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STATEMENT BY PREMIER GEORGES POMPIDOU

ON APRIL 13, 1966

I now come, ladies and gentlemen, to foreign policy.

Its constant factors have been defined here too often by me
and by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and, publicly, on numerous occasions
by the President of the Republic, for me to discuss it in detail. I will,
however, recall the principles.

France intends to be, in the world, in the forefront of the
nations that recommend effective aid to the developing countries and to
practice it, especially, with the new States of Africa to which we are
linked by cooperation agreements or with the States to which we are
attached by a long past of political and cultural relations; I am thinking
particularly of Latin America.

In Western Europe, France hopes to complete the Common Market, to
open it eventually to the neighboring countries that are prepared to accept
its rules, notably Great Britain, where I am pleased to be going soon at the
invitation of the Labor Government. She hopes that true cooperation is
instituted, finally, between the same countries that would enable those
States--between which the French-German reconciliation eliminated the main
source of yesterday's conflicts--to act in concert so as to arrive slowly,
but progressively, at harmonizing their policies, thanks to which our continent
would finally rediscover in the world the place due it and to which it is
entitled by its population, its economic strength and its capacities in all areas.

France intends that this Western Europe be not the adversary, but
the partner of Eastern Europe, whose economic, social and political evolution--
both among the States that compose it and within those States--will, we hope,
come closer to us each day by eliminating divergencies and by multiplying
points of contact.

With the United States of America, lastly--to which we are linked
by nearly two hundred years of constant friendship, whose determining role
in the last war we have not forgotten and whose strength is today still
essential to the security of the Western world--we wish to maintain the
alliance concluded in 1949 that makes us united in the face of possible
unprovoked aggression.

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But, above all else, France intends to have her policy; to maintain
peaceful, and if possible friendly relations with all; to assume the respon-
sibility for her own defense; to be mistress of the commitments to which
she subscribes; to keep in the many bodies to which she belongs--as, for
example, the United Nations, the Atlantic alliance or the European Economic
Community--her own originality, the possibility of defending her vital
interests, of upholding, in the management of the world's affairs,
respect for the independence of all peoples and the determination to
settle differences by negotiation. Presuming to dominate no one, having
nothing to demand of anyone, maintaining good relations with all, France
merely claims the right to act in the interest of peace.

All that, ladies and gentlemen, is well-known, but it is always
good to repeat it. Nevertheless, the Assembly certainly expects me to give
it some clarifications on the new events that have occurred since its last
session. It seems to me that three should be brought out.

The first is the Luxembourg agreement that put an end to the crisis
opened on June 30th in Brussels and made it possible to resume negotiations.

Uncompromising over the European structures, over the reciprocal
competences of the Council of Ministers and of the Commission, as over the
fact that none of the participating countries can see imposed decisions
contrary to its essential interests, France is nonetheless resolved to
promote the Common Market, considered in all its aspects, agricultural
as well as industrial. Better, she is aiming, through the customs union,
at the establishment of a real economic policy, which is provided by the
treaty but whose realization is scarcely sketched out.

Not envisaging the Community as an inward-looking entity sheltered
by the external tariff, she is ready to encourage the progress of the "Kennedy
round" and, through an extensive lowering of customs duties, to encourage
the development of international trade, from which she expects, at the same
time, a tightening of the ties between the participating countries, general
progress in their economies, and particularly in her own.

But everything is linked and depends, in our view, on the
establishment of the agricultural Common Market, therefore the completion
of the financial regulation. I am pleased that the last Brussels meetings
make it possible to consider the future, in all these areas, with reasonable
and measured optimism.

The second important event in recent months is the acceptance by
the President of the Republic of the invitation extended to him by the
Government of the Soviet Union to repay the official visit made several
years ago by Mr. Khrushchev.

The Moscow trip in no way represents what some would like to
see in it, that is, a sort of reversal of alliances, a sort of threat against our
European or American allies. This trip falls into the broad lines of our
policy, favorable to the development of relations with all countries, re-
gardless of their system, and consequently to the rapprochement of Western

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and Eastern Europe. On this rapprochement depends the future of peace in
the world, perhaps, and in any case in Europe.

The constant improvement in our relations with Soviet Russia,
the auspicious cooperation that has been instituted between us in different
areas, make it possible to think that this trip will take place under good
omens and will contribute to a true détente, profitable not only to France
but to all her neighbors. By moving in this direction, we are aware of
helping to dispel the climate of cold war that has not ceased to weigh on
the world and on Europe for 20 years.

This leads me to speak of another event that has taken place
since the close of your last session, which is the decision taken by
France to withdraw from NATO and to reassume the full exercise of her
sovereignty on her soil and in her skies.

Many have feigned surprise at this and pretend to believe that it
was a harsh and unexpected decision. In reality, for years we have never
ceased to proclaim both our faithfulness to the Atlantic alliance--that is,
to the treaty of April 1949--and our determination to call into question
the integrated military organization that had been superimposed on it.

The conversations that we have been having for years, with our
European and American partners alike, have convinced us that they, far
from being ready to reform the organization in a direction compatible
with our views, envisaged only maintaining the existing organization, even
aggravating it.

That is why, after having expounded our views on different
occasions, both to United States representatives and to the Secretary
General of NATO, after the President of the Republic having many times,
and especially in his press conference this February, defined our
intentions clearly, we came to the decision, for lack of anything better,
to act on our own behalf. In doing so, we have not ceased to stress that
we did not intend to question the alliance itself, whose maintenance appears
indispensable to us so long as there is a possibility of threat to our
security and to that of our allies.

The negotiations have opened. Our 14 partners in the alliance
have shown, with some slight differences in their respective positions,
their preference for maintaining the organization. We are not surprised
at this. We are ready to debate with them, and particularly with the
United States and Germany, the terms of application, whether on the transfer
of the general staffs, the evacuation of the American bases or the presence
of French troops in Germany. We are prepared to negotiate agreements on
the facilities that could be granted to the allies and aimed at providing
for participation by the French armed forces in joint action in the event
of conflict in the framework of the alliance.

But the issue for us is to draw the lesson of the evolution of
the international situation since the 1950's.

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Following the last war, Western Europe no longer existed, either militarily or even economically. Faced with the threat brought to bear on it by Stalinist Russia, its only guarantee, its single hope lay in the American atomic power.

NATO--that is, first and foremost the integration of commands under the authority of an American general, simultaneously commander in chief of the allied forces and commander in chief of the American troops, responsible in this capacity, and in particular for the use of the atomic force, to the President of the United States alone--NATO placed Europe under American protection. I am not criticizing, I am only noting a *de facto* situation.

This situation has, since then, changed from top to bottom. Russia's possession of an enormous nuclear arsenal has changed the ratio of forces between her and the United States.

The economic rebirth of the European countries, France's conquest of the atomic weapon, have equally changed the relations within the Atlantic alliance. Soviet Russia's evolution since the Cuban crisis, the concerns created for her by China's growth, the confrontation in Asia, more obvious each day, between American and Chinese policies, have also changed the situation. The threat on Western Europe has diminished. Asia has taken the place of Europe as a closed arena where the mighty confront one another.

Within NATO itself, we have seen the replacement, gradual and without our agreement, of the initial strategy that was based on deterrence and, consequently, on the immediate use of atomic reprisals, by a strategy called "flexible" which, under the pretext of lessening the risk of total war, actually consists in enabling the United States to limit the field of the initial operations by sparing the territory of the main potential aggressor.

Such a formula cannot satisfy us because, for us French, it piles up the dangers.

The conventional forces of the alliance, alone integrated--even equipped with tactical atomic weapons whose use remains under American command alone--could not be sure of halting an attack from the East; this is the least that can be said.

Such a strategy risks dooming us to atomic bombardment first, to invasion next. It occupies the integrated general staffs with planning operations of the most superannuated type, in which we would indeed risk being defeated. Does it not perpetuate the error committed by William II in 1914, made by Hitler in 1939, which is to imagine that a war in Europe can be "localized" and that once the immediate objectives are attained, the conflict can be negotiated and halted?