The end of ambivalence and the triumph of pragmatism? Franco-British defence cooperation and European and Atlantic defence policy traditions

Conflicting traditions and the 2008–2010 rapprochement

France withdrew from the integrated command structure of NATO under the presidency of Charles de Gaulle in 1966. However, because of the need to assure alliance cohesion towards the Soviet Union, the French maintained considerable influence on allied policies using bilateral bargaining with the United States. ⁵ The end of the Cold War made this strategy much more problematic, and a new geopolitical reality in Europe with a united Germany and a United States considering a lighter military commitment made new arrangements necessary. The French opted for increased cooperation with the British and the Germans and for institutionalizing policies in CSDP. Paris conducted a clear Europe first! approach, which was strengthened after President Jacques Chirac’s attempt between 1995 and 1997 at reintegrating France into the NATO allied command failed. The EU, French defence policy-making elites came to believe, should instead become a full-fledged international actor and shape a multipolar world order. ⁶

The consistent Europeanism of French defence policy thought historically contrasted with the British approach. Despite some openness to European initiatives, the United Kingdom has generally conducted a policy focused on keeping NATO as the centrepiece of any security and defence action, in line with its Atlantic foreign and defence policy tradition and the much vaunted special relationship with the United States. ⁷ This included a preference for NATO in dealing with non-collective defence tasks, such as failed/failing states and crisis management. Duplicating NATO’s command structures was a non-starter for London elites. Pragmatic cooperation in Europe was deemed possible and desirable, but an integrated European defence identity project – understood as making the EU an independent, distinctive and internationally unique actor – was not. Conversely, NATO could fulfil the British wish for functional arrangements suited to action on a case-by-case basis. ⁸

Looking to lessons from the often uncoordinated and problematic Balkans wars on Europe’s doorstep in the 1990s, particularly the Bosnia atrocities in the middle of the decade, French and British interests in developing CSDP temporally converged. CSDP was launched in 1998 by Labour PM Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac at the Franco-British Saint-Malo summit. ⁹ However, Franco-British cooperation was extremely difficult to maintain due to the different role of Atlanticism in their doctrines: the French wanted to tie the United Kingdom to Europe de la défense, which was always an identity project for France, ¹⁰ while the British did not mean to change anything on their preference for NATO. Thus, mistrust reigned, and divisions clearly opened up around the 2003 Iraq debacle. ¹¹ The French policy of duplicating NATO structures in the EU limited its ability to cooperate fully with the British and the Americans. ¹² Franco-British cooperation was steady, but also steadily lagging behind its level of ambition because of these different traditions. The question on whether there was competition or complementarity between the EU and NATO was always answered ambivalently on the French side. ¹³

It was only when Sarkozy became French president in May 2007 that these differences began to be resolved. The announcement that he intended to reintegrate France into NATO’s structures (with the exception of the Nuclear Planning Group) triggered an intense debate on the legacy of Gaullist autonomy and the future of European defence. ¹⁴ For Sarkozy, competition between CSDP and NATO was no longer an issue. ¹⁵ The Joint UK-France Declaration of 2008 ¹⁶ binds the partners to numerous areas of cooperation and capacity-building efforts. ¹⁷ Subsequently, the Lancaster House Treaty ¹⁸ was signed in November 2010. It involved a partial abandonment of defence sovereignty through the pooling and sharing of certain capabilities. Most notably, the 50-year treaty on Joint Radiographic/Hydrodynamics Facilities ¹⁹ (nuclear treaty) established joint research facilities for the countries’ nuclear forces. Although research in these facilities is to stay exclusively national, this step in the highly sensitive nuclear domain was remarkable.

Franco-British defence cooperation was thus finally put on a pragmatic as opposed to an ideological footing. Writers such as Christopher Bickerton and Pernille Rieker have astutely observed that this intensification of Franco-British cooperation mainly followed a budgetary and defence-industrial logic. ²⁰ For the British in particular, Bickerton contends that the British decision was a response to operational overstretch caused not least by its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and the budgetary cutbacks after the 2010 general election. ²¹ For the French, the move meant putting their European identity project on hold. ²² Ben Jones thus concludes that ‘while thinking on capability planning (particularly on doctrine), has been a component of cooperation in the past, it is now regarded as “fundamental” to the push for deeper cooperation’. ²³ Against this background, Jolyon Howorth questions whether Franco-British cooperation might have the potential to develop as an alternative to CSDP rather than as a complement. ²⁴ Taken together, therefore, it is worthwhile investigating how this new cooperation was achieved, given prior divergent defence policy traditions in the two countries, and to assess the extent to which these economic and other dilemmas led to a reconfiguration of those traditions.

France: shared values, identity, capacities and the re-signification of European defence

In a speech to the British parliament in March 2008, Sarkozy expressed his belief in the unity of two countries with strong democratic-nationalist traditions. ²⁵ This democratic narrative was combined with a willingness to develop a foreign policy with a global reach that could live up to the responsibilities of permanent members of the Security Council. Sarkozy acknowledged different traditions in the United Kingdom and France with respect to European integration, but he concluded that the two countries shared the same values and interests, ‘have the same vision of the future and the same willingness to act’. ²⁶ Consequently, the president believed that France and the United Kingdom should work together more closely to achieve agreed outcomes. The ability to increase capacities through cooperation was thus framed against the background of a foreign policy identity based on shared values and roles, in which different transatlantic and European traditions should not be barriers to success. This common identity narrative would be continued later on during the ratification debates.

However, the relaunch of Franco-British cooperation was always connected to the tradition of European defence with the president and in parliament. The president and lawmakers therefore sometimes referred explicitly to CSDP, thus enacting this distinctive French tradition in the context of Franco-British initiatives. ²⁷ In his speech in front of the British parliament, the president continued by remarking that:

[…] what we do together makes only sense when we accomplish it in Europe, what is the name we give ever since to our common destiny. Every time the fate of England has been at stake, it has been at stake in Europe. Every time the fate of France has been at stake, it has been at stake in Europe. ²⁸

In a comparable effort at honesty, the leading Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) senator Hubert Haenel emphasized that:

We have to stop beating around the bush: European defence cannot be constructed except on the basis of a France-British agreement; we have seen which impulsion the Saint-Malo agreements have given ten years ago. ²⁹

While the president advanced a common destiny between the countries, the senator spoke in pragmatic terms about the purpose of driving CSDP forward and alluded to its Franco-British origin in Saint-Malo. In accordance with these beliefs in a common destiny, values and interests, cooperation with the British was envisaged as centring on the development of concrete capability projects. ³⁰ This was a discursive moment welcomed by the British. In this spirit of pragmatism, the commitments of the 2008 Franco-British declaration encompassed, for instance: the formation of a joint Franco-British aircraft-carrier group and/or the joint development of a new carrier, a strengthening of EU civilian crisis-management capabilities, nuclear missile technology cooperation, and training and service initiatives. ³¹

Although the British abandoned the plans for a joint aircraft carrier later in 2008, ³² these commitments pass the threshold of cooperative to integrative capability policies and indicate the emergence of a common strategy. Defence-industrial cooperation is also integral to this venture, along with far-reaching data exchange and technology transfer. Thus, the pragmatic approach to defence cooperation was not only about security but also about the realization of economic advantages at a very difficult financial time for both countries. Hence, realist arguments about security and the maintenance of a world rank, liberal claims about jobs, cultural grandeur and a common democratic identity were all invoked as reasons to strengthen cooperation. These arguments drew on conflicting policy traditions among the partners, but were also a response to budgetary pressures that entailed the search for new policies. The preference for cooperation was therefore encouraged by the continuing belief in financial benefits in times of crisis, also later during the period under scrutiny. ³³ Rather than repeating the European tradition of French security and defence policies, it was re-signified to include British Atlanticism, to the extent that the EU and NATO were put on an equal footing. While scepticism about having to choose between NATO, the EU and the British persists in the two chambers of the French parliament, ³⁴ the existence of a dilemma between Europeanism and Atlanticism is not accepted intersubjectively. Conversely, the reformulation of the European tradition by focusing more strongly on the pragmatics of cooperation and looking to Atlanticism is remarkable.

In November 2010, when the two cooperation treaties were signed, both countries confirmed that their forces would ‘perform the full spectrum of missions’. However, more clearly than before, the Lancaster House Treaty refers to NATO as the organization for collective defence, while the purpose of CSDP is to ‘strengthen[ing] international security’. ³⁵ The emphasis on concrete armament projects, the mutualization of capacities (understood as owning them jointly) or technology transfer bears testament to an overall capability-dominated representation of cooperation with a clear integrative impetus in strategies, joint policies and practices of cooperation. ³⁶ The treaty on nuclear cooperation broadens this integrative moment to nuclear issues. It therefore illustrates an instance of integration and institutionalization of cooperation in the usually highly sensitive realm of nuclear sovereignty.

In France, the ratification debates ³⁷ framed Franco-British cooperation in terms of common views, joint ‘vital interests’ and the product of a ‘natural’ ³⁸ partnership between Europe’s leading military powers. ³⁹ Cooperation was occasionally portrayed in the context of a grand historical narrative reaching back to the entente cordiale and to the community of destiny formed to fight Nazi Germany, ⁴⁰ a construction widely shared on both sides of the political spectrum. ⁴¹ Franco-British cooperation was not, symbolically, presented as a threat to national autonomy. For instance, Joëlle Garriaud-Maylam (UMP) explained that ‘this cooperation constitutes an interdependence which respects each partner’s sovereignty. We are dealing here with a mutualization of technologies which does not change our respective nuclear deterrence capacities’. ⁴² Accordingly, a sense of community was built via the narrative of a strategic and a natural-historic community between the two most powerful European states with global ambitions. A dilemma between autonomy and cooperation was thus avoided in the perception of the majority of the political class.

Nevertheless, as indicated above, a dilemma between the primarily EU-European tradition on one hand and an emphasis on Franco-British cooperation that might entail Atlanticism on the other was maintained in parts of the political class. Members of the French Assemblée nationale frequently discussed whether deeper cooperation with Britain was doing a service to CSDP or whether the European project might be damaged. ⁴³ But for all this criticism, the indispensability of the partnership was defended on all sides, showing the pragmatic re-signification of the European tradition discussed above. Jean-Michel Boucheron (Parti socialiste, PS) was very blunt in saying that ‘We are dealing here with a cooperation in Europe, not a European cooperation. This point must be underlined. Some are anxious about this. Personally, I am not too anxious, because what counts are the political will and the money’. ⁴⁴ Despite the fact that Boucheron is the most pragmatic lawmaker on the left of parliament when it comes to NATO, such a positioning gives leeway for a new interpretation of European security and defence cooperation that no longer insists on a strong institutionalization of Europe de la défense within the EU. Hence, in sharp opposition to the past, talk about institutionalization efforts in the EU was almost completely absent. ⁴⁵ Not even the NATO-favourable elements of the cooperative agreements were able to undermine support from large parts of the left. On this basis, it was felt that autonomy could be given up partially due to a widespread identification with the United Kingdom in defence-political and identity-related terms, notably the community of shared values and the maintenance of the global power status of both countries. The formerly strong EU-institutionalist tradition of security and defence integration has largely vanished to be replaced by a pragmatic belief that both Franco-British cooperation and NATO reintegration are core elements of France’s security identity. This move illustrates how ‘situated agents’ connect their beliefs to external pressures from the international (European, economic) environment and to domestic foreign policy traditions.

United Kingdom: adaptation of tradition amid budget dilemmas

In opposition to the French reformulation of defence policy traditions, in the period under investigation – and across changes in the main parties of government – Atlanticism remained a key plank of British security policy thinking. For the British, NATO has continually been constructed as the appropriate institution for the organization of security and defence policies. In the words of PM Brown, NATO was the ‘cornerstone of our security’, ⁴⁶ and according to Cameron, it was simply ‘a tried and tested command and control machinery’. ⁴⁷ Only the Liberal Democrats spoke of a more central place for the EU in organizing British security, ⁴⁸ whereas Lord Robertson (Labour), former Secretary General of NATO, and Lord Trimble (Conservatives) openly questioned the ability and willingness of the EU to be engaged militarily at all. ⁴⁹ Politicians across the political spectrum strongly believed in the primacy of NATO and wanted to avoid any sort of duplication of allied capabilities and structures. Hence, the famous British opposition to standing EU headquarters was continued by the ministers and in parliament. NATO was considered ‘the natural home’ ⁵⁰ of European defence. EU actorness was almost exclusively conceptualized in the civilian realm, and it was only here where the EU is considered an added value to NATO. ⁵¹ The idea of EU actorness was not questioned per se, but in the context of the smooth working arrangement between NATO allies in Libya, we can diagnose a certain indifference towards the military aspects of CSDP in British and also in French discourse. ⁵² Altogether, CSDP as an institution received little attention. ⁵³ When the Franco-British treaties were signed, then Conservative Defence Minister (Minister of Defence (MoD)) Liam Fox wanted to emphasize that UK forces would not be under ‘supranational control’ ⁵⁴ by the EU. In a telling statement about EU actorness, Lord Teverson interpreted the British preference for NATO against the background of another strong tradition, that of an economic-only European Union: ⁵⁵

One of the contradictions of the European Union is that its power, its soft power and its whole raison d’être in a practical sense, is around an economic bloc, and around trade and commercial relationships within itself and the rest of the world. That is where its power really lies. It is about doing business with whoever in the rest of the world wants to do business. Unlike other international organisations, the EU has a very high ethical content in terms of membership, the Copenhagen criteria, the rule of law, democracy, human rights and the rights of minorities, et cetera. It is extremely difficult to reconcile those two different arms to the rest of the world when it has to make decisions. ⁵⁶

In accordance with this politically salient tradition, this statement rejects the exercise of military power from the realm of possible EU actions in the face of its economic raison d’être. At the very least, it doubts whether the EU will ever be able to formulate coherent policies in situations where crisis and/or military power issues are at play. Hence, individual and shared beliefs in NATO’s assets and merits led to a reinforcement of the Atlantic tradition of British policies, whereas we can see a change in traditions on the French side.

Reflecting this Atlantic tradition, the British under Brown and Cameron were careful not to destabilize the special relationship via enhanced cooperation with France, but they certainly adapted the Atlantic tradition. Bickerton contends that the Iraq invasion 2003 did not leave British–American relations untouched because the idea of having influence on the United States through alignment practically failed there. Hence, Dunne ⁵⁷ or Bickerton suggest that the United Kingdom preferred NATO for reasons of ‘habit and practicality’, ⁵⁸ rather than having a concrete political project for it. This general belief in pragmatism connected well to a France that had given up its ambiguities towards NATO in its newly formulated European defence policy tradition. It connected even better to the turning away of the French from institutionalization as major part of its CSDP policies. While pragmatic cooperation with the French was believed to endanger the special relationship, this dilemma was resolved because of the perceived reciprocal adoption by the French of the pragmatic approach described above. Hence, PM Cameron, ⁵⁹ or Lord Teverson ⁶⁰ in parliament, expressed the belief that the small-scale initiatives approach is able to fulfil the need for effectiveness. ⁶¹ Advancing interoperability, doctrine harmonization and efficiency, MoD Fox stipulated that French reintegration into NATO was ‘good for NATO, good for the United Kingdom and good for France’. ⁶² In sum, French NATO policy was perceived as a positive policy change in the United Kingdom. Both UK–US and Franco-British cooperation could be mentioned alongside each other without any idea of incompatibility. ⁶³

Additionally, the idea that deeper Franco-British cooperation entailed considerable budgetary and financial advantages was paramount in British discourses (and part of its wider foreign policy strategy – see Daddow’s article in the Special Issue). It responded to the dilemma between a willingness for the maintenance of a world rank ⁶⁴ and a highly strained budgetary situation. The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (FgAff), William Hague, made this point explicit:

For both sides, a major reason for this initiative is the prospect of maximising the value of our investments and achieving financial savings from closer co-operation. Closer collaboration with France provides us with great opportunities to increase efficiency, by sharing development and support costs and reducing unit costs through longer production runs and reduced overheads. ⁶⁵

This quote refers to several budgetary advantages (‘efficiency’, R&D, ‘unit costs’) and sits alongside ‘economics of scale’ ⁶⁶ using joint capabilities when deploying together into a theatre. The language of cooperation was therefore economically based. Lord Lee straightforwardly formulated that ‘severe budgetary pressures in our two countries have made greater co-operation the obvious and inevitable way forward’. ⁶⁷ This narrative was repeated similarly with regard to the treaty on nuclear cooperation, wherein the saving of one testing facility on each side made eminent financial sense. ⁶⁸

In another take on pragmatism, Franco-British cooperation was supposed to resolve the dilemma between the perception of a US retreat from Europe through its pivot to Asia and the resulting need for Europeans to take care of their security in a more meaningful way. ⁶⁹ Lords Addington and Lee strongly advanced Franco-British leadership as indispensable for guaranteeing a European capacity for independent or semi-autonomous action. ⁷⁰ The Minister of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Lord Howell, also pointed out that the United States was no longer anxious about duplication issues between the EU and NATO. Hence, opposing Franco-British cooperation or EU actorness on the grounds of threatening the UK–US relationship or NATO did not make sense. ⁷¹ The perception of a dilemma between the need for cooperation and French unreliability was thus lessened by the perceptions of a new US position and of budgetary necessities. The dilemma between formerly conflicting Atlantic and European traditions was rather resolved from the French side.

Ultimately, there was a clear perception of a policy change which had brought France closer to the UK’s pragmatic tradition in foreign and security policy. In British parliament and the executive, the initiatives were interpreted as ‘ground-breaking’ ⁷² and as ‘historically important for our nation’s defence’. ⁷³ Autonomy was not supposed to be given up, but cooperation was said to be able to achieve common goals instead. As Lord Wallace, then spokesman on foreign affairs for the Liberal Democrats, put it, ‘our default position is to operate as a partner wherever we can’. ⁷⁴

Conclusion

Applying an interpretive approach to the explanation of the Franco-British rapprochement in security and defence policies made a contribution to the research programme advanced by this Special Issue in three main ways. First, the triptych of traditions, beliefs and dilemmas was useful in combining a perspective on political agency with the consideration of social traditions actors have to cope with when implementing a policy. This has shown that dilemmas are not necessarily clear-cut political alternatives. They rather unfold with different vigour, dependent on specific conditions and the strength of the violation of a tradition the resolution of a dilemma to one side is seen to entail. This was evident in the French dilemma between an EU-European or wider-European (or possibly Atlantic) approach to cooperation, where a part of the political class was able to accept cooperation with the British without seeing its European tradition violated by reformulating the latter in a new, more inclusive way. Second, the article has shown how agents are ‘situated’ in their respective policy traditions which they combine meaningfully with their beliefs. However, the article has shown, too, that these traditions and beliefs can be reformulated by agents in the course of perceptions of political challenges ahead of them, revealing a co-constitutive relationship between agents and traditions and the beliefs they inform.

Finally and empirically, this article has discovered that while individual agency mattered with the novel role played by Sarkozy in furthering Franco-British cooperation, the decision must be seen in the context of a more fundamental re-signification of French security and defence policy traditions during his presidency. In the centre of this, we find a pragmatization and de-institutionalization of the approach to CSDP and a new ease in accepting NATO as a tool for European security. This re-signification could only be touched on at this place, ⁷⁵ but Franco-British cooperation is a central part of this re-invention of tradition that ended former French ambivalence towards NATO. The analysis has shown that Sarkozy’s ideas about Franco-British cooperation were not merely accepted in parliament, but actively discussed as dilemmas between the EU focus of the French security and defence identity, the counter-image of British Atlanticism, the willingness for maintaining a global role and budgetary constraints, which had gained momentum with the financial crisis. However, we cannot say that these situational budgetary constraints simply imposed themselves on policy-making for reasons of some external rationality. Instead, they were weighed against French foreign policy traditions, to which they were made compatible, confirming Hopf’s and Wendt’s observation on the social constructedness of rationality and interests. In the French case, this happened explicitly through a parliamentary vote.

A re-signification of traditions did not happen on the British side to the extent that was witnessed in France. This was mainly due to the fact that French pragmatism brought it closer to the British tradition. Nevertheless, engaging in new Franco-British cooperation remained contentious against the background of the special relationship and suspicion of past French ambivalence. This observation notwithstanding, French policies during the Sarkozy presidency were clearly perceived and appreciated as a policy change. Together with a more favourably perceived US attitude towards European autonomy, Franco-British cooperation could be accepted as political project. This aspect seems to have been of paramount importance in the United Kingdom. Adding to the dilemma between severe budget cuts and the UK’s willingness to continue a global role, an intensification of Franco-British cooperation was perceived as a pragmatic solution to immediate economic and strategic travails. Although France and the United Kingdom have cooperated in the capability domain before, ⁷⁶ the institutionalization of nuclear cooperation, the sheer volume of capability initiatives and mutualization and the overall depth of their strategic rapprochement suggest that deeper bilateral cooperation is likely to be an enduring feature of future Franco-British relations.