The Geopolitics of France: Maintaining

Its Geopolitics of France

Stratfor 2010

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Editor's Note: This is the 14th in a series of Stratfor monographs on the

geopolitics of countries influential in world affairs.

Geographically, the continent of Europe is a busy place. It is riddled with

features that impede the formation of any large political entity. Mountain
ranges inhibit trade and armies alike while peninsulas and islands limit the
ability of larger powers to intimidate or conquer smaller ones. Because of
such features, it isn't as much of a surprise that Europe has never united
under a single government as it is that anyone has ever tried.

That is because there are two other geographic features that push Europe
together rather than pull it apart. The first is the North European Plain, an
expansive stretch of lowland extending from the Russian steppe in the east
to the Pyrenees in the west. This region is blessed with the densest
concentration of navigable waterways in the world. The combination of a
fertile, easily traversable coastal plain with seven major rivers guarantees
both agricultural surpluses and the ability to move them easily and cheaply.
The plain is perfect for trade, communication and technology transfer and
from those activities the accumulation of massive amounts of capital.
Consequently, Northern Europe is home to the densest concentration of
wealth in the world.

The second feature the Mediterranean Sea plays a similar role to the
continent's south. Maritime transport on the Mediterranean is far simpler
than oceanic transport in Northern Europe; the North Sea is one of the
world's stormiest bodies of water. But mitigating that advantage is the
simple fact that much of the southern side of the continent lacks a robust
coastal plain. So while Southern Europe is still rich by global standards, it is a
distant second by the high standards of Northern Europe. The two regions
have very little to do with each other geographically, and their relative
isolation has spawned a raft of differing political, social and economic
cultures.
Mix the geographic features that inhibit unification with the features that
facilitate trade and communication and Europe becomes a very rich, very
violent place. None of Europe's rivers naturally interconnect, giving most
European nations their own independent capital base. But these rivers are all
close to each other, and most flow across the North European Plain to empty
into the Atlantic, ensuring constant interaction. It is a recipe for wars of
domination, a simple fact born out in centuries of European history.
Yet there are three places on the Continent where this pattern of
fragmentation does not hold. The first are the Seine and Loire river valleys,
whose upper reaches are so close together, separated by only a narrow
stretch of very flat land, that the two have always been integrated the
only such multi-riverine system in Europe. The region therefore gains the
economic and trade benefits of the North European Plain without suffering
significant division.

The second and third places where the fragmentation pattern does not hold
are the Garonne and Rhone river valleys. The Garonne's head of navigation is
at Toulouse, only 150 kilometers from the Mediterranean, but the river flows
west across the North European Plain to the Atlantic rather than east to the
much-closer Mediterranean. The Rhone is one of the relatively few European
rivers that both empty into the Mediterranean and serve as a trade corridor
to Northern Europe (the Danube empties into the geographically constricted
Black Sea). As such, the Garonne and Rhone serve as the sole natural
connections between the plain and the Mediterranean.
The one thing these three geographic exceptions have in common is that
they all have long resided in the political entity known as France. Only France
is both a Northern and Southern European power. It is the only European
power despite its seeming isolation near the Continent's western end
that can attempt to project power in any portion of the European theater. But
the key word here is "attempt." While France stands out in its unique access,
it lacks especially today the size to dominate. Consequently, France is
nearly always engaged but is only rarely ascendant.

The Geography of France

France is bound by the Alps in the southeast and the Pyrenees in the
southwest, the Mediterranean Sea in the south and the Atlantic in both the
west and north. In the east, France is bound by the river Rhine and the low
mountains of the Ardennes, Vosges and Jura.

Mountain chains, rivers and seas therefore enclose France at all points save
for one: the North European Plain. Access to the plain gives France its most
important geographical feature. Because it is at the terminus of the plain
or its beginning, depending on one's perspective France has the
advantage of having to defend itself only on one lowland front and from the
sea. However, it is at the same time subjected to the same threats,
opportunities and temptations that the North European Plain offers: It can be
drawn into thinking that the road of conquest is clear ahead or to ignore the
threats coming down it at its great cost.

The lowlands of the plain enter France at Flanders in the extreme northeast,
where the Belgium-France border abuts the Atlantic. The plain then continues
west past the Ardennes the heavily forested hills at the southern border of
France and Belgium before curving southwestward via the Beauce gap,
the aforementioned flat lands between the upper reaches of the Seine and
Loire. Finally, the plain flows into the Aquitaine region in extreme
southwestern France where it meets the Pyrenees Mountains, ending at the
natural boundary of the Iberian Peninsula.

Internally, aside from the Massif Central in the southeast, France is a country
of relatively low-lying terrain with occasional hills. It is interspersed by a
number of slow-flowing rivers, most of which are open to transportation with
little or no modification and which historically have been connected by
canals to facilitate commerce.

The territory with the greatest of France's advantages navigable rivers,

warm climate, sufficient rainfall, good drainage and fertile soils is the
Beauce region. The area's limestone soil, rich in nitrogen, phosphorus and
potassium and thus providing natural fertilizer, and warm climate made
possible by the North Atlantic Drift make it the most fertile land in Western
Europe. It has been the basis of French agricultural power for centuries and
holds nearly all of the country's agricultural land. Today it is also the most
integrated via a robust transportation infrastructure with the rest of
Europe.

The Beauce region is therefore the French core. At its extreme northern
border, where the rivers Marne and Seine meet, lies Paris. Paris itself was
founded on an island in the Seine, Ile de la Cite (the current location of the
Notre Dame Cathedral), an easily defensible location that commands control
over the land route between the last major curve of the Seine to the north
and the river Marne to the south. Whoever controls Paris therefore controls
transportation from the Beauce region to the rest of Europe via the North
European Plain.

Paris is also close enough to the Atlantic connected by the Seine to

benefit from oceanic trade routes but far enough away to be insulated
somewhat from a direct naval invasion. In fact, Paris is as far north as it is
(the French at times flirted with moving the capital to southern Orleans,
which is almost dead-center in the Beauce) in order to keep a close eye on
both Viking raids from the Atlantic and the once independence-minded
Normandy and to complicate any English attempts to establish a permanent
base of operations on the south side of the English Channel.
In comparison with its continental neighbors, France has almost always been
at an economic advantage because of its geography. Germany has relatively
poor agricultural land and paltry access to the Baltic Sea and is blocked from
the Atlantic by the British Isles. Italy has the fertile Po valley but is blocked
by the Alps to the north and trapped inside the Mediterranean. Spain suffers
from mountainous terrain, poor agricultural land and relatively useless rivers.
Russia lacks reliable maritime access altogether as well as a reasonable
climate. France has therefore been able to parlay its geography into
enormous economic advantage, particularly in agricultural production. Prior
to the advent of industrialization, this gave France enormous advantage over
its continental rivals.

The History of France

Phase I: Centralization (843-1453)

The Beauce region of France has always been the core of the French state
because of its fertile land and strategic location on the North European Plain.
Political power in the region only temporarily migrated southward during the
time of Roman rule, but it quickly returned to the north when Franks invaded
from the northeast. However, extending political power from Beauce to the
rest of territory that is today France was a serious challenge, particularly for
the fledgling Frankish kingdom that emerged following the Roman
withdrawal.

Early France faced two problems, both rooted in geography. The first dealt
with the plains. The Umayyad Caliphate's invasion of Europe in the 8th
century had introduced heavy cavalry as the preeminent military technology
of the time, particularly fitting in France because the lowlands of the North
European Plain were quite conducive to charges of heavy horse. Ranks of
Beauce infantry were easy to suppress, although Charles Martel managed to
hold the Muslim advance at the 732 Battle of Tours only 200 kilometers
from Paris largely with highly trained heavy infantry. The solution to this
military reality was feudalism. To spread the costs of training and
maintaining cavalry, the king ceded land to his vassals, enabling them to
maintain mounted knights.

This ultimately held the Muslim forces at bay, but this "solution" nearly killed
early France through decentralization. By granting feudal lords lands and
rights, the crown further entrenched a nobility that could also maintain
military forces independent of the crown. Unsurprisingly, the region devolved
into a political free-for-all following the dissolution of the empire of
Charlemagne Charles Martel's grandson in 843.

And while the lowlands fractured into dozens of competing feudal realms
with the crown looking on helplessly, central power weakened sufficiently so
that the hills and mountains of the rest of the country could entrench and
maintain their own distinctive identities. Modern French is based on the
northern Langue d'oil of the Ile de France dialect dominant in the Beauce
region. But southern regions used various Langue d'oc dialects, which had
more in common with Catalan, Spanish and Italian. Meanwhile, the Rhone
and Saone valleys retained a separate but related linguistic identity through
the Franco-Provencal dialect. The residents of these regions considered
themselves ethnically French for the most part.

The Bretagne population was of Celtic origin (Celtic refugees who fled Saxon
invasions of Britain) while in Aquitaine the population was a mix of ethnic
Basque and Galo-Roman. It took millennia of consolidation before all of these
ethnic/linguistic differences were assimilated into what is now France. French,
one of the Langue d'oil, did not become the official tongue until the 1500s,
and linguistic unification was not completed until the 1800s.
This political (feudal) and ethnic (linguistic) disunity combined with France's
position as a north-south continental crossroads encouraged the intervention
of outside powers. The most pertinent examples are the wars with England
from the 11th until the 15th centuries. England considered continental
France their playpen for much of the Middle Ages. In fact, the Norman
leaders of England did not distinguish much between their French and
English possessions; both were considered integral parts of their ancestral
lands. The narrowness of the English Channel allowed England continually to
threaten the French core in the Beauce, especially as long as it had
continental footholds in Aquitaine, Burgundy and Normandy. The threat was
so great that France was nearly destroyed during the Hundred Years' War
(1337-1453), which almost resulted in the uniting of England and France
under London's control.

But ironically this conflict the one that nearly destroyed France
ultimately saved it. During the Hundred Years' War, heavy cavalry proved to
be vulnerable to fortifications, advanced archery and (eventually) gunpowder
all technologies that required a much greater centralization and
coordination of resources than feudalism could provide. Only a strong
monarchy could furnish the capital needed for the construction of massive
castles and the production of guns and gunpowder on a proto-industrial scale
while freeing up sufficient numbers of peasants to form units of archers. As in
the conflict with the Muslims, it was a technological innovation that forced
France's political system to evolve, and this time the shift was toward
centralization rather than decentralization. The result was the initial
consolidation of what we now know as France and a steady increase in the
coherence of the French state.
The combination of the political disasters of the feudal period and the
success of consolidation in the battles with the English served as the
formative period of the French psyche. The English taught the French the
hard way the value of unity. Ever since, France has had the most
centralized state in the Western world. Unlike Germany, the United Kingdom
or the United States, France does not have a large and robust federal
structure. There are no substantive regional governments. Instead, almost all
power is vested in Paris and Paris alone. Having a foot in both Northern and
Southern Europe and needing to maintain a navy to keep the English at bay
as well as a large army to compete in Europe requires a wealth of resources
and a high degree of central planning. Whether the leader is Louis XIV,
Napoleon or Charles de Gaulle, a centralized government is in and born of
French blood.

Phase II: The Hapsburg Challenge and Balance of Power (1506-1700)

Europe's Hapsburg era was a dangerous time for the French. In addition to
controlling Spain (and briefly Portugal) and the rising wealth of the New
World, the Hapsburgs also commanded most of Italy and the trade center
that was the Netherlands, threatening France in both European spheres. Paris
in particular was endangered by the Hapsburg-Dutch connection, with little
standing between the two powers on the North European Plain. With the
English still in control of the English Channel, Paris understandably felt
constrained from all sides.
Facing so many threats forced France to be flexible in its alliances. Scottish
separatists were a favorite means of unbalancing the English. France allied
with the Muslim Ottoman Empire against the fellow Catholic Hapsburg
Empire during many of the engagements in Italy in the mid-16th century and
with numerous Protestant German political entities during the Thirty Year War
(1618-1648) the latter when foreign policy was conducted by Armand Jean
du Plessis de Richelieu, a Catholic cardinal. France would do anything to
prevent its enemies from massing forces in the Netherlands and Belgium and
anything to avoid having to fight a land war on the North European Plain.

But it was one thing to play the spoiler and quite another to rule. Well-crafted
policy in Paris could prevent the Hapsburgs' geographically far-flung
possessions and overextended military from coalescing into a single
dominating force that could uproot France, but as the Hapsburgs weakened,
France found itself similarly unable to remake Europe in its own image. In
three major wars the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), the War
of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and the Seven Years' War (1754-
1763, against Britain in North America) France expended great financial
resources in efforts to dominate one region or another, only to emerge at
each war's end with little to show for its efforts. Paris kept coming up against
coalitions expressly designed to balance its power and prevent it from
dominating. With the Hapsburg Empire waning in power, the rest of the
European states well understood that France and only France could be
the next to rule Europe.

But French efforts were exhausting. The various global military

entanglements of the 18th century bankrupted the state, severely infringing
on Paris' ability to maintain internal coherence and defend the North
European Plain. There were two equally damning results. First, the depleted
treasury led to a general breakdown in internal order, contributing to the
French Revolution of 1789. Second, Paris' distraction with England and Spain
led it to miss the emergence of Prussia as a serious European power that
began to first rival and ultimately superseded Hapsburg Austria for
leadership among the cacophony of German kingdoms.

Phase III: Nationalism and the Rise of Germany (1789-1945)

One of the many unintended side effects of the French Revolution was the
concept of nationalism, the idea that people of a relatively common origin
and ancestry and speaking a common tongue shared a common destiny.

From nationalism grew the nation-state, a political entity that harnesses all
people sharing a similar ethnicity into a single governing unit. Combining
nationalism, the nation-state and France's already deep penchant for
centralization begot a juggernaut that was republican France. Rather than
having its energies split internally on various regional and class-based feuds,
all of French power was pooled into a single government, completing the
process that had begun at the end of the Hundred Years' War against
England. This unprecedented capture of a nation's strengths was going to
make France a powerhouse beyond imagining no matter who happened to
rule the country, and it turned out it was Napoleon who would hold the reins.

The result was the one near-unipolar moment in European history. Not only
was France the only state to have embraced the concept of nationalism, but
it also grafted the concept onto an already centralized system, allowing
French power to pour forth across Europe and North Africa. France suddenly
reversed its role on the North European Plain that of a cautious power
protecting its borders with fortifications and distraction and used the plain
to its own advantage, launching an all-out invasion of what was then,
essentially, the entire Western world. The rest of Europe fragmented
among various royal families interconnected through marriage and
inheritance and dependent on pseudo-feudal forms of allegiance was
simply unprepared for the onslaught launched upon them by a modern
nation-state led by the brilliant military strategy of Napoleon Bonaparte.
From 1803 to 1815, France nearly overwhelmed the rest of Europe before a
coalition of nearly every major and minor power on the Continent combined
forces to defeat it.

The lesson was a simple one, again rooted in geography. Even when France
is united and whole, even when it is not under siege, even when its foes are
internally distracted and off balance, even when it is led by one of the
greatest organizational and military minds in human history, even when it
holds the advantage of nationalism it still lacks the resources and
manpower to rule Europe.

The Napoleonic Wars were the highpoint of French power, made possible by a
constellation of factors that are unlikely to be repeated. The English, Spanish,
Dutch, Russians and Italians all recovered. Napoleon was exiled. But most of
all the advantage of nationalism spread. Over the next few decades the
political innovation of the nation-state spread throughout Europe and in time
became a global phenomenon. The result was stronger governments, better
able to marshal resources for everything from commerce to war. And no
people benefited more much to France's chagrin than the Germans.

The shock to France of a unified Germany was palpable. Not only was the
German empire directly unified through war against France, Germany also
made sure to conduct the 1871 unification ceremony and coronation of the
German emperor at Versailles Palace during its brief occupation of France.
While the 100 miles of border between France and Belgium always
represented the main threat to the French core, prior to Germany's
consolidation that threat was somewhat manageable. But the unification of
Germany created a just as populous and more industrialized state hard by
France's most vulnerable point. Instead of France being able to use various
German principalities as proxies, all of them save Luxembourg were now
united against France, with German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck crafting a
careful diplomatic policy throughout the late 19th century whose sole
purpose was to isolate France.

Post-1871 France battled a united Germany with the same strategies its
monarchist predecessors used against Hapsburg Spain and England. In 1907,
it cobbled together a complex web of military alliances that eschewed
historical precedent or ideology in the form of the Triple Entente, which
included colonial rival the United Kingdom and ideological nemesis Imperial
Russia. Additional French-inspired alliances encircled Germany after World
War I with a band of weaker states the so-called Little Entente alliance of
Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia in the 1920s.

It didn't work. France knew from the Napoleonic era that even at its height it
could not rule Europe. It soon was driven home how indefensible the North
European Plain border with Germany was and how much more powerful
Germany was when France was not the only player embracing nationalism.
Berlin simply was able to adopt tenets of the modern nation-state with
greater efficiency in large part because its precarious geographic position
in the middle of Europe required efficiency and then fuel them with much
larger natural and demographic resources than France ever could. The
culmination of this dichotomy was the events of May-June 1940, when the
French military crumbled in less than six weeks. The defeat was by no means
solely the result of geopolitical forces, but it sprang from the fundamental
imbalance of power between France and a unified Germany.

Phase IV: Managing Germany

Most historians break the modern era into the Cold War and post-Cold War
periods. At least as far as France is concerned, however, Stratfor views the
entire post-World War II era as a single chapter in French history that has yet
to come to a conclusion. In this phase, France is attempting to find a means
to live with Germany, a task greatly complicated by recent shifts in the
global political geography.

From the French point of view, the difference between World War II's
beginning and end was stunning. In mid-1940, France was fighting for its life
and losing so badly that Germany, in essence, swallowed it whole, Five years
later, Germany was not just shattered but also occupied in part by none
other than France itself. In mid-1940, the threat on the North European Plain
spelled doom for Paris. Five years later, that threat had evaporated and the
American nuclear umbrella made the thought of hostile military action
against France on the North European Plain highly unlikely. Far from being a
threat, post-war Germany was France's new Maginot Line.

And far from being exposed and vulnerable, France found itself facing the
most congenial constellation of forces in its history. The United Kingdom was
exhausted and had returned home to lick its wounds, pay down its war debts
and deal with decolonization. Spain languished under Francisco Franco's
dictatorship. The Low Countries had been leveled in the war's final year. Italy
and Austria were essentially under the control of the occupying powers. And
the Soviets had sealed off all of Central Europe along with the eastern
portion of Germany behind the Iron Curtain.
Military options were off the table, but politically and economically there was
nothing standing between France and Western European domination. And so
France quite easily was able to coax the Low Countries into an economic and
political partnership, while Italy and Germany were simply forced to join. The
European Coal and Steel Community precursor to the European Economic
Community (EEC) and today's European Union was born only six years
after the war ended.

The stated gains of the EEC/EU have always been economic and political, but
the deeper truth is that the European project has always been about French
geopolitical fear and ambition. Fear in that so long as Germany is subsumed
into an alliance that it does not control, then Paris need not fear another
German invasion or any invasion, for that matter. A France that can
harness German strength is a France that does not need to burn resources
guarding against Germany and a France that can become once again a
global power.

It was a solid plan, taking full advantage of the American occupation of

Germany, and it worked in part. During the Cold War, France was able to plot
a middle course between the Soviets and Americans (much to the
Americans' annoyance) and focus on deepening economic links to both
Europe and its former colonies. It pursued an independent nuclear deterrent
and a relationship with the second and third worlds largely unrestrained by
its membership in the Western alliance.

But it didn't last. Eventually the Cold War ended, and the Soviet collapse was
perceived very differently in France. While most of the free world celebrated,
the French fretted. France was not a front-line state during the Cold War, so
the French never saw the Soviet Union as a great threat. However, the Soviet
collapse led to the reunification of Germany and that was a top-tier issue.

No longer could France consider Germany a non-entity content to be

harnessed for someone else's ends. The French knew from their disastrous
firsthand experiences in the late 19th century that Germany would claw back
to its position as the premier power in Europe and attempt to remake Europe
in its image with more resources and thus likely more success than the
French had after World War II.

France's solution was as creative as ever: ensure that continued German

membership in European institutions remained in Germany's interest. When
it became apparent that German reunification was imminent, France rushed
negotiations of the European Union's Maastricht Treaty on Monetary Union
essentially handing over Europe's economic policy to the Germans (the
European Central Bank is, for all intents and purposes, the German
Bundesbank writ large). Twenty years on, Germany cannot abandon the
European Union without triggering massive internal economic dislocations
because of the economic evolutions Maastricht has wrought.

Considering the tools at hand, it is as tight a cage as the French were able to
build, but that leaves the French with two long-term concerns. First, the cage
breaks, Germany goes its own way and attempts to remake Europe to suit its
purposes. The details of this scenario are impossible to predict, but in theme,
it would be 1914 all over again. Second, the cage holds, but it constrains
France more than Germany. With the Germans ever more in control of their
own policies, the French can no longer take for granted their undisputed
leadership of the European Union as they did during the Cold War. Germany's
recent aggressiveness in seeking a German solution to the current financial
crisis is an excellent case in point as to how Germany is moving beyond what
France hoped would be a co-leadership structure. And then there is the
simple fact of direct competition. Paris fears that the outright Franco-German
economic competition that the European Union allows could end as badly for
France as the direct Franco-German military competition did 70 years ago. It
is probably correct. On at least one level, France in 2010 is in an even more
uncomfortable situation than it was in 1871 because this time France is in
the cage with Germany.

The hope in Paris is that Germany will come to the same conclusion that
France has: that it lacks the geopolitical gifts and positioning to rule Europe
by itself and that it needs a partner. So long as that is the case and so
long as Germany chooses France as that partner France can breathe more
easily. But the fact remains that this is a decision that will be made in Berlin,
not Paris. And with that renewed cognizance in Berlin, France's strategy of
managing Germany is already beginning to fail.

Geopolitical Imperatives

Secure a larger hinterland.

Always look east.

Maintain influence in regions beyond Europe.

Be flexible.

Secure a Larger Hinterland

France is the only country on the North European Plain that has an option for
expansion into useful territories beyond its core without directly clashing with
another major power. This begins with expanding down the plain to the
Pyrenees, but many other regions are worth the time: the Rhone valley, the
Mediterranean coast between the Pyrenees and the Alps, the Cotentin and
Brittany Peninsulas, and even the Massif Central. While none of these areas
can compare with the fertility and capital-generation capacity of the Beauce,
all are valuable areas in their own right and most grant Paris influence in
regions beyond the North European Plain.

Assimilating those regions populated with Bretons, Basques and Galo-

Romans was not a simple task. Linguistic and ethnic differences require
centuries to grind away. But unlike most of the similar regions in Europe, in
France there are no other powers that are well-positioned to interfere with
this process. The Scots and Sicilians could be reached via the sea, the Serbs
and Bulgarians by any number of routes. But the minorities of France could
only be accessed through France itself, making France uniquely able to
centralize not only government but also identity.

Always Look East

Being situated at the western end of the North European Plain makes France
the only country on the plain that has only one land approach to defend
against. Paris must be ever vigilant of developments elsewhere down the
plain and be prepared to intervene on any stretch of the plain it can reach in
order to forestall or hamstring potential threats.

As France discovered that it must centralize, the Beauce became even more
important and due to its position on the plain more vulnerable. It
became quite clear to its rivals that making a run for Paris and thus knocking
out the nerve center of France was a simple means of taking over the entire
country. The Maginot Line is simply the 20th century incarnation of a series
of fortresses that were first built in the 17th century in an attempt to forestall
a military conquest.

In other eras the French were more proactive, sometimes occupying portions
of the Netherlands or Germany as France did near the end of the Hapsburg
era, sometimes carving out buffer states as it did with Belgium in the 19th
century.

Maintain Influence in Regions Beyond Western Europe

Unlike the United Kingdom, whose expansion into empire was a natural step
in its evolution as a naval power, France's overseas empire was almost
wholly artificial. The empire did not exist to expand Paris' power per se but to
grant the French an eye and hand in far off places to complicate the doings
of others. North African colonies could be used to disrupt Italy, North
American and Southeast Asian colonies to cause heartburn for the English. It
did not so much matter that these colonies were profitable (most were not)
so long as a French presence in them complicated the lives of France's foes.
This strategy continued throughout the Cold War as France used a long list of
third-world leaders to complicate American, British, Soviet and German
policies globally (roughly in that order).

These colonial assets served one more critical role for Paris: They were
disposable. Because they were not designed to be profitable, it did not
unduly harm France when they were lost or traded away. After all, France's
primary concern is the North European Plain. If a piece of the empire needed
to be used as a chip on the poker table that is Europe, so be it. Louisiana was
sold for loose change in order to fund the Napoleonic wars, while Algeria was
ultimately abandoned despite being home to some 1 million ethnic French
so that Charles de Gaulle could focus attention on more important matters
at home and in the rest of Europe.

Be Flexible
Geopolitics is not ideological or personal, although few countries have the
discipline to understand that. To survive, nation-states regularly need to ally
with powers they find less than ideal. For example, the United States sided
with Soviet Russia during World War II and Maoist China during the Cold War
to gain advantage over its rivals.

But France takes this concept to new heights. France's position on the
western end of the North European Plain and sitting astride the only reliable
connections between Northern and Southern Europe make it remarkably
exposed to European and North African developments. France does possess
a great deal of arable land and navigable waterways, but these are not
sufficient resources to deal with the multiple challenges that its
neighborhood constantly poses from many directions.

Consequently, France makes these kinds of less-than-ideal alliances far more

often than other states. Luckily, its penchant for obtaining influence on a
global scale (its third imperative) provides it with no end of potential
partners. Throughout France's history, it has allied not only with the Ottoman
Empire against its fellow Western Europeans but also with Protestant German
states against fellow Catholic states during Europe's religious wars.

Challenges Ahead

Today, France is faced with a Germany that is still tied to Paris via the
European Union and NATO but is beginning to think for itself. It will take all of
Paris' diplomatic flexibility, acumen and influence to maintain France's
position as one of the world's premier powers. It will have to make itself
indispensable to Berlin's control of Europe while making sure that it has
Germany outmaneuvered on the global stage. It is a difficult challenge, but
France has a 1,000-year history of diplomatic intrigue and Machiavellian
politics from which to draw.