Soil, Sky & Sea

"Alors," announced Charles de Gaulle at his press conference last week, "We will speak of NATO." That, in itself, was no news: he has been speaking about NATO, not always very kindly, ever since it was founded in 1949. Last week, however, he publicly gave NATO a timetable for getting out of France. De Gaulle told his audience that France would "modify successively the measures currently practiced" before the North Atlantic Treaty expires in 1969. "It means re-establishing a normal situation of sovereignty, so that everything French, including soil, sky, sea and forces, and any foreign element in France will in the future be under French command alone."

Exactly how did le grand Charles plan to evict or take command of SHAPE headquarters outside Paris, 14 U.S. Air Force bases, 26,000 U.S. servicemen, and NATO's complex network of pipelines and storage dumps in France? He was not saying, for part of his plan, in the canny tradition of French diplomacy, was to provoke the U.S. into offering some compromise or alternative before the actual bargaining begins.

Washington did not rise to the bait. "1969 is quite a long way off," remarked one U.S. diplomat, aware that many things could alter France's attitude between now and then--including the departure of Charles de Gaulle. In any case, plans have been made to cope with outright ouster. Already the day-to-day supply of the U.S. Seventh Army in Germany is based not on French ports but on Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg. And though it would cost at least $700 million, the U.S. could move most of its facilities in France to the Low Countries and West Germany. To the U.S., it seemed a sizable sum to charge for amour-propre. But not to De Gaulle. As an atomic power, he said, France has world responsibilities. "France desires to handle these responsibilities herself. This desire is incompatible with the organization of defense under which she is now subordinated."

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