French for Beginners
THE Spectator would be the last to com- plain that the new Government is impro- vising on its foreign policy. After all, what the Labour Party was threatening out of office—on the Nassau agreement and MLF —was far more dangerous than anything they are likely to devise after full consul- tations with Britain's partners in NATO. And already the new Government is within sight of one very considerable achievement : it has all but persuaded the alliance that MLF need not be the crucial and divisive issue everyone feared. By arguing that the scheme for a mixed-manned force is only
one issue among many and one which by no means requires an urgent decision, it may have helped to avert the most serious internal crisis the NATO powers have ever had to face and one which could have—and could still—split the alliance altogether.
What the Government has suggested is a full- scale review of what NATO is about. What it actually means by this, however, is far from clear, though no doubt something more concrete will emerge after Mr. Wilson's talks with Presi- dent Johnson next month. Until it does, the suspicion lingers that the Government, far from pondering how to save the alliance, is des- perately improvising to save its own skin. For if the proposals for the review of NATO are to mean anything at all, they must be aimed primarily at reconciling the French. Yet it is the French whom the Government in its first days of office has most seriously offended. It is the French again who are left till last, if they are to be included at all, in the round of consultations with our allies.
Already the short-sighted view is gaining ground in Britain that if General de Gaulle were to carry out his threat to withdraw from NATO and halt the progress of the Common Market, it would be no bad thing. It is argued that the General co-operates so little anyway that his withdrawal would mean that both the Market and the alliance could at last get back to business: in each case there is, an obvious opportunity for British initiative. Such a view is usually accompanied by the belief that, since de Gaulle is both old and mortal, France would come running back to the fold as soon as he has gone. These are the most dangerous delusions. It is unlikely that the France the General has come to personify, will follow him to his grave. The view that Europe can exist without France is more dangerous still. Its de- fence, would at once become entirely dependent on massive United States retaliation, while Ger- many gained an increasing share of nuclear weapons. Such a situation would be anathema to the Russians and would end overnight any remaining hopes of an advance from the test ban treaty. Not only would the alliance be split; simultaneously the chances of nuclear war would increase tenfold. It is something which we can clearly never allow to happen, and certainly there is room for a British initiative to prevent it. But it lies in a new approach to France far more than to the Five or to the Americans.
It is one of the oddest things in the last Government's record that they kept so quiet about the achievements that had been made, despite the rejection at Brussels, in Anglo-French co-operation. In fact, both in technology and defence these were considerable. It must partly have been the Conservative reticence on such issues that induced the Labour Party to make its first major mistake—its handling of the Concord project. The damage caused by the Government's hasty words on that subject has already been severe and there' are signs that it is already re- gretting them. But there is an infinite amount to repair and it can be done only by the Govern- ment going out of its way to understand the French position and by convincing the French that it is ready to respect their views. The Con- cord debacle is only a small part of this. Far more it is essential to listen to the French on the future of the alliance, and at present this means on the MLF. For if France• goes, there can be no doubt that it will be MLF which does it.
It is an interesting thought that if the plans for MLF didn't already exist, no one would now dream of inventing them and certainly not of insisting that the alliance couldn't go on with- out their immediate implementation. They're there because they're there and critical because in the inevitable snowballing process they have acquired a mystique that has nothing to do with their original purpose. No one would doubt their attraction as one element in the alliance: to pur- sue them at the risk of losing so much else would be a disaster. It is argued that we must go ahead because President Johnson is set on it. But the proposals were put up in the first place for the benefit of the Europeans and the President must realise that it is the Europeans who must have the final say. Similarly, it is hard to think the Germans would be dissatisfied with an alternative that offered the possibility of greater co-opera-
lion all round, which is surely what they want.
One would have thought that this odd coinci- dence of views on MLF between the French and the Labour Party would have been recognised by Labour in office as a godsend, the one way in- deed of ensuring that the -whole of the alliance could get down to some fundamental talking and France be brought back as a full and respected partner. We cannot be sure that the Government has recognised this yet. But if it does and can escape from its former idea 'of Britain doing more or less as she likes while sheltering under the American nuclear umbrella, then it will be in a formidable position. If, of course, it could take the party along with it.
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