2003 Volume 2003 Issue 134 Pages 56-69,L11
This article attempts to examine development of relationship between France and West Germany (FRG) in 1959-1963. The Cold War was transformed in the 1960s. The so-called ‘bipolar system’ was consolidated as well as challenged by various attempts, i. e. “Neue Ostpolitik” of Willy Brandt. On the other hand, Franco-German relations were also transformed. Since his return to the Presidency of the French Republic, Charles de Gaulle had started his “Grand Design” which was designed to reorganize the European-Atlantic dual order based upon the European Integration and the Atlantic Alliance.
In this article, firstly, the negotiations in the European Economic Community (EEC) about the European Political Union, the so-called “Fouchet Plan Negotiation” would be analyzed. Secondly, I shall examine the significance of reactions by the French and the FRG governments to the European policy of the USA during the Kennedy's presidency.
In 1959, de Gaulle launched a political consultation project in the EEC and then presented a more sophisticated concept of “Political Union” during Franco-German conversations in 1960. The basic idea was accepted by all of the six members as the next step to further integration and they agreed to organize a special committee to deal with this issue. In this negotiation, however, the main problem was the relationship between the Political Union designed to have competences of military defense and NATO. In fact, de Gaulle regarded the Political Union as an effective instrument for re-shaping the structure of European-Atlantic politics. The French government therefore insisted that the Political Union should have a function of military defense, but the other member states did not concur. This difference was finally to lead the negotiations for the Fouchet Plan to a deadlock in April 1962.
There was another “Grand Design” on the other side of the Atlantic: the Atlantic Community by John F. Kennedy. He sought to consolidate the Atlantic alliance, by maintaining the European unity through the admission of United Kingdom to the EEC, by reinforcing the liberal trade system between USA and the Common Market through the Trade Expansion Act, and by integrating the chain of military command in the NATO under the new posture of American nuclear strategy; “Flexible Response” and the multilateral nuclear forces (hereafter, MLF).
It is this American policy toward Europe that arise dynamics of Franco-German relations. Paris and Bonn shared anti-American strategy because Kennedy's Flexible Response strategy denied the nuclear power within American's Allies. In the FRG, this American strategy was interpreted as decline of US commitment to European security. Franco-German relations were, however, disrupted over the MLF questions. In December 1962, after Anglo-American conversations at Nassau, France and the FRG were both invited to participate in the MLF, which the USA and UK took the initiative to start. On the same day when the Germans accepted this invitation, January 14, 1963, the French government rejected MLF project.
The two ‘Grand Designs’ finally failed to realize because of complicated connections between cooperation and confrontation in Franco-German relations. They could never successfully escape from the restriction of the transatlantic relations. Franco-German relationship was a connecting point between the transatlantic framework and the Gaullist vision.
