Suchergebnisse

When French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand proposed in 1929 to establish "a sort of federal bond" between the European members of the League of Nations, these states numbered 27 out of a total membership of 60. Today the United Nations has a membership of 114 states of which 23 are European. Of these 23 states, seven are popular democracies. (The Soviet Union, a special case, is not included in this calculation.) There remain sixteen countries extending in the form of a crescent from Finland to Ireland to France and from Portugal to Turkey which are part of the "free" or "Western world." The conclusion is obvious. The League of Nations was dominated by Europeans who furthermore controlled a large part of the overseas world in the form of colonies, protectorates, and mandates. The United Nations, where the major influence, linked to power, is exerted by the United States and the Soviet Union, is dominated by non-Europeans. This non-European domination—political, psychological, and moral—is the fundamental phenomenon, and it is the subject of this study.

The strategy of international conflicts is the result of decisions made by nations whereby they decide the stakes & the extent of risks that they will run to win such stakes. The stakes are determined by 3 types of motivations: pol'al (a wish to increase the power of the State, or secondarily its prestige); econ (a wish to raise the living standards of the pop of the country); &/or ideological (a wish to promote the ideology of the state). The most frequent instances of this last motivation is where the ideology is one of nationalism (where there is a demand to rejoin separate segments of a nation). The risks are determined by the importance of the stake, the chances of resistance by the opponent, the chances of winning & the chances of losing, whether the opponent will give up without resistance, whether the opponent will be the conquered or the conqueror. 3 levels of risk may be recognized: minor (loss of money, prestige, or human life), major (loss of independence or territorial integrity), & total (physical annihilation). Tr by J. A. Broussard from IPSA.

We are living at a time when events move more rapidly than in the past. It is therefore very difficult, even in an article for a review, to sum up the situation, and still more difficult to see even a short distance into the future. This is true for any country, even for those, like the United States and the Soviet Union, which have greater autonomy and greater power in the bipolar world in which we live. But it is probably in the case of France that the task is most difficult of all, for in this country the general problems are complicated by a particular kind of crisis growing out of internal conditions. As I write these lines, it is impossible for me to have the slightest idea as to what French foreign policy will be when the article is published.

I do not intend to write an exhaustive study of the history of Franco-German relations since the capitulation of Germany on May 8, 1945. Such an undertaking is hardly possible in the present state of documentation. It seems to me more useful to concentrate on the essential characteristics of these relations and present them from an objective French point of view, as is natural for a French historian. The subject of French public opinion with regard to Germany has extremely interesting aspects which scholars, educated people from abroad and especially the average citizens of various countries of the world, find it difficult to understand. It is bseyond doubt that, in a country with a democratic constitution like France, public opinion exercises a considerable influence on the government. But conversely the government's influence on public opinion cannot be overlooked. It happens that in France the policy towards Germany since 1945 has been determined by a very small number of men: General de Gaulle, Georges Bidault, Robert Schuman, André François Poncet, René Pleven, Gilbert Grandval (the last to a lesser extent: he is concerned with the Saar problem).