Groenewolf
09-07-2010, 09:04 AM
Chronicles Magazine (http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2010/09/02/general-pierre-marie-gallois-rip/)
by Srdja Trifkovic
September 2nd, 2010 • Related • Filed Under
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
General Pierre-Marie Gallois, who died on August 23 in Paris at the age of 99, will be remembered primarily as the architect of France’s nuclear deterrence doctrine in the 1950s. He was the last in a long line of European geopolitical thinkers—from Clausewitz and Jomini to Liddell Hart and Guderian—who have combined superbly honed analytical skills with hands-on soldiering.
Gallois was one of the most impressive men I have met. Back in 1993 I enjoyed his hospitality at his sprawling flat at No. 8, rue Rembrandt, just south of the Parc de Monceau. He was in his early eighties then, a dynamo of physical and mental energy dividing his time between an insane writing and speaking schedule and the painting of a five-story mural on the courtyard side of the building. It was an old love: before joining the French air force in 1935 he had studied arts and worked for a company that created lighted ads that hung on the Eiffel Tower. Speaking in a staccato English, accented but fluent, he insisted that a true soldier has to be an artist at heart: “You need a vision, an image of what lies beyond, a sense of the greater reality.”
His vision was shaped by the trauma of France’s debacle of May 1940. Two years later Gallois fled from Algeria, where he was serving as an air force officer on the staff of the Fifth air region, to London. He placed himself at General Charles de Gaulle’s disposal and joined the RAF.
A decade after completing thirty bombing raids over Germany, Colonel Gallois joined the cabinet of the French minister of defense. From there he was seconded to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), studying the effect of nuclear weapons on modern strategy. He came to the conclusion that the atomic bomb was the only opportunity for his country to regain that great power status that he knew was no longer rightfully hers on the basis of economy, demography, or spirit. The alternative, he realized then and reiterated half a century later, was to accept France’s fatal dependence on a hegemonistic yet unreliable America—a “totalitarian democracy” devoid of any sense of its normal limits.
A geopolitical realist who believed in “peace through fear,” he was attacked in the English-speaking world as an advocate of nuclear proliferation. He responded by arguing that the possession of a nuclear arsenal was the key prerequisite to ensuring deterrence, and added, provocatively, that the spread of nuclear weapons could increase international stability. He claimed that nuclear weapons raise the stakes and forces all actors to show greater restraint in crises involving more participants with nuclear weapons. As the number of nuclear actors involved increases, Gallois claimed, the likelihood of war would continue to fall.
Gallois’ tenure at SHAPE convinced him that France could not afford to entrust its strategic defense to the American nuclear umbrella in perpetuity. As he recalled many years later, he shared his concerns with his boss, General Lauris Norstad:
My idea was to explain to him that the American risk was increasing with time, with the advent of new weapons, such as long-range ballistic missiles . . . Before 1960, when the Americans were out of reach, we had no doubt in our minds that they would use atomic weapons from the onset of any serious attack against any country of Europe, because they were out of reach themselves. The risks were small, after all. But it was easy to foresee that ten years later, the situation would change: Americans being in the first line, in the same position vis-à-vis the enemy as Europe, they would change their strategy and try to reduce the atomic commitment. Hence, we had to find a substitute, and General Norstad agreed. He said to me that was probably what was going to take place, and he said you should inform your government.
(...)
Rest at the above link.
by Srdja Trifkovic
September 2nd, 2010 • Related • Filed Under
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
General Pierre-Marie Gallois, who died on August 23 in Paris at the age of 99, will be remembered primarily as the architect of France’s nuclear deterrence doctrine in the 1950s. He was the last in a long line of European geopolitical thinkers—from Clausewitz and Jomini to Liddell Hart and Guderian—who have combined superbly honed analytical skills with hands-on soldiering.
Gallois was one of the most impressive men I have met. Back in 1993 I enjoyed his hospitality at his sprawling flat at No. 8, rue Rembrandt, just south of the Parc de Monceau. He was in his early eighties then, a dynamo of physical and mental energy dividing his time between an insane writing and speaking schedule and the painting of a five-story mural on the courtyard side of the building. It was an old love: before joining the French air force in 1935 he had studied arts and worked for a company that created lighted ads that hung on the Eiffel Tower. Speaking in a staccato English, accented but fluent, he insisted that a true soldier has to be an artist at heart: “You need a vision, an image of what lies beyond, a sense of the greater reality.”
His vision was shaped by the trauma of France’s debacle of May 1940. Two years later Gallois fled from Algeria, where he was serving as an air force officer on the staff of the Fifth air region, to London. He placed himself at General Charles de Gaulle’s disposal and joined the RAF.
A decade after completing thirty bombing raids over Germany, Colonel Gallois joined the cabinet of the French minister of defense. From there he was seconded to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), studying the effect of nuclear weapons on modern strategy. He came to the conclusion that the atomic bomb was the only opportunity for his country to regain that great power status that he knew was no longer rightfully hers on the basis of economy, demography, or spirit. The alternative, he realized then and reiterated half a century later, was to accept France’s fatal dependence on a hegemonistic yet unreliable America—a “totalitarian democracy” devoid of any sense of its normal limits.
A geopolitical realist who believed in “peace through fear,” he was attacked in the English-speaking world as an advocate of nuclear proliferation. He responded by arguing that the possession of a nuclear arsenal was the key prerequisite to ensuring deterrence, and added, provocatively, that the spread of nuclear weapons could increase international stability. He claimed that nuclear weapons raise the stakes and forces all actors to show greater restraint in crises involving more participants with nuclear weapons. As the number of nuclear actors involved increases, Gallois claimed, the likelihood of war would continue to fall.
Gallois’ tenure at SHAPE convinced him that France could not afford to entrust its strategic defense to the American nuclear umbrella in perpetuity. As he recalled many years later, he shared his concerns with his boss, General Lauris Norstad:
My idea was to explain to him that the American risk was increasing with time, with the advent of new weapons, such as long-range ballistic missiles . . . Before 1960, when the Americans were out of reach, we had no doubt in our minds that they would use atomic weapons from the onset of any serious attack against any country of Europe, because they were out of reach themselves. The risks were small, after all. But it was easy to foresee that ten years later, the situation would change: Americans being in the first line, in the same position vis-à-vis the enemy as Europe, they would change their strategy and try to reduce the atomic commitment. Hence, we had to find a substitute, and General Norstad agreed. He said to me that was probably what was going to take place, and he said you should inform your government.
(...)
Rest at the above link.