John Keiger John Keiger

France needs Britain more than ever

‘What is grave about this situation, Messieurs, is that it is not serious’, was how General de Gaulle addressed his cabinet following the attempted putsch des généraux in April 1961. That could equally apply to recent Franco-British ructions over fishing rights in the Channel Islands. It is mere gesture politics, for all the French retaliatory threats to cut off the electricity supply to Jersey, the British dispatch of two Royal Navy vessels and the French countering with two patrol boats. Behind the facade France and Britain are serious military and diplomatic allies bound by important and wide-ranging security treaties that go beyond just Nato. But it is the French who have the most to lose were relations between Paris and London to deteriorate beyond the cosmetic.

Governments and regimes come and go, but a state’s foreign policy varies little for the simple reason that it is founded on geography and immutable geostrategic national interests. General de Gaulle never ceased calling ‘Russia’ by that name, even when it was the USSR, precisely because it was the same entity with at heart the same geostrategic interests. In that he was following the line of the great 19th century British foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, when he reminded parliament that: ‘we have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual and those interests it is our duty to follow.’

Britain’s geostrategic interest is the open sea, international commerce and no hegemonic power in continental Europe. France shares the British fear of a hegemonic power in Europe — other than its own — whether it be 17th century Spain, 18th century Austria or, since 1871, Germany, whose unification was sealed on the back of French defeat. 

France has always looked to Britain as a counterweight to a dominant Germany

Subsequently, France looked to Britain as a counterweight to a dominant Germany constantly seeking an elusive binding peacetime military alliance with London.

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