The View From France: No to NATO, Yes to Peace
Alain Rouy / Le Mouvement de la Paix
FRANCE (July 6, 2024) — I’d like to give you a French voice on NATO: in France, NATO has never been very popular, because the USA, which dominates this military alliance, respects neither the diplomatic nor the military autonomy of its member states. That’s why, in 1966, the President of the French Republic, General de Gaulle, decided to withdraw France from the integrated military structures and to close the US military bases in France.
De Gaulle did not dispute the existence of the Atlantic Alliance, and had always been a loyal ally of the United States in times of East-West crisis. But he contested the determining weight of the USA in the integrated military command, at the service of the American policy of hegemony. De Gaulle was opposed to bloc politics, refusing to alienate member states to the will and interests of the United States.
Other French presidents have also opposed NATO’s orientations: President François Mitterrand contested the American conception of global security assured by NATO, and questioned NATO’s role after the end of the USSR; President Jacques Chirac criticized NATO’s evolution towards a broader alliance engaged in military interventions, a NATO that presents itself in Kosovo or Afghanistan as a kind of “armed arm of the UN”, which France rejects. Logically, in 2003, Chirac announced that he would veto any UN resolution authorizing war against Iraq.
The fears and criticisms expressed by French presidents in their day would be even more justified today: globalized NATO is no longer a defensive military alliance, but an offensive alliance at the service of the Western powers, and first and foremost at the service of the United States.
Unfortunately, since President Sarkozy, successive presidents have broken with the tradition of independence of French policy, France has re-entered NATO’s integrated command, France is systematically aligning itself with US policy, and now French President Emmanuel Macron is calling those who won’t help Ukraine fight to military victory “cowards”.
Before Macon became one of the most aggressive leaders in the Western camp, French diplomacy had played a positive role in recognizing that Russian demands for security guarantees had to be taken into account: this was the case for the Minsk agreements in 2014 and 2015, for which France was guarantor along with Germany; it was again the case in February 2024 when Macron maintained contact with Putin and evoked security guarantees for Russia.
Everyone knows that the war in Ukraine didn’t start in February 2022 with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: Putin’s illegal and criminal invasion is the culmination of a conflict that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Like Michael Gorbachev, we might have believed that a new era was about to begin, an era of collective security and cooperation. But this was not the case: the West proclaimed its victory, it wanted to extend its economic system to the whole planet, and to this aim, it maintained, then enlarged and strengthened NATO, the USA’s real “armed arm” on the whole planet.
The Rise of NATO
This is the context in which the war in Ukraine must be analyzed: Russia feels threatened by Western expansion, and sets a red line: Ukraine must not join NATO. Nationalist Putin believed in force, and invaded Ukraine, deliberately violating the United Nations Charter. In the end, this war will benefit NATO. NATO welcomed Finland and Sweden as new members on Russia’s borders, NATO increased its hold on the European Union and could now focus on its expansion into Asia.
Today, NATO is fanning the flames of conflict and has no interest in negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine. In NATO’s bloc logic, confrontation and expansion are more important than peace efforts. NATO means: never-ending militarization of the international relations.
Yet we know that the foundations for an agreement to put an end to the war in Ukraine exist: they were already laid down in the Minsk agreements, and were still being formulated during the negotiations in Turkey in March 2022, as David Swanson reminded us. They include the neutrality of Ukraine, self-determination for the populations of Crimea and Donbass, and security agreements guaranteed by the international community. NATO countries have pushed Ukraine to reject such agreements and interrupt all negotiations.
For NATO, the only valid notion of security is security by force and military supremacy: this is why NATO cannot be a force for peace, neither in Ukraine nor anywhere else in the world.
NATO and the Ukraine War
The war in Ukraine has become one of NATO’s confrontations with those designated as “systemic rivals” in the NATO 2030 strategic document. These orientations cannot bring greater security to the world; on the contrary, they make NATO a factor of aggravated insecurity. We must oppose this global NATO with all our energy, which is why we hold counter-summits and demonstrations every year. We must also develop alternatives to NATO, and re-prioritize the notion of common security.
In France, which is currently going through a very dangerous period with the risk of the extreme right coming to power, we are not resigning ourselves and we appreciate that the ideas of pacifists inspire the forces of progress in their fight against the extreme right. By reviving its tradition of independent diplomacy, and breaking free from the NATO straitjacket, France could become a force for peace and disarmament, in the service of social and climate justice.
No justice without peace, no peace without justice.
