Charles de Gaulle, the International System, and the Existential Difference

215 Pages·2016·1.65 MB·English

by  Graham O'Dwyer

Charles de Gaulle, the International
ff
System, and the Existential Di erence
This innovative account of Charles de Gaulle as a thinker and writer on
nationalismandinternationalrelationsoffersaviewofhimfarbeyondthatof
a traditional nationalist. Centring on the way de Gaulle regarded nations as
individuals the author frames his argument by rationalising de Gaulle’s
nationalism within the existential movement that flowed as an intellectual
undercurrent throughout early and mid-twentieth-century France. Graham
O’Dwyer asserts that this existentialism of the nation and ‘the presence of the
past’ allowed de Gaulle to separate the ‘nation’ from the ‘state’ when looking
at China, Russia, Vietnam, and East European countries, enabling him to
understand the idiosyncrasies of specific national characters better than most
of his contemporaries. This was especially the case for Russia and China and
meant that he read the Cold War world in away that Washington and London
couldnot,allowinghimauniqueinsightintohowtheywouldactasindividuals
and in relation to other nations.
Graham O’Dwyer is a lecturer at the University of Reading.
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Charles de Gaulle, the
International System, and the
ff
Existential Di erence
’
Graham O Dwyer
K ~~o~;J~n~~~up
ORKYOR LLONODONNLODNDOONN
Y
LONDONANDNEWYORK
Firstpublished2017
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Title:CharlesdeGaulle,theinternationalsystem,andtheexistential
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Description:Abingdon,Oxon;NewYork,NY:Routledge,2017.|Includes
bibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2016040556|ISBN9781472437556(hardback)|
ISBN9781315571348(e-book)
Subjects:LCSH:Gaulle,Charlesde,1890-1970--Politicalandsocialviews.|
Internationalrelations--Philosophy.|Nationalism--Philosophy.|
Existentialism.|Worldpolitics--1945-1989.|France--Foreignrelations--
1945-1958.
Classification:LCCDC420.O382017|DDC327.101--dc23
LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2016040556
ISBN:9781472437556(hbk)
ISBN:9781315571348(ebk)
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
1 Introduction to the work 1
2 Haunted by history, preoccupiedwith nations 21
3 Ethno-symbolism and the ‘content’ of the international system 57
4 Existence preceding essence: The individuality of nationhood 92
5 Nationalism is an existentialism 128
6 De Gaulle, political science, and the problem of pessimism 166
Index 199
Acknowledgements
Iamdeeplygratefultoanumberofpeoplefortheirgeneroushelpandvaluable
contributions to this book. In particular I would like to thank my former col-
leagues at the University of Kent who read through the initial draft chapters
and offered their valuable insights on various philosophical and ontological
aspects of international relations (IR), the existential tradition, and the course
of recent French history (thank you in particular to Iain MacKenzie, Adrian
Pabst, and Jane O’Mahony). I would also like to thank Andrew Wroe and
George Conyne for acting as an endless source of wisdom and knowledge on
all aspects of the United States over the past few years and for putting up
with my never-ending questions on American politics and American diplo-
matic history (thank you for all the coffee too!). I also thank Andrew Wil-
liams at the University of St Andrews whose encouragement for this project
and his reading of my very early draft chapters was certainly heartening and
contributed greatly to the finished product. Thanks also go to the editorial
team at Routledge and my anonymous reviewers for their enthusiasm for the
book. In particular I thank Rob Sorsby whose infinite patience and guidance
has been most welcome (and very much needed), and to Claire Maloney for
her careful reading of the final manuscript (although any errors in the text
remain entirely my responsibility). I would also like to offer a special thank
you to my former students at Kent whose genuine diligence, intellectual curi-
osity, and good nature have been a constant source of inspiration and
humour.InparticularIthankthosewhotookmymoduleson‘ForeignPolicy
Analysis’ and ‘US Foreign Policy’ between 2010 and 2014 and whose ques-
tions, criticisms, and comments on some of the themes presented here helped
to develop the text. Finally, and above all, I offer my boundless gratitude to
my parents (Norma and Wayne O’Dwyer) for their unwavering support and
constant inspiration, and for acting as a constant source of good humour in
my life. Please keep feeding Ginny and looking out for the barn owls.
1 Introduction to the work
French philosopher Régis Debray once claimed that history’s giants are his-
tory’s great ‘political myths’. They appear, that is, as fleeting intrusions in our
lives that ‘decimate or exhaust us’ and leave a lasting mark on the world. In
using the term ‘myth’, Debray does not mean to imply that history’s giants
are some form of ‘imagined beings’ that lack a tangible existence, rather that
certain personalities exert an omnipresent ‘force that leaves awake behind it’
andwhich, at least for atime, ‘turns theworld upside down’.1 It is true to say
that most of us will never meet such an individual and instead we tend to
create subjective narratives that, while containing certain kernels of truth, are
largely fictionalised accounts. It is in this sense that man becomes myth and,
while we may haveno formal acquaintance with such ‘giants’, we nonetheless
sense the aftershocks of their actions. As inheritors of the historical, that is,
we live with the legacies of their actions and are condemned to swim in the
‘wakes’ that transcend the era in which they lived. This is true of figures such
as Bonaparte and the two decades that he dominated European affairs, of
Vladimir Lenin and his sense of the ‘natural laws of history’ in relation to
Czarist Russia, of Franklin Roosevelt and his radical expansion of the Amer-
ican state in the 1930s and 1940s, of Margret Thatcher and her injection of a
doseofHayekian economicthoughtintothe heart of British political life, and
of Deng Xiaoping’s reorientation of the Chinese economy in the latter years
of the twentieth century. As ‘conductors’ of their time such giants seem to
condition and orchestrate theworld around them in away that fewothers do.
While the consequences of Vladimir Putin’s vision of politics both within
Russia (and the ‘democratic recession’that he possibly represents) and on the
international stage may see him join such illustrious company it is surely the
case that this book’s central focus, Charles de Gaulle, sits among the cast of
historical leviathans and ‘myths’ as a consequence of his potent sense of
France, his actions in ‘saving’ France in the 1940s, his creation of the French
Fifth Republic in the 1950s, and his actions on the world stage which he
sought toinfluenceand bend to hiscast-ironwillduring the1960s.Indeed, de
Gaulle understood that for most Frenchmen and Frenchwomen he was a
‘mythical’ figure and spoke of how his subsequent political career was condi-
tioned by the public image that had formed around him. There was, in other
2 Introduction
words, a self-conscious understanding that ‘de Gaulle’ was largely a public
‘invention’ over which ‘Charles’ had little control. This had been formed
during the Second World War when hebecame aware that he had enteredthe
national consciousness of France. ‘I realised that “General de Gaulle” had
become a living legend’, he once claimed. ‘The French had formed a certain
image of him…they expected many things of him…they thought of him as
behaving in a certain way. From that day on I knew I would have to reckon
with this man, this General de Gaulle’. ‘There were many things’, he recalled,
‘I would have liked to do but could not, for they would not have been fitting
for General de Gaulle’.2 This is why he stressed to André Malraux that ‘I too
am a myth’.3 It is also why, after giving his inflammatory ‘Vive le Québec
libre!’speechin1967(wherehewasseen tostircertain secessionist sentiments
in Canada), he told his aides that, in the context of the occasion, diplomatic
niceties were not available to him; ‘When one is General de Gaulle one does
not get away with those kind of expedients. What I did, I had to do.’4 It is
interestingtoponderhowtruethisisforotherworldleaderswho,duetotheir
stature and importance, take on a similar status within their respective
nations.
It is because figures such as de Gaulle have a profound impact on their
political environment, in both a domestic and international sense, that they
transform souls and have a propensity to divide people into supporters and
adversaries during their lifetimes but also long after they have passed on.
While we spill endless ink debating their respective influences and the merits
of their ideas, visions, and actions it is certainly the case that to be great is to
be controversial (although it is clear that the relationship does not always
work theother wayaround). Of course,as the quintessential contrarian of his
day, controversy was de Gaulle’s life-long companion. Whether as a young
student at Saint-Cyr, as writer and critic on the antiquated nature of French
military strategy in the 1930s (de Gaulle saw this as being too defensive, the-
oretical,and rigid,and thus lacking inmobility; aquality that hetreasured in
political life), as self-proclaimed leader of France in the 1940s, or as premier
oftheFifthRepublicinthe1950sand1960s,deGaullehabituallycourtedthe
controversial. This is why, in the twilight of his political career, Alexander
Werth once described the General as ‘the most controversial figure on the
international scene’. ‘Perhaps’, as Werth was towrite, ‘his Stendhalian qualité
suprême has been his tendency to always rebel against something’ and is why
de Gaulle liked to say that ‘in politics one must always vote against some-
thing’.5 This he most certainly did.
The study of individuals in the context of international relations
Irrespective of the reasons we are drawn to the world’s historical giants I
begin this study by assuming that figures such as de Gaulle do matter and
should be studied in some capacity. This may, it is true, appear as an odd
caveat to offer in the opening chapter of this volume but in all honesty it
Introduction 3
probably (read certainly!) exposes my background in international relations
(IR) where individuals are seldom studied. Indeed, as a scholar of the rela-
tively minor sub-discipline of IR that is ‘Foreign Policy Analysis’ (FPA),
where individuals are one of the central points of focus or ‘levels of analysis’
(what is usually referred to as ‘actor-specific theory’), I often find myself at
oddswith academic colleagues regardingtheimportance of ‘the individual’to
international affairs and events and am constantly assured that the individual
is of peripheralimportance. Needlesstosay I donot believe thistobethe case
and hope that this study goes someway to supporting this way of thinking
about the world, but given the countless discussions that I have (genuinely)
enjoyed on the issue over the years I find it somewhat difficult to proceed
withouttouchingonthisratherelementarypoint.Thatsaid,andinrelationto
this question, it must be noted and indeed conceded that the intellectual
foundations of my opponents’ position sit upon solid ground as theirs is lar-
gely representative of the ‘default’ position in contemporary IR scholarship
regarding certain ontological assumptions.
By this I mean the claim that individuals are of peripheral importance to
global affairs stems, in large part, from the dominance of systemic theories in
IR such as neorealism (perhaps better understood as ‘structural realism’) and
neoliberalism that have shaped the ontological ground of the discipline
whereby ‘the state’ is seen as the central, and often solitary unit of analysis
(although supranational bodies have increasingly figured into theories of IR
in recent decades). States in other words, and the structural forces that con-
dition their actions matter, people and human-agency generally do not.
Alexander Wendt captures IR’s consensus on this question when he writes
that scholars ‘have mostly ignored individuals on the assumption that their
effects mostly washout in a world of Leviathans like States, Multinational
Corporations, and International Organizations’.6 This is certainly the case.
InasenseIraisetheessence(ifnotthefullextent)ofthisdebaterightaway
as I wish to cut off any significant discussion on the matter and focus solely
on framing de Gaulle’s interpretation of the Cold War international system,
and the foreign policy that was produced by this, through the logic of Berg-
sonian ‘duration’, ethno-symbolic nationalism and, ultimately, Sartrean exis-
tentialism in order to offer a fresh perspective on the broad themes of French
foreign policy under his stewardship. Indeed, my central claim in the work is
that de Gaulle’s views, actions, and pronouncements in relation to interna-
tional politics were inherently Bergsonian, ethno-symbolic, and existential in
nature and led him to see the world, what we may call the ‘content of the
international system’, differently than that of his Anglo-American counter-
parts. This, as I go on to argue, bears much responsibility for the deteriora-
tion in trans-Atlantic relations during his presidential tenure. In short, and in
seeking to pinpoint de Gaulle’s ‘operational code’ (a term that is often
employed in FPA that seeks to explore an individual’s ‘belief system’) I set
out to explore Debray’s remarkably astute comment that ‘de Gaulle was an
existentialist of the nation’.7 While this may be a somewhat cryptic remark