A European Future for NATO?

Ms. Davidson is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Yale University. Her dissertation is entitled, "Dealing with de Gaulle: France, the United States and NATO, 1958-1970." She is a writer for the History News Service. Attribution to the History News Service and the author is required for reprinting and redistribution.


President Obama discussed transatlantic relations on his trip to Europe. It was the first statement of U.S. policy toward NATO heard from this administration. Yet behind the rhetoric extolling multilateralism the reality is that while France is rejoining military NATO, the United States is becoming more distant. This may be the best way the United States can lead the Alliance.

In March 1966, Lyndon Johnson received a handwritten note. In it, President Charles de Gaulle announced France would no longer participate in NATO's integrated command and that NATO military headquarters and U.S. personnel could no longer be based on French territory. De Gaulle was dismayed that the major European powers continued to rely on America to decide how Europe should defend itself.

Johnson reacted calmly to de Gaulle's announcement. Ignoring the advice of esteemed Cold Warriors such as the former secretary of state, Dean Acheson, he resisted taking punitive measures against France and suppressed the kind of "freedom fries" vitriol 21st-century disputes between France and the United States have inspired. LBJ re-engaged in NATO by giving America's allies the initiative to reform NATO without France. De Gaulle's shock treatment served NATO well by forcing the United States to reconsider what it wanted from the alliance.

Forty-three years later President Nicolas Sarkozy is pushing to reintegrate France into NATO's military command. Sarkozy has accurately pointed out that it makes no sense to have French troops fighting for NATO if France is not prepared to supply French officers to the NATO command structure. He is trying to move France closer to the United States but also to push Europe to think harder about what it wants from NATO.


Obama should capitalize on the present U.S. drift from NATO and the new French proximity. But the absence of an enthusiastic U.S. response to Sarkozy's move shows the absence of any American conviction that NATO matters. It's important that the US responds in a constructive way to the French return. Rather than indulge in lukewarm rhetoric, Obama should administer some shock treatment of his own and praise NATO's potential as a European alliance.





Policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic have dismissed the French return as symbolic: the French, it is often repeated, never left the Atlantic Alliance and Sarkozy's move is simply formal recognition of reality. Dismissing the French return in this way ignores the possibilities change offers. Obama, of all people, should know this.



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Robert Lee Gaston - 4/17/2009

I think your essentially correct. There are any number of non-military organizations which allow the United States to interact with Europe.

An essentially military organization with no real mission will find one sooner or later. I think Europe is ready to carry its own water.

Without the U.S. in NATO it would be interesting to see if Western and Central Europe is willing to meet its own security needs.

Randll Reese Besch - 4/6/2009

As we see the USA uses NATO as its private multi-national facade for USA unilateral interests and until the EU throws the USA out they won't get their act together. Why should they? The USA does it for them. Classic psychological reaction. It would be in their own best interests to do it. Things are radically different from 1946.

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