France to rejoin NATO?

[dead0man]

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This is a good thing....right?

[Hash]

France never left NATO to begin with. It left the NATO command.

Apart from all this stuff, this story is so ironic and so many '60s politicians must be rolling in their graves.

[Jens]

What a load of rubbish - almost as funny as those Americans who think that the USA singlehanded won WWII.

[Ogre Mage]

This move is sure to please NATO allies, but apparently has sparked some criticism within France.

I'm not familiar of the intricacies of NATO, but it appears Sarkozy believes that France having a greater say within NATO is worth losing some independence. 

[Lief 🗽]

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Hahaha, LBJ was awesome.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

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Hahaha, LBJ was awesome.

Yes, yes he was.

[CultureKing]

What a load of rubbish - almost as funny as those Americans who think that the USA singlehanded won WWII.

I don't see how Great Britain and Russia could have won without us. The best they could have done was negociated very bad peace treaties that would have left them crippled.

[Lief 🗽]

It's hard to argue that France would have been a free state without the United States. Either Nazi Germany would have won/forced a stalemate and kept France or the Soviets would have gobbled up all of Europe but the United Kingdom, in which case France would have been just another Communist satellite state behind the Iron Curtain.

[Jens]

What a load of rubbish - almost as funny as those Americans who think that the USA singlehanded won WWII.

I don't see how Great Britain and Russia could have won without us. The best they could have done was negociated very bad peace treaties that would have left them crippled.

I don't disagree with the fact that USA played an important role in defeating Germany, primarily via the vast surplus of war material, but the Russians took the brunt of the battles and the casualties.
D-day prevented at complete Russian conquest of Germany (and the rest of Western Europe), but the battle for Europe were won at Stalingrad, Leningrad and Kursk, not Omaha Beach.

[Hash]

I'm not familiar of the intricacies of NATO, but it appears Sarkozy believes that France having a greater say within NATO is worth losing some independence. 

It's that criticism (and support, mind you) that makes this situation so sweetly ironic.

[Bacon King]

What a load of rubbish - almost as funny as those Americans who think that the USA singlehanded won WWII.

I don't see how Great Britain and Russia could have won without us. The best they could have done was negociated very bad peace treaties that would have left them crippled.

What? The Soviet Union would have ended up steamrolling across the entirety of Europe if the U.S. never got involved.

[big bad fab]

France "out of NATO" myth reminds me of Swedish "neutrality"...

Bayrou is like a fish in water: he can speak of "symbols"... Ah, "symbols in French foreign policy, symbols in French political scene...

[Hash]

Bayrou is like a fish in water: he can speak of "symbols"... Ah, "symbols in French foreign policy, symbols in French political scene...

Bayrou's arguments make no sense. He claims that if France had been in the NATO command in 2003, France would "most certainly" have gone to Iraq. However, Germany was in the NATO command in 2003 and it didn't go to Iraq.

What is so ironic in this situation is the attitude of the opposition. Bayrou, the heir to French Christian democracy and the MRP, is taking a stand against. However, the French centre, from the MRP to the CDS, has always been one of the most pro-European and pro-NATO parties. More proof that he's a fake centrist. The PS is against, while in 1966 the SFIO introduced a NCM against the Pompidou government condemning this.

François Fillon as recently as 1990, when he was one of the leaders of the Séguiniste faction of the RPR, wrote a brochure against this very re-integration into NATO.

I think Michel Debré must be rolling over in his grave.

[Storebought]

It's hard to argue that France would have been a free state without the United States. Either Nazi Germany would have won/forced a stalemate and kept France or the Soviets would have gobbled up all of Europe but the United Kingdom, in which case France would have been just another Communist satellite state behind the Iron Curtain.

I'm envisioning the France that would result from "allowing" the Red Army into Paris:

1. Versailles and the Loire River Valley chateaux detonated
2. Vinyards plowed under to make space for oats for the draft-oxen
3. Paris rebuilt under the precepts of Socialist Realism
4. French-language spelling reform(s)

Yeah. God-damn those American bastards from giving the Russians their due.