France doesn't withdraw from nato's integrated military structure
- Thread starter cjc
- Start date
I wonder how that would affect popular impressions in the anglosphere of France as a land of cowards and military slackers. Obviously, those stereotypes are based largely on World War II, the Maginot Line, and collaboration, but did their ongoing popularity have anything to do with the French disengagement from NATO?
I'm not sure this would neccessarily follow. Most NATO countries stayed out of Vietnam.
marathag
Banned
avoiding that would help for better relations, but also need to avoid the effort to drain US Gold reserves by Pompidou, after efforts to improve relation after de Gaulle low point did not helpHe seemed to be more interested in better relations with the Soviets and WP than the US and UK
Yes. But if France, as a result of its neo-colonial interests, had been inclined to get involved jn the American phase of the Vietnam War, they could have done that with or without NATO membership. Whether or not they went in had everything to do with their own preferences in the matter, not with how closely they were integrated into the alliance.
Yes，espeacially the Neo-Con propaganda against France since Iraq War，a "punishment" for Chirac's pro-Iraq stance.
As mentioned, nobody else in NATO did that (indeed, why would they?) and the French already fought a decade long war in Indochina within living memory. They would have zero interest in going back in again.
They did in OTL (in French), all the way through the Cold War... ~50.000 French troops were stationed in Germany in 1989, and in case of war they would have integrated with CENTAG (2nd paragraph).
Nothing to do with being a part of the integrated military command or not. France was still a NATO member (politically), and thus both covered by and obliged to follow article 5, making it a clear adversary of the USSR in every way that counted.
To my understanding these stereotypes didn't really appear in earnest until the early 2000s following French opposition to the American invasion of Iraq, even if there was some playing around with them during the years prior. The French withdrawal from NATO mostly seems to have resulted in opinions of French arrogance rather than French cowardice.
Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
How would French involvement in Vietnam have gone down with the South Vietnamese? They helped chuck out their old colonial masters just over a decade earlier, now the Americans bring them back in. Would be a blow dealt to the concept of "Hearts & Minds".
No, the caricature existed to a noticable degree before the Iraq invasion. Remember, "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" had been an old line from The Simpsons(intended to ridicule people who believed the stereotype, but proof nevertheless that the stereotype was well-known).
And, in English Canada in the 1970s and 1980s, you often heard people referencing the idea, both in regards to the French capitulating during the war(and the attendant idea that the Resistance was a joke), and French Canadian opposition to fighting in World War II. I'm pretty sure this got connected to France supposedly not doing their part against the Soviets via NATO. (Ironically, anti-Communism was probably an influence on French Canada's skepticism about the Allied cause in World War II, but English opinion tended to lump all examples of supposed French pacifism together.)
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Of course we could avoid the withdrawal by changing De Gaulle's destiny but I think that you'd need an earlier POD that involves changes in mentality both in the US and French side.
In this regard, having better relations during the Indochina war and not having them break down quickly after would be an interesting way to avoid the withdrawal from NATO's integrated military structure.
Unfortunately, the French were still quite reluctant to abandon their power and disliked the independentist Diem (when Bao Dai was still at the helm) and also wanted to improve relations with North Vietnam, while the US were somewhat more anticommunist and quite fond of Diem. You'd need a compromise on this issue to keep Franco-Vietnamese-American coop after 1956, but you'd arguably avoid some of the worst aspects of South Vietnam under Diem.
In this regard, having better relations during the Indochina war and not having them break down quickly after would be an interesting way to avoid the withdrawal from NATO's integrated military structure.
Per my idea above, SV-French relations would continue beyond 1956 when the French left. The Pentagon Papers on the matter indicate that as of 1954 the French were actually intended to stay longer than they did and the US wanted to cooperate with them, with the French having the particularly valuable role of handing over administrative, economic and military duties to the indigenous government and training the SV Army. There was a Vietnamese political faction that was willing to cooperate with the French for the time being.
Unfortunately, the French were still quite reluctant to abandon their power and disliked the independentist Diem (when Bao Dai was still at the helm) and also wanted to improve relations with North Vietnam, while the US were somewhat more anticommunist and quite fond of Diem. You'd need a compromise on this issue to keep Franco-Vietnamese-American coop after 1956, but you'd arguably avoid some of the worst aspects of South Vietnam under Diem.
Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
The French withdrew from all of Vietnam. They were no longer welcome. The North just ended up under the communists. The South didn't want the French to stay.
As I said some elements of it had been played around for years before, but the significant explosion of it was only following 2003, at least in the United States.
Kinda like Korea. You've got the Communist North, the capitalist South, and while the latter might have had more erstwhile collaborationists in power for awhile, general anti-Japanese sentiment is extremely widespread across the peninsula.
Indeed, in the USA, it wasn't until the Iraq War that the stereotype was formally harnessed toward a definite political end.
In Canada, conservative commentators were known to play the "goddam French can't fight" card, but it probably wasn't used by people in the upper echelons of government. It WAS well-known that Pierre Trudeau had avoided enlisting during World War II, and supposedly spent his time riding around on a motorcycle wearing a German helmet. Persuant to the earlier mentioned irony, this anecdote was most popular with people who hated Trudeau for being left-wing, even though Trudeau's antiwar opinions at the time were likely connected to his conservative clerical upbringing.
Re item 2, a seemingly endless series of "France Left NATO", "No, they were still in NATO but left the command structure.." discussions get avoided over the decades. If the time and energy spent on those discussions was directed in different directions who knows what might have been accomplished, or maybe the topic provided a much needed diversion from discussing other issues
I have been in meetings that had nothing to do with NATO when this topic came up