Charles G. Cogan – författare

The author offers a revisionist-style look at the French-American relationship as seen through a series of case studies dating from the great misunderstanding between the Roosevelt administration and the Free French movement in World War II to the formation of the Euro-Corps in the early 1990s.American power grew tremendously in the wake of World War II and the Cold War that followed, forming, around a strategic consensus based on the indivisibility of defense against the Soviet Union, an American imperium in Europe. The interests of this imperium differed significantly from those of France, the oldest and one of the most important nations in Europe. Great Britain, France's counterpart in these respects, benefitted from special treatment by, and a special relationship with, the United States. France's efforts to develop a national nuclear force as a demonstration of its strength and independence were continually hampered by the United States until the 1970s. Britain's efforts, on the other hand, were not hampered but aided.In struggling to regain France's leading position in Europe, the French leadership under Charles de Gaulle sought on the one hand an independent nuclear force, and, on the other, a strengthening of Europe with a Franco-German alliance at its core. Both of these policies provoked friction with the United States; both will now have to be revised, after the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a powerful, reunited Germany. The overall prospect, however, is that of continuing differences between France and the United States, as the antagonisms of the past, which date primarily from the World War II era, will not easily die out. Written by a former senior intelligence officer with a background of extensive French government and academic relationships, this book will be invaluable to all students of contemporary European history and U.S. foreign relations.

Cogan examines the France-NATO problem, going back to its origins in 1945-1952, when a weak France, obsessed by the threat of Germany and jealous of the ascendancy gained by the British during the war, sought security guarantees and assistance from the United States. However, in the process, France put itself in a position of dependence under the NATO integrated command to a degree that later governments of a resurgent France felt compelled to challenge—and are still doing so today.Post-World War II France was to disappoint the hopes of such American statesmen as Dean Acheson and George Kennan, who looked to it to take the lead in Western Europe in the face of a growing Soviet threat. Dogged by the humiliation of the wartime occupation, obsessed by fear of a resurgent Germany, jealous of the British ascendancy gained during the war, and dominated by an intellectual class almost wholly given over to the prevailing antifascism (and, therefore, philo-sovietism) of the postwar, France would take 20 years to live up to its promise as the motor of Western Europe. Though it was perhaps inevitable that France, falling on the western divide of the Iron Curtain, would join the U.S. camp, it did so with a loss of sovereignty, symbolized in NATO's integrated command. This was a situation which Charles de Gaulle, after his return to power in 1958, would seek to undo. His successors have continued this quest to this day.Cogan explores the Gaullist argument that the North Atlantic Alliance and NATO are two distinct movements against a background of ever-increasing threats—or perceived threats—by the Soviet Union, culminating in the North Korean invasion of 1950. The French, desperate to emerge from a position of wartime inferiority, willingly abandoned hopes of building a defense of Europe by Europeans alone. France threw itself into the arms of the United States, partly to escape the onerous tutelage of Great Britain. In 1951, when the NATO integrated command was put in place, the French wound up with very little—not even a major subordinate command. Frustration and, ultimately, withdrawal from the NATO military structure were the results. This is a major examination of contemporary international relations and Western European defense policy for scholars and researchers alike.

It was logical to expect that the European Economic and Monetary Union would lead ineluctably to an autonomous European defense; the very size of the European Union seems to demand it. The EU eventually will reach the point where its economic and demographic weight will far exceed that of the United States. Can it not be expected too that the EU will seek to make this weight felt internationally? Cogan tracks the halting creation of an independent European military structure, a third way between national armies and ATO, since the Iron Curtain's fall.With the Cold War's end and subsequent western engagements in Central and Eastern Europe, it is no longer a question of whether NATO and the EU compare; they now must relate. They have to coordinate their planning and force postures so as to avoid duplication of resources and efforts. Although NATO's integrated command structure theoretically was an anomaly with the end of the Cold War, it nevertheless turned out to be the case in Bosnia, and later Kosovo, that nothing was possible until the Americans intervened. The virtue of integrated command -- American participation and know-how -- was once again seen as crucially important, despite the increasingly anachronistic deficit of sovereignty for Western Europe in defense matters. In the long run, Europe's economic power must be balanced by its military and diplomatic might.