If Marine Le Pen wins the presidential election, a general and more than a hundred French soldiers, installed in the heart of the largest naval base in the world, in Norfolk (Virginia), will have to prepare their suitcases. On these American lands is the headquarters of one of the two supreme commands of NATO, systematically led, since 2009, by a Frenchman. But the president of the National Rally was very clear: elected, she will leave, once the war in Ukraine is over, France from the integrated command of the Atlantic Alliance.
This partial withdrawal from NATO – France would remain a member – is supposed to strengthen the country’s position. It would, however, lead to its lasting weakening. “France would lose its credibility capital, worries Amélie Zima, researcher in international relations and author of NATO (What do I know?, 2021). Moreover, a report commissioned under the presidency of François Hollande had concluded that no ally would understand such a departure.
Marine Le Pen acknowledged that there would be a “price to pay”. But she believes that this exit would restore its “diplomatic and military independence” to Paris, deploring a “trusteeship with a decisional loss of sovereignty”. An assertion contradicted by the facts: “The return of France to the NATO command structure, under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, did not prevent it from carrying out its own military operations, as in Mali, or from withdrawing its soldiers from Afghanistan in 2012, well before the Americans, recalls Benjamin Haddad, European director of the think tank Atlantic Council. Nor did he prevent France from pursuing its own diplomatic dialogue with Russia.”
A French Leclerc tank taking part in a military exercise in Estonia, February 5, 2022.
ALAIN JOCARD / AFP
To justify her choice, the candidate evokes the decision of General de Gaulle in 1966, similar to hers. But the motivations of the president at the time were quite different: the United States of President Johnson then refused to recognize the autonomy of French nuclear deterrence and Paris wanted the end of American bases on its territory. “But de Gaulle has always been very clear about his alliances and has never considered that a substantive agreement is possible with the USSR, unlike Marine Le Pen vis-à-vis Putin’s Russia”, indicates Amélie Zima.
To compensate for the departure of the NATO military command, the far-right leader claims to have found the solution: “the conclusion of bilateral strategic partnerships”, in particular with the United Kingdom. Admittedly, the British and French increased their military cooperation in 2010 with the Lancaster House agreements. “But a new treaty will be more difficult to obtain today, because London, since Brexit, is more than ever attached to NATO’s military format”, warns Ian Bond, of the think tank Center for European Reform.
Marine Le Pen would not be entitled to more respect from the United States, even if the next president were a Republican hostile to the Atlantic alliance. “His anti-American and pro-Russian accents go down badly and the Americans remain complicated allies, as the Aukus affair has shown”, recalls Benjamin Haddad, referring to the military alliance between Washington, London and Canberra and the torpedoing of a contract of French submarines with Australia. Difficult, therefore, to imagine Washington offering him such a “bilateral strategic partnership”. Contrary to its ambitions of “greatness”, a Lepenist presidency turning its back on NATO would only lead to the diplomatic isolation of France.