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French Strategy Emergent: General André Beaufre—A Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Edward A. Kolodziej
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Extract

General André Beaufre defines strategy as “the art of the dialectic of two opposing wills using force to resolve their dispute.” Nowhere is this dialectic more pronounced than in Beaufre's own works where Beaufre as strategist is pitted against Beaufre as a leading Gaullist strategist and director of the Institut Français d'Études Stratégiques. Beaufre, as strategist, broadens the image of French military thinking projected, for example, by General Pierre Gallois's more widely known, always stimulating, but more flamboyant and less precise, writings. Beaufre, as Gaullist, delineates the profound dimensions and compelling attractions of newly emergent French nationalism which still are only dimly perceived in what is for the French the Anglo-Saxon world.

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Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , April 1967, pp. 417 - 442
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1967

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References

1 An Introduction to Strategy, trans. Barry, Major-General R. H. (New York 1965), 22 (Beaufre's italics).Google Scholar

2 General Beaufre's major works on which this study is based include the following: Introduction to Strategy and the French text Introduction à la Stratégic (Paris 1963)Google Scholar; Dissuasion et Stratégic (Paris 1964)Google Scholar and its English translation Deterrence and Strategy, trans. Barry, Major-General R. H. (New York 1965)Google Scholar; L'O.T.A.N. et l'Europe (Paris 1966)Google Scholar; “L'O.T.A.N. et l'Europe,” Stratégic, No. 8 (April-May-June 1966), 5–12Google Scholar; “Le Problème du Partage des Responsabilités Nucléaires,” ibid., No. 5 (July-August-September 1965), 7-20; “De la Méthode,” ibid., No. 6 (October-November-December 1965), 7-15; “Vue d'Ensemble de la Stratégie,” Politique Étrangère, xxvii, No. 5 (1962), 417–46Google Scholar; “Les Armaments et la Paix,” ibid., xxvii, No. 4 (1962), 321–30. General Beaufre's very recently published Stratégie de l'Action was not yet available when this article was written.

3 See especially General Pierre Gallois, Stratégie de l'Age Nucléaire (Paris 1960)Google Scholar. A much revised English edition was published under the title Balance of Terror (Boston 1961)Google Scholar. See also “La Logique de l'Ére Nucléaire et Ses Incidences sur l'O.T.A.N.” L'Avenir de l'Alliance Atlantique (Paris 1961), 111–78Google Scholar. A representative spectrum of General Gallois's views has appeared in the pages of the influential Politique Etrangère: “Les Conséquences Stratégiques et Politiques des Armes Nouvelles,” xxiii, No. 2 (1958), 168–80Google Scholar; “La Paix par la Dissuasion Controlée,” xxvi, No. 6 (1960), 553–56; “Pierrelatte A Ses Raisons,” xxvii, No. 5 (1962), 453–61; “Faux Paradoxes et Vérites Paradoxales,” xxvin, Nos. 4–5 (1963), 317–29. Also relevant are “L'O.T.A.N.: La Défense de l'Europe Occidentale Hier et Aujourd'hui,” Res Publica, vi, No. 1 (1964), 42–51Google Scholar.

4 Obvious exceptions are Hoffmann, Stanley H., “De Gaulle, Europe, and the Atlantic Alliance,” International Organization, xviii (Winter 1964), 1–28Google Scholar; Furniss, Edgar S. Jr., France, Troubled Ally (New York 1960)Google Scholar and “A Personal Evaluation of the Western Alliance,” in Furniss, , ed., The Western Alliance (Columbus 1966), 159–78Google Scholar, esp. 165ff; and Kissinger, Henry A., The Troubled Partnership (Garden City 1965), esp. chap. 2, 31–65Google Scholar.

5 Introduction to Strategy, ii.

6 Ibid., 13 (Beaufre's italics).

7 Ibid., 23 (Beaufre's italics).

8 Wohlstetter, Albert, “Scientists, Seers, and Strategy,” Foreign Affairs, XLI (April 1963), 466–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 On Thermonuclear War (Princeton 1960), 324ff.Google Scholar

10 On War, trans. Jolles, O. J. Matthijs (Washington 1943), 3–18Google Scholar.

11 Read especially Beaufre, Introduction to Strategy, 107–30.

12 Deterrence and Strategy, particularly 23–33.

13 The relation of nuclear deterrence to larger changes in the international environment is suggested throughout Beaufre's writings. See especially Deterrence and Strategy, 137ff.

14 Aron, Raymond, Paix et Guerre entre les Nations (Paris 1962), 563ff.Google Scholar

15 Beaufre enjoys comparing strategy in operation to music. Direct strategy “in which force is the essential factor” is the major key; indirect strategy “in which force recedes into the background and its place is taken by psychology and planning” is the minor key (Introduction to Strategy, 134).

16 See Bernard Brodie's review of Beaufre's Introduction to Strategy and Dissuasion et Stratégie in Survival, vii (August 1965), 208–10. Also examine the exchange between Beaufre and Brodie, ibid. (December 1965), 342–44.

17 Ibid., 242–43.

18 Ibid. (August 1965), 209.

19 Deterrence and Strategy, 25.

20 Ibid.

21 At least one French air general on active duty during the Suez crisis believed that the British backed down in large part as a result of the nuclear threat (interview, November 16, 1965, Paris).

22 Deterrence and Strategy, chap. 2, 34–77.

23 Ibid., 34–40.

24 Gallois, Strategie de I'Âge Nucleaire, 229. Herman Kahn does, of course, distinguish among three kinds of deterrence (pp. 126ff.). None of these distinctions quite fits or implies Beaufre's categories that envisage the reliance on nuclear weapons both as a deterrent against untoward enemy aggression and as a basis on which to take the initiative against an opponent.

25 Stratégie de l'Age Nucléaire, 232ff., and “Faux Paradoxes et Vérités Paradoxales,” 325.

26 For a useful critique of Gallois's position, see Aron, Raymond, Le Grand Débat (Paris 1963), 115–56Google Scholar. It is interesting to note that Aron wrote a complimentary preface to Gallois's Stratégie de l'Âge Nucléaire. Aron distinguishes his critique of Gallois from his preface of a half-decade ago on the grounds of Gallois's recent turn to aggressive nationalism (p. 135). On this matter Gallois appears more consistent if not in style at least in holding fundamentally the same views today that he held when he wrote his work.

27 See, for example, Enthoven, Alain C., Speech before the Loyola University Forum for National Affairs, Loyola University, Los Angeles, California, February 10, 1963, Department of Defense News Release: 157–63.Google Scholar

28 Secretary of Defense McNamara, Robert S., Speech before the Economics Club of New York, November 18, 1963, Department of Defense News Release: 148–63.Google Scholar

29 Deterrence and Strategy, 81.

30 Ibid., chap. 3, 78–103. The core of Beaufre's argument is contained in this chapter. Nevertheless, the entire book should be read to understand the context of Beaufre's position.

31 Remarks of Secretary of Defense McNamara, Robert S., at the Commencement Exercises, University of Michigan, June 16, 1962, Department of Defense News Release: 980–62.Google Scholar

32 Deterrence and Strategy, 55, 62–63.

33 See Halperin, Morton H.Limited War in the 'Nuclear Age (New York 1963), 58–75Google Scholar, for a review of the arguments for and against the use of tactical nuclear weapons. American policy has again shifted from that represented in Halperin's analysis and now looks to greater command and control of nuclear-equipped ground units and the withdrawal of the Davy Crockett, a lightweight atomic-launch weapon, from frontline units in Europe.

34 Deterrence and Strategy, 43–44.

35 Secretary McNamara opened to public view this communication process in his testimony before Congress: “It would certainly be in their interest as well as ours to try to limit the terrible consequences of a nuclear exchange. By building into our forces a flexible capability, we at least eliminate the prospect that we could strike back in only one way, namely, against the entire Soviet target system including their cities. Such a prospect would give the Soviet Union no incentive to withhold attack against our cities in a first strike. We want to give them a better alternative. Whether they would accept it in the crisis of a global nuclear war, no one can say. Considering what is at stake, we believe it is worth the additional effort on our part to have this option” (Statement of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara before the House Armed Services Committee on the Fiscal Year 1964–68 Defense Program and 1965 Defense Budget, January, 1963 [Washington 1963], 30).

36 See the first paragraph of Section I of this article.

37 Deterrence and Strategy, 84.

38 Stanley Hoffmann makes a similar argument in “De Gaulle, Europe, and the Atlantic Alliance,” 9. For a brief critique see Aron, Le Grand Débat, 155–56.

39 Deterrence and Strategy, 92.

40 L'O.T.AN. et l'Europe, 127–28.

41 Deterrence and Strategy, 85.

42 L'O.T.A.N. et l'Europe, 1205.

43 Ibid., 173–75.

44 Deterrence and Strategy, 162 (Beaufre's italics).

45 The Economist (November 21, 1964), 814.

46 U.S. House of Representatives, United States Defense Policies in 1965 H. Doc. 344, 89th Cong., 2nd Sess. (April 6, 1966), 79, 118. A more conservative figure of $4.2 billion for French defense is given in the publication of the Service de Presse et d'Information, de France, Ambassade, France and Its Armed Forces (New York, December 1964), 50Google Scholar.

47 Deterrence and Defense, 43.

48 “L'O.T.A.N. et l'Europe,” 5–12.

49 See, for example, Stanley, Timothy, NATO in Transition (New York 1965).Google Scholar

50 L'O.T.A.N. et l'Europe, 148–57.

51 Kennan, , Russia, The Atom, and the West (New York 1957).Google Scholar

52 L'O.T.A.N. et l'Europe, 23–47.

53 Deterrence and Strategy, 159.

54 For a similar view, see the much-discussed “Mr. XXX” article, “Faut-il Réformer l'Alliance Atlantique?” Politique Étrangère, No. 3 (1965), 230–44.Google Scholar

55 Ibid., 99.