Une armée de diplomates: Les militaires américains et la France, 1944–1967

In this book, François Doppler-Speranza has written a detailed and fascinating account of the situation in which the US military found itself after the Second World War because of the large number of troops it had stationed on the territory of its ally, France. Considered of vital strategic importance to the United States, Paris contained the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), increasing its value to Washington. However, political activists in France were far from content with the large-scale US presence in their country – especially, members of the French Communist Party with its determined anti-Americanism – but the Gaullists were similarly distressed. Meanwhile, many ordinary French people, with memories of the German occupation still fresh, also found the US military bases disturbing. Unsurprisingly, this situation led to tensions and cultural clashes between the Americans and the French at the local, national and international levels. Given the importance of France to the United States, the Pentagon sought to smooth relations between the French population and the US soldiers, and so the US military developed its own strategy of public diplomacy. This book studies the paradox the author describes on the very first page of the introduction: ‘soldiers make war but, at the same time, they represent America abroad’ (p. 1). Trained as a fighting force, the US military found itself exercising essentially diplomatic functions towards a major ally. This situation was further complicated by the fact that the United States already had a bureau charged with diplomacy, the US State Department, whose leadership resented seeing a number of their functions taken over by the Defence Department. This led to rivalries, conflicts and turf wars between the two offices over the conduct of US foreign policy, notably public diplomacy. François Doppler-Speranza does an excellent job describing this complicated tapestry of international and intragovernmental tensions and detailing the Pentagon’s response to them. The book begins in 1944 when the French population largely welcomed US troops during the Liberation and examines the countries’ – often rocky – relations over the following years, notably after the creation of NATO (whose headquarters were in Paris from 1952-67). During this postwar period, large numbers of GIs took up long-term residence in France, reminding many French people of the trauma of the German occupation during the Second World War. These US military bases were often established far from major cities and cultural centres, and thus from the traditional diplomatic apparatus. Realising the tensions with local French people and seeking to ease the way for the US soldiers, the US Defence Department embarked on a large programme of public diplomacy. The author studies the cultural image that Washington sought to project in France and examines how it was received by the French population during this short but key period in relations between the two nations. Most importantly (at least to the Pentagon), the Defence Department had to justify the soldiers’ presence to the French – as well as the domestic US public. Doppler-Speranza uses the term ‘parabellicist’, coined by Jacques Ayencourt in 1946, to describe the policy undertaken by the Pentagon to legitimise the US presence in France post-Liberation: for the US military leadership, both nations should be kept on a permanent war footing.