-5-

It makes us envisage eventual liberation by the American atomic
weapon, with the certainty, in that case, that what would have been able
to survive the first phase would certainly be annihilated.

Due to the intermeshing it entails, integration can, moreover,
involve us in a war that would not be ours and that would have broken out
elsewhere than in the regions covered by the North Atlantic Treaty and for
reasons alien to the interests of France and of the alliance.

Lastly, to the extent that integration is, even in peacetime, the
setting up of a collective war mechanism, it is the daughter of the cold war
and helps to perpetuate it.

Against these concepts--which do not correspond to the necessities
of modern warfare, or to the interests of France, or to her dignity--we offer
our own: a freely agreed to alliance, agreements permitting it to work fully
from the moment of aggression and providing for the cooperation of all the
allied armies, including our own, and above all the organization not of war,
but of deterrence, deterrence alone capable of sparing mankind from
irreparable disaster, and to which we will contribute, insofar as we are
concerned, with our own atomic force.

Through our action, we are aware of serving peace, we are aware
of defending the alliance's real interests, just as we knew we were
unhesitatingly serving them during the Cuban crisis by making it known
to the President of the United States that France would be at its side in
an eventual conflict, and this even though Cuba was not covered by the
North Atlantic treaty.

Good allies are not the most docile ones. Free and sovereign
peoples are the only ones who can envisage joining the battle.

For us, it is not a question of leading France back into concepts
of an outmoded nationalism, but simply of giving her back her self-determination.
Independence does not eliminate solidarity, but strengthens it, I will
even say creates it.

It is a question of restoring France to herself. In doing so, we
are serving Europe and are paving the way for it to reappear and to play
its role.

And let no one think that it is a question of our changing camps.
Opposed to all hegemony, we have no intention of encouraging Soviet hegemony
any more than our position on the Vietnam war tends to encourage China's
hegemony in that part of the world.

These, ladies and gentlemen, are the motives for our action in
this major affair. They alter nothing in our sentiments toward the American
people, or in the importance of the interests that join us with the United
States. The day will come, I am convinced, when America will understand
us and will give just credit to General de Gaulle as the farsighted head
of its oldest and most constant ally.

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I have limited myself, in my statements, to general factors. If during the course of the debate it appears, as I think it will, that the Assembly attaches special importance to this problem, I will ask the Foreign Affairs Minister to give you any additional explanations that you would deem useful, holding myself ready, moreover, to answer the speakers at the end of the debate.

But I would not like to close without saying a few words about the effects that our stand on NATO can have on our relations with the Federal Republic of Germany.

Certainly--and we understand this--Germany's situation, owing to the past first of all, then to the fact that, at this time, she is cut into two, and even into three, directly exposed to a threat from the East, is different from ours. It is thus normal for her reactions to be different.

But to those who raise the scarecrow of German nationalism, I will say first that, for us, the Germany of today is no longer the Germany of 1930. Reconciliation, officially embodied in the Treaty of January 1963, has terminated a long quarrel. We know the German leaders and have confidence in their determination for peace. And, moreover, if it has been possible for fears to emerge in this domain, are they not over Germany's access, direct or indirect, to atomic power, on which subject France incurs no responsibility?

It is true that the presence of French troops in Germany raises a question. It can be solved, and it will be if Germany so desires, just as it is not due to us that French-German military cooperation has not been more active and more effective. But--and we have often said this quite frankly to the German leaders--there is no solution to the great problem, to the essential problem for Germany, and I mean reunification, except by affirming a resolutely peaceful policy and by improving relations with Russia. That is why the trip to Moscow should, far from disturb the Federal Government, serve its interests at the same time as those of peace in Europe.

Peace: this word has recurred frequently during my statement. For it is in truth the key word to our foreign policy. The terrifying might of modern weapons forbids responsible men from envisaging recourse to war. The goal of national defense is no longer to win a war, but to make it impossible. Failing real and controlled disarmament--which we, for our part, are prepared to accept--the task of peace demands that all countries, regardless of the ratio of forces, agree to respect the independence of others, undertake to settle differences through negotiation alone, work to eliminate tension and to facilitate rapprochement, and, lastly, that the fortunate peoples reach accord so as to aid the development of the deprived peoples. For there can be no lasting peace when poverty is found alongside wealth, when the weak is subjugated by the powerful, no more than there can be domestic peace with moral and material inequality of social conditions.

The goals of such a policy are difficult.

But do not be mistaken, they are the only ones that are deeply
realistic in an era when all men have become aware of their dignity.

In this perilous world, in which the eternal and inevitable
determination for power of the great disposes of incalculable means, a
voice must be raised to call out for the right of nations, as weak as they
may be, to answer for themselves and to decide on their destiny. ` Today
this role belongs to France. Her genius inspires it in her, her history
teaches it to her, her place among nations and the international prestige
of the President of the Republic make it possible for her.

Certainly, the assumption of this role is not without incon-
veniences. But if France were to shirk it, she would fail herself and
would deceive the dim hopes of mankind.

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STATEMENT BY PREMIER GEORGES POMPIDOU

ON APRIL 20, 1966

Ladies and Gentlemen,

During the debate that took place on the occasion of the general
policy statement which I developed at this rostrum and of which the
discussion on the motion of censure is a continuation, many criticisms
were directed at the Government. I shall first answer those that can be
termed formal.

The first criticism centered on the fact that I did not take the
initiative to pledge the responsibility of the Government. Several speakers--
M. Mitterrand, M. Pleven and still others--dealt with this point. I
thought I had made it clear. I am going to clarify my position, since that
is necessary.

According to the spirit and the letter of the Constitution, the
Government remains in office so long as it is not overthrown, and it behooves
the opposition to prove that it has a majority capable of doing so. A
different thesis was maintained, based on precedents set by my predecessor
or by myself. That is an inaccurate interpretation of what happened, and
I ask you to believe that I carefully weigh the constitutional precedents,
judging their importance above immediate political interest. I admit, like
the leaders of the opposition, that it is normal at the start for a Government
to show proof that it has a majority. But let us take a look at the facts.

In 1959, M. Michel Debré formed a Government, the first of the
Fifth Republic. He had before him a newly elected Assembly, also the first
of the Fifth Republic. He therefore presented his program to that Assembly
and asked it to approve it. This was in the spirit of the Constitution.

In April 1962, I myself formed the Government. Of course, that one
differed only in part from the preceding one, but it did differ; the political
situation was deeply altered by the Evian Agreements, and the Head of
Government was both new and unknown to the Assembly. I therefore presented
a program, and I had it approved.

In May 1962, an important and sudden political change occurred in
the Government. But the Assembly was the same; the Government's policy,
despite the departure of several and not the least of the ministers, was the
same. I therefore took no initiative, feeling it was eventually up to the
group whose members had voluntarily left the Government to take the initiative,
if it saw fit, for a motion of censure. It did not do so, and no one pro-
tested against my attitude.

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on their behalf. What is more, the decision taken was, as you know, unanimously approved in the Council of Ministers. That this unanimity disappoints the opposition and contrasts with their own experience, I can see.

We are also criticized for not having consulted Parliament. But what was the issue?--to denounce a number of documents, that were adopted for the most part in 1951, 1952, 1954 and were never debated in Parliament, were never submitted by their signatories to Parliament and, moreover, did not legally have to be, all the more so as several of those texts are secret and were not published. Will you tell me, gentlemen, that it is consistent with the smooth functioning of a Republican system as you conceive of it--particularly, if I am to believe M. Fontanet--to bind France without the consent of Parliament and not be able to free her without that consent? One of the documents denounced by France--which is not the least important--was the subject of a debate in the Assembly with a view to ratification. It was the Protocol of August 1952 on the status of the general headquarters. The debate on ratification took place on August 4, 1954, or two years later. And yet that ratification of August 4 had to take place at night, if I may say, for the minutes of it take up a column in the *Journal Officiel* and contain neither Government nor Parliamentary statement, except for that of the representative of the communist group. You must admit, gentlemen, that our system is more loquacious. It is also faster, since we started that debate only one month after the decision and at a time when nothing irreversible had occurred. For who can doubt that if the motion of censure was carried that evening, and on condition of the electors' reaction, France would again find herself, I was going to say, would fall back into military integration?

Lastly, we are criticized for not having negotiated with our allies, for having presented them with an accomplished fact. I said, and I repeat, that we have warned our allies for years, and repeatedly in recent months, that we did not accept the Organization as it is and that we did not want any integration. I said, the Foreign Affairs Minister said and I repeat that we have run up against a wall, that they have told us and had us told that the alliance and integration were inseparable--they are asserting it somewhat less today, it seems, as M. Couve de Murville pointed out--and that our decisions that we had announced for March 1966 were only and could only be withdrawal from the Organization. Our allies, and in any event the strongest one, could have been offended, they could not have been surprised.

To start a negotiation would have only led, as M. Guy Mollet very rightly said in rebuttal to similar criticisms at the time of Suez, to endless conversations and to new delays, with the certainty of getting nowhere. It is better to take the decisions that are required and to negotiate the terms and the consequences calmly and positively afterward. That, I believe, is what is going to happen and is what we, for our part, are prepared for.

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If the United States agrees today to link itself with the European countries, it is undoubtedly because of old reasons that stem from the heart and the mind, but it is primarily because it considers it a necessity for the United States itself. Is there any other way of explaining why it is allied not only with us, but with Germany, which was its main adversary twenty years ago, and stands opposite Russia, which was then its main ally? Moreover, who could ask it to run incalculable risks if there were no interest vital to its people and its nation? We are certainly not forgetting that 300,000 Americans died in the two wars on the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific in the service of the freedom of the world, and, to be sure, the freedom of France. But, in this year when we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of Verdun, let us not forget either that nearly one million Frenchmen died for their freedom and the world's even before the first American troops were engaged on our battlefields. In 1940, when M. Paul Reynaud sent the appeal to President Roosevelt that M. Couve de Murville recalled last Thursday, he could have used Michelet's words: "What has the world lived on, if not on the blood of France? If she is wan and pale, do not be surprised."

Ladies and gentlemen, I would not like to conclude with these considerations on the conditions in which France's decision was taken and announced without referring to a suggestion that M. Pleven introduced. An adept for the moment, it seems, of "Realpolitik," he considered that the President of the Republic would at least be able to derive some advantage from his intentions by addressing himself to the Soviet leaders during the trip that he is to take to Moscow to ask them: "What price are you prepared to pay for France's leaving the NATO organization?" M. Pleven, the Atlantic alliance is an alliance between France and 14 countries, including the United States of America. What is more, it was concluded in the hypothesis of unprovoked aggression by Soviet Russia. It is not with the potential adversary that we intend to negotiate our situation in the alliance. General de Gaulle may be a difficult partner, but he is not, and you know it better than anyone, a disloyal ally.

I now come, gentlemen, to the substance of the matter, and I will reply less on the political aspect of things--which was presented fully by M. Couve de Murville, and eloquently by M. Maurice Schumann--than on their military aspect, developed at length last Wednesday by M. René Pleven. I will deliberately say nothing about the motion of censure, for its text does not make it possible to know whether or not it expressly condemns the decision in its substance--and M. Guy Mollet's explanations could not clear up this surprising ambiguity. M. Pleven thus tried first to demonstrate that the NATO agreements did not alienate France's sovereignty.

I will pass rapidly over what was said about the bases. It is true that the French flag waves alongside the star-spangled banner. This is a moral satisfaction--I do not underestimate it. It is true that a picket of French servicemen is seeing that only persons with authorization from the American command enter the bases. I am not sure that this is an act of French sovereignty. As for the affair of the flights to the Congo, which was cited in support of the thesis, it happens that we realized

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precisely on that occasion that the 1951 and 1952 agreements did not permit us to control allied air activities. And that is why we negotiated a system of annual authorizations, along with identification means, permitting us to fix the volume, nature and destination of the flights. But it was by us that this control was instituted, and not the signatories of the 1951/1952 agreements.

I now come to the matter of sovereignty, to the fundamental point: M. Pleven stated that the Supreme Command receives its orders from the North Atlantic Council where we are represented and where all decisions are taken by unanimity. This is theoretically correct. I do not deny that the NATO Council meetings should result, and sometimes do result, in decisions taken by unanimity. But what do these decisions concern? Most of the time, and this is quite normal, they concern questions linked to the Organization's day-to-day life, to its material set-up, to "financing infrastructure," for example. Likewise, the Military Committee and the standardization committees under it arrive at minor decisions concerning, for example--I am not joking and, moreover, in these matters everything is useful--"the standardization of signs for indicating contaminated zones." But the system "jams" as soon as major decisions are involved. With regard to standardization, for example, it has never been possible, concerning weapons, to reach agreement either on the decision of principle or on implementation. This was the case for tanks, for missiles, for airplanes--it is the case for the Bréguet Atlantic, the aircraft adopted by NATO, which, however, only Germany and France have ordered.

Once, it is true, the NATO Council unanimously took a major decision. This was--and M. Pleven referred to this essential aspect of the Council's powers--when it approved what is generally called the "strategic concept" of NATO. Now, nothing better illustrates the accuracy of our theses and the totally illusory nature of the apparent equality within the Council than this affair of the strategic concept. For the strategy approved by the Council was that of massive and immediate atomic retaliation. Officially, it remains the NATO doctrine, and the Council has never been in a position to adopt a new strategic concept. But, in actual fact, this strategic concept approved by the NATO Council, unanimously, still theoretically in effect, has been abandoned by the Supreme Command in favor of the concept of the flexible response. It sufficed for Mr. McNamara to renounce Mr. Dulles' concepts for a strategy that the NATO Council had never approved to become, in fact, that of the Command. Certainly, we protested; we refused to take part in the exercises that were too obviously based on that new theory; we discussed--"negotiated," as M. Pleven would like--that is, we upheld, throughout conferences of military leaders and diplomatic representatives, our theses conforming to the official NATO doctrine. The entire apparatus, nonetheless, obeyed the directives of the American Government. And I affirm, without violating secrets, that a large part, perhaps even the majority of allied military leaders, share our viewpoint. But as soon as the discussion becomes public, not one of our allies contradicts the sovereign thesis of the United States. And this is what integration is, M. Pleven.

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I do not think, besides, that you yourself have many illusions about this. And that is why you immediately introduced in your demonstration an argument of weight, at least apparently. Without the NATO Organization, you say, French national defense loses all value. Without the NATO alert system, France is disarmed. Only that alert system makes it possible for us to have the necessary time to set up our own defense, even to unleash our atomic force. On this point, the gravity of which escapes no member of the Assembly, I will answer with all the necessary details. But first, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to say that the very base of the reasoning is false. People confuse--either voluntarily, which I cannot believe, or involuntarily, which is surprising to say the least, on the part of a former Premier, I should say two former Premiers, for M. Guy Mollet made the same confusion--the alliance and the Organization. It is unimaginable for allies--even if they do not accept a single command, and all the more because they reject integration in peacetime--not to place at their mutual disposal the information they receive on the action of the potential adversary. Nothing stands in the way of agreements between France and the United States, or between France and NATO, making it possible for the different States to have immediate access to the information furnished by an alert network. This NATO alert network would be of service to us; but our own network--more important than you seem to think--is also useful to the armies of NATO and of the United States itself, do not doubt this. This will be the subject of negotiations and, I hope, of agreements.

For it is a definite error to affirm, as does M. Pleven, that "the alert system is, by necessity, an integrated system." The information furnished by the NATO system is immediately communicated to the integrated command, it is true, but it is also sent to our own command, which is not integrated. And to the Pentagon, which is not integrated either. Moreover, there is a strictly American alert system, located for the main part outside of Europe, in any case not integrated into NATO, which is more extensive than the NATO system itself. The information it furnishes is also sent to the NATO forces, as to our own command. Since we remain in the alliance, there is no valid reason to think that we would be deprived of the information gathered by all our allies' alert networks, whether it concerns NATO networks or national networks like the American one, and this on a reciprocal basis, of course. It does not seem to me that there can be a serious obstacle to agreements in this area, while there are such agreements, for example, between our General Staff and that of a European country that does not even belong to the alliance.

Having said this--and I may frighten you a little, but aren't we dealing with a frightening subject?--this alert system must be reduced to its real value. Certainly, if an attack from the East occurred by means of a fleet of bombers flying at normal altitude, the existence of an alert system in the east of the Federal Republic and in northern Europe will give us several additional minutes of warning. Please note, however, that if these were aircraft flying at low altitude, no radar would alert us, and there would be no warning for us except by sighting the aggressor airplanes over our heads. But, and this is more serious, if nuclear war were to break out in Europe, it is probable that it would be by means of missiles. In that case--in the case of a missile attack--the NATO alert system, combined with the strictly American system, gives the United States a useful

alert time on the order of fifteen minutes. This is not negligible. This
is slightly better than what our national alert system would give us as a
warning period before a high-altitude air attack directed against our
eastern provinces. But for Europe, and for France in particular in the
event of a missile attack, the fifteen minutes become one or two. In
other words, there is no alert or warning at all. In a nuclear war
conducted with missiles--the most plausible hypothesis--there is no
valid system for France; the alert will be given by the bombs if they happen
to explode on our soil.

In fact, and despite these few minutes which it has and which
make the alert systems located in Europe more valuable for the United
States than for us, America's situation is not basically different. And
that is why its deterrent strategy is based on the "counterstrike," that
is, the fact of disposing of a large enough and sufficiently dispersed
nuclear force in order for the American Government, even after the in-
calculable destruction wrought by the enemy attack, to be sure of being
able to launch such retaliation that the adversary is destroyed. This
is the same line of reasoning, on our scale, that makes us choose the
atomic submarine as the principal weapon of our future strategic force.

Then, you will tell me, what good is our present striking force,
if it is to be annihilated before it can be unleashed? Here is where
another notion enters the picture. Who can imagine a nuclear war breaking
out suddenly, like a storm in a calm sky? In reality, it would be preceded
by a period of perceptible political tension, of military movements large
enough for us to be put on the alert. And naturally, we have foreseen
these circumstances and have set up a dispersal and alert system for our
strategic force that would shelter at least part of it from the initial
destruction.

Truly, M. Pleven, you commit two errors:

The first is to think in terms of the 1940 war. That is
very clear when you defend--weakly, moreover--the strategy of the flexible
response. Of course, we are not envisaging launching atomic bombs because
one NCO; accompanied by a dozen infantrymen, would have crossed the Federal
German border and killed several sentries. But, believe me, if the Warsaw
Fact forces were to launch a widespread conventional attack on the border of
the Federal Republic, we would see it. What we criticize about that doctrine
is its being specifically conceived on the basis of America's geographic
location, its claiming from the outset not to be limited to conventional
weapons (this stage would rapidly be passed), but limiting the atomic battle-
field by sparing the territory of the Soviet Union, and therefore the terri-
tory of the United States, and thereby creating a psychological risk, that
of making it believed that the war could remain localized between the
Atlantic and the eastern Polish frontier, that is to say, in Europe,
but a Europe doomed to destruction.

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You think in terms of trench warfare: the potential aggressor attacks. The alert system works. The allied armies are in position thanks to integration and they contain the attack. The war of wear and tear begins. The strongest--that is, of course, the camp in which the United States is found--ends up by having the upper hand and the counterattack begins. But in an era of missiles coming from the East and reaching France in one, two or three minutes, American in fifteen minutes, all that is as outdated as the Hundred Years' War. If there were to be a third great war in Europe, it would be nuclear and Europe would be destroyed.

Here is where I find your second error. You think of winning the war and of defeating the aggressor, but the nuclear weapon is not made to win the war; it is made to prevent it. The aggressor's certainty that he would sustain intolerable losses is the only guarantee that we can have against aggression. That is what justifies our own deterrent force. That is also what leads us to remain in the Atlantic alliance. You think in terms of war, and of yesterday's war. We think in terms of deterrence, that is to say, of peace.

Deterrence alone can guarantee peace, and for the West, by nature and geography, the only deterrence is nuclear. You tell us: NATO has guaranteed peace in Europe for fifteen years. What an error if you are referring to the integrated organization! What has guaranteed peace is the alliance, insofar as it brought to bear the threat of the American Strategic Air Command, which also prevented world war at the time of Korea and Cuba.

Oh, I admit that, from the military technocrat's viewpoint, to organize the allied forces of the Western world into a single army, in which the different participating countries would place all their means and which would obey a single head who could only be American, would represent a degree of immediate convenience slightly superior to that of allied forces responsible to their respective governments, even if coordinated action had been foreseen for them. But this extreme case had been envisaged by no one. The United States has always maintained 95% of its nuclear force outside of NATO and kept absolute control over the remaining 5%. And for us, in any event, this would mean disappearing purely and simply as a nation.

Lastly, M. Pleven--and I beg your pardon if I direct myself to you at such length, but I must refute your argumentation point by point, and I must clarify our national position for everyone, since it is apparent that in our encounter you set forth arguments brought up outside--you claim, that the integration--and the intermeshing that it implies--creates no additional risk for France. On this point, and out of respect for our American allies and friends--who, I am sure, are deeply peace-loving, even if they are sometimes swept up by the force of events--I shall refrain from any hypothesis.

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But I will first of all mention one little fact. It relates to the Cuban affair. Faced with the threat weighing on the United States, President Kennedy took immediate steps. He did not consult us, but informed us, quickly, although after the fact. I point this out here only because you spoke of our policy of the *fait accompli*. We agreed with President Kennedy. But, even before we announced our position--while the NATO forces were supposed to be outside the conflict, and while even though they had been advised to take precautionary measures, no coded alert system had been set up--the American forces in Europe, including those in France, had been placed in a state of alert and, I might add, alert of the highest degree.

Does that give you something to think about?

For I ask that we please have the intellectual honesty not to claim to have answered when they say that nothing in NATO obliges us to enter into war automatically because one of our allies would have done so on his own in some part of the world: if one day there should really occur, for interests that would be alien to France and to her obligations in the alliance, a conflict between the United States and the USSR--and this is really the issue--who can maintain that the fact of having on our soil the American general headquarters in Europe, with its communications network and its entire command apparatus, not to mention air bases and supply depots, would not constitute an obvious and serious risk for us? Nothing in all that forces us to declare war, I admit, but all that could make us a target for atomic bombs, and is that not what is involved?

And, furthermore, I have tried to point out some of the errors that appear to me at the base of your reasoning, M. Pleven. But, in the final analysis, everything comes back to this: you forget the atomic bomb. You believe that the NATO organization is preserving the West. Now, it is atomic power--primarily American, also British and French--that is preserving it. You believe solely in integration and that an alliance without integration is of no use, while only the nuclear weapons that are not integrated really count. You believe that the war can be won, while we can only hope to avert it by atomic deterrence. When you suggested alternating commands, American and then European, I told you: in that way, there will be years with bombs and years without bombs. You answered me: no joking. This is what is revealing, since what you take as a joke is really what is the crux of the problem and what creates the danger and the conditions for security.

I must speak now about what have been called substitute policies.

On this point, the motion of censure is confined to referring to a "European substitute policy." It does not seem necessary to me to take up again the explanations that the Foreign Affairs Minister gave the Assembly. There can be no European defense policy so long as our European partners persist in considering defense to be the business of NATO. An integrated Atlantic organization could not be, by definition--even and above all if it were, against all possibility, conceived of and practiced on strictly equal bases--either European or, for that matter, American.

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then on the commitments of our allies, which we do not question, any more than they have reason to doubt ours. To say that we would be unable alone to face up to aggression by one of the two big atomic powers is an obvious fact. But since when is only the most powerful nation on earth entitled to independence? It is precisely to compensate for these imbalances that alliances are conceived, and today is not the first time that France's forces have not enabled her to resist aggression alone. Furthermore, no State alone can claim to face up to everyone, whether for reasons of power, demography or geography, and that is why by keeping our place in the alliance, we are providing assistance and we are taking risks that are not without comparison to the protection we are drawing from it. That is an alliance, a free association of States contracting mutual commitments in their reciprocal interest. We do not blush at attaching some value to the alliance of our American friends or our European neighbors. But we are not servile enough to believe that we bring them nothing in return. An independent France that is mistress of her policy is not, for that matter, a negligible ally. On the other hand, she can simultaneously play her role and use all her weight for that rapprochement between East and West on which the future of Europe and world peace depend.

In the presence of such a problem, at a time when General de Gaulle has made France mistress of herself once more, how pitiful a motion of censure appears. Its awkward drafting, the list of signers, of opposers who did not wish to sign and of those who were not even authorized to do so, reveal the opposition's powerlessness to define a policy, to assume responsibility for it, to represent the nation! Ah! Poor France, in truth, if she should again fall into those deplorable practices, if she should again become tomorrow the stake in such disputes and seek her future in party disorders!