Vedomosti: Following de Gaulle’s footsteps… France moves towards withdraw from NATO in protest of Trump’s policies

The Russian Vedomosti newspaper published an article, in which he discusses the ongoing debate about the future of NATO and the possibility of France’s exit from it, recalling history when Paris took this step 60 years ago.

According to the article, US President Donald Trump’s ambitions for Greenland had opened the door to speculation about the alliance’s future.

While the US leader is declaring that the alliance will weaken without the United States, and European leaders are contemplating a new defense alliance, there has been talk in France of an intention to leave the bloc publicly.

Clemence Guette, vice president of the French National Assembly, has prepared a draft resolution to leave NATO, accusing the United States of practicing a blatant imperialist policy.

It’s not difficult to believe that the seriousness of Guette’s intentions is that the secession mechanism is relatively simple, and two countries have already used it, Greece in 1974 and the French Fifth Republic itself exactly 60 years ago.

France was one of the 12 founding countries of NATO in 1949.

By 1966, the alliance had 15 members, and had been headquartered in Paris since 1956, however, in March 1966, a letter from the then French president to his US counterpart was revealed, explaining France’s intention to withdraw from the alliance.

He noted that the newly re-elected French President Charles de Gaulle told his US counterpart Lyndon Johnson bluntly: “France intends to restore its full sovereignty over its territory, which currently detracts from the permanent presence and use of its airspace, end its participation in NATO’s unified military command, and not place its armed forces at the disposal of the Alliance”.

However, de Gaulle made an exception in the spirit of Article 5, stressing that the country would remain ready to fight alongside the allies if one of them falls victim to an unprovoked attack.

De Gaulle’s letter came as no surprise to the public, as France has long been known to dislike the large role of the United States.

In September 1958, de Gaulle sent a memorandum to Washington and London in which he claimed that NATO no longer meets our defense needs.

The talk at the time wasn’t about exit, but rather demanded that de Gaulle strengthen his country’s role and effectively make the alliance a tripartite that includes the United States, France and Britain.

De Gaulle also criticized the United States at the time, as do modern allies with Trump, for not informing other members enough about their own military operations, warning that Washington could be drawn into a conflict that runs counter to France’s interests.

While the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain had the nuclear bomb, the Americans believed that France didn’t need to develop its own weapons as long as there were American bombs on its soil.

According to historians, the Americans’ refusal to use nuclear weapons to save the French army from defeat in the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam was a turning point that led to France’s loss of the first war there.

By 1966, de Gaulle argued that US weapons no longer guaranteed to protect France from the red menace because Washington wouldn’t risk a nuclear strike on its territory in order to protect Europe.

The 1958 memorandum later turned out to be a maneuver, with de Gaulle admitting five years later that he had asked for the impossible to use Washington’s refusal as an excuse for gradual distancing.

It began with the withdrawal of the French fleet in the Mediterranean from the NATO command in 1959, then the forces returning from Algeria in 1962, until the final break in 1966.

By March 1967, NATO forces had left France, and this included the departure of 26,000 military personnel and their families, and the evacuation of 56 ground bases and 17 air bases.

Despite protests over the loss of jobs and contracts, de Gaulle insisted that foreign troops go.

The alliance’s headquarters moved from Paris to Brussels in 1967, but France maintained close ties and remained a member of the political alliance.

Rather, military agreements (the Illyrier-Lemnitzer agreement) were signed that effectively preserved France’s role as a key component of Allied defense in Western Europe, but in the form of a partnership rather than a dependency.

Jacques Chirac gradually returned France to NATO committees in the 1990s, until Nicolas Sarkozy announced in 2009 a full return, with the exception of the Nuclear Planning Commission to preserve France’s independent nuclear doctrine.