Forced to Choose: France, the Atlantic Alliance, and NATO -- Then and Now

(Hardback)

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Post-World War II France was to disappoint the hopes of such American statesmen as Dean Acheson and George Kennan, who looked to it to take the lead in Western Europe in the face of a growing soviet threat. Dogged by the humiliation of the wartime occupation, obsessed by fear of a resurgent Germany, jealous of the British ascendancy gained during the war, and dominated by an intellectual class almost wholly given over to the prevailing antifascism (and, therefore, philo-sovietism) of the postwar, France would take 20 years to live up to its promise as the "motor" of Western Europe. Though it was perhaps inevitable that France, falling on the western divide of the Iron Curtain, would join the US camp, it did so with a loss of sovereignty, symbolized in NATO's integrated command. This was a situation which Charles de Gaulle, after his return to power in 1958, would seek to undo. His successors have continued this quest to this day. Cogan explores the Gaullist argument that the North Atlantic Alliance and NATO are two distinct movements against a background of ever-increasing threats - or perceived threats - by the Soviet Union, culminating in the North Korean invasion of 1950. The French, desperate to emerge from a position of wartime inferiority, willingly abandoned hopes of building a defense of Europe by Europeans alone. France threw itself into the arms of the United States, partly to escape the onerous tutelage of Great Britain. In 1951, when the NATO integrated command was put in place, the French wound up with very little - not even a major subordinate command. Frustration and, ultimately, withdrawal from the NATO military structure were the results. This book is a major examination of contemporary international relations and Western European defence policy for scholars and researchers alike.

Reviews

"A splendid, carefully nuanced study, [this book] sheds new light not only on the early history of NATO but on strains within NATO in the post-Cold War era."-Ernest R. May Charles Warren Professor of American History Harvard University
"As NATO reorganizes itself, and France and the United States struggle to impose their competing interests and visions on the Alliance, the story of France's role in NATO's creation takes on new significance. Replete with fascinating anecdotes and citations, thoroughly researched, and clearly written, [this work] makes valuable reading for anyone interested in these issues, then or now. Fifty years later, these events have a resonance and meaning that current decision-makers would be unwise to ignore."-Dr. Philip Gordon Editor, "Survival"
"Charles Cogan's examination of France's ambivalence toward the Atlantic alliance illuminates the sources of many of the problems France has with American leadership of the alliance in the 1990s. He has made an authoritative and objective contribution to NATO historiography in a relatively neglected area of NATO's formative years."-Prof. Lawrence R. Kaplan Kent State University Author of NATO and the United States: the Enduring Alliance
[A]merican policy makers would certainly profit by studying Cogan's excellent account of the challenges and dilemmas faced by their predecessors.-Political Science Quarterly
There is much to be learned from a reading of this concise and economically written book. For instance, most of us knew that Roosevelt did not think much of the Free French and was put off by de Gaulle's magisterial style; but how many knew that Roosevelt (and Hopkins) truly abominated him.... Much of the diplomacy of the WWII years can be written as though the major participants were in a private room with de Gaulle, trying to climb through the transom.... Cogan earns readers' plaudits for making these bewildering episodes understandable...-Choice
"American policy makers would certainly profit by studying Cogan's excellent account of the challenges and dilemmas faced by their predecessors."-Political Science Quarterly
"[A]merican policy makers would certainly profit by studying Cogan's excellent account of the challenges and dilemmas faced by their predecessors."-Political Science Quarterly
"There is much to be learned from a reading of this concise and economically written book. For instance, most of us knew that Roosevelt did not think much of the Free French and was put off by de Gaulle's magisterial style; but how many knew that Roosevelt (and Hopkins) truly abominated him.... Much of the diplomacy of the WWII years can be written as though the major participants were in a private room with de Gaulle, trying to climb through the transom.... Cogan earns readers' plaudits for making these bewildering episodes understandable..."-Choice

Author Bio

CHARLES G. COGAN is an Associate of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, and an Affiliate of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and the Center for European Studies, Harvard University. He is the author of Oldest Allies, Guarded Friends: the United States and France Since 1940 (Praeger, 1994) and Charles de Gaulle: A Brief Biography with Documents (1996). Cogan spent 37 years in the Central Intelligence Agency. From 1979 to 1984 he was chief of the Operations Directorate's Near East and South Asia Division. He was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal in 1989. In the same year, he was assigned to the Intelligence and Policy Project at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and after leaving the CIA earned a doctorate in public administration from Harvard in 1992. His published articles have dealt primarily with French-American relations, with the Middle East, and with intelligence and defense issues.