaire de Youri Gagarine pour promouvoir l'idéal soviétique. Les succès rencontrés par le PCF ne peuvent néanmoins compenser le fait que le choix des références toponymiques par les élus reflète un atlantisme désormais solidement ancré dans les représentations.
