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French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday that nothing stands in the way of France rejoining the NATO alliance as a full member. Charles De Gaulle withdrew France from the military command of NATO in 1966, although it remained part of the political alliance and maintained a substantial amount of informal cooperation. Sarkozy is therefore shifting a national strategy that has been in place for more than 40 years. He has been moving in this direction for months, but Tuesday’s statement represents the degree of the evolution in French policy. It would have been hard to imagine this statement made by a French president even a year ago.
What Sarkozy is proposing is to reintegrate France into NATO’s command structure. He has set three conditions. First, that France would not commit to participating in military operations except on a case-by-case basis. This is already the norm. Second, that France would not leave any forces permanently under NATO command in peacetime. This is already an option for NATO members. Third, France would retain complete control over its nuclear arsenal. On paper this would be a challenge since NATO has a nuclear policy committee, but in practice, other NATO nuclear powers — the United States and the United Kingdom — are part of that committee but retain practical control of their nuclear forces.
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