Histoire secrète de la Ve république (Secret History of the Fifth Republic)

Citation

Richardson, J. (2007), "Histoire secrète de la Ve république (Secret History of the Fifth Republic)", Foresight, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 60-61. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636680710737768

A French adage is reculer pour mieux sauter (step back to leap ahead better), and this detailed volume shows how learning from the political past should improve democratic governance in the future. The book concerns France from 1958 to the present; it is a lesson in avoiding plans, policies and strategies that inevitably get democracies in trouble both domestically and abroad. Our review should be of special interest, incidentally, to foresight readers who follow closely its Retrostrategy section.

The Fifth Republic dates from the time when Charles de Gaulle resumed the reins of government and forced through Parliament a constitution whose infamous Article 49.3 allows a legislative bill to be passed, under certain conditions, without a parliamentary majority. This constitutional device remains unpopular today with many French voters. The half‐century of the new constitution has been peppered, furthermore, with other aberrations of governance and scandals so numerous that they fill this book of nearly 800 pages.

Histoire secrète's editors and main authors (Faligot and Guisnel) have divided their “secret history” in seven parts: Origins and the Algerian War, Decolonization and Colonial Heritage, Nuclear Energy and the Military‐Industrial Complex, Secret Diplomacy, Secret Services and Reasons of State, Finance and Games of Influence, and Politics and Hidden Networks. A “Chronology” of the years 1958‐2006 follows, together with an impressively detailed index of 3,000 entries.

To the outsider, post‐Second World War France is probably best known by the Algerian war and her subsequent withdrawal from colonial Africa, on the one hand, and her achievements at home in the advanced technologies, on the other – the Concorde supersonic aircraft and high‐speed trains among them. But the country has also led a parallel life – one not amply documented beyond its borders. In a compendium as rich in examples as this one, we have to limit our review to a manageable number.

To begin with a recent, and still unresolved, incident is the Clearstream affair (14 entries in the book). Clearstream is an investment firm, not French, based in Luxembourg. Someone in the French government (all indications point to the prime minister's office) decided to “reveal” that the leading conservative candidate for president in the 2007 elections, Nicolas Sarkozy, was illegally involved in Clearstream's operations.

Word got out to the media that “Sarko” holds private accounts in an obscure Italian bank, accounts stuffed with unspecified proceeds from Clearstream transactions accruing to his name while serving a few years ago as French finance minister. The aim of the accusation, not surprisingly, was to undo Sarkozy's chances at both gaining the nomination and winning the election. The reputed Italian holdings proved to be untrue, but Sarko – currently minister of the interior – has not forgotten the criminal ploy.

From colonies to collusion

In the 1960s, after colonial Algeria won independence from France, neighboring Morocco was still under French influence. King Hassan II was plagued internally by an opposition leader named Mehdi Ben Barka, whom the monarch wanted out of the way. In October 1965, European‐appearing plainsclothesmen picked up Ben Barka outside the fashionable Lipp tavern‐restaurant in Paris' Latin Quarter. The Moroccan was whisked away, leaving no trace behind. Despite official denials in Paris and the Moroccan capital, Rabat, there is little doubt that an aggressive complicity existed between France's secret services and the leadership of the North African kingdom. More than forty years later, Ben Barka is still officially missing.

Histoire secrète's authors deal extensively with France's post‐colonial record in Africa, placing an economic accent on the petroleum riches of the Gulf of Guinea area and Nigeria as well as the intense competition between US and French firms to profit from this disappearing resource. From the time of conservative Charles de Gaulle to socialist François Mitterrand (i.e. from the 1940s to the mid‐1990s), the gray eminence of French politics in West Africa and fomentor of wars among African kings and presidents was one Jacques Foccart. Neither a career diplomat nor a titular civil servant, Foccart endured for decades as Paris' man on the ground – often in collusion with petroleum and other industrial interests – in formerly French domains in Africa. His intrigues merit, alone, 64 mentions in the book.

Within the United Nations, France is one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council; she is also one of the original nuclear powers. With the loss of Algeria in 1962, France ceded her nuclear‐test grounds there and moved the continuation of nuclear trials to island holdings in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Protests in Oceania and nearby Asian countries were of no avail. France went ahead and, after a period of nuclear calm, resumed testing again in the 1980s.

The countries of the Pacific basin were thunderstruck by an event occurring in 1985, recounted tersely in the 44‐page Chronology of the French Fifth Republic appended to Histoire secrete:

10 July – Attack on a vessel of the Greenpeace environmental association, Rainbow Warrior, in the harbour of Auckland (New Zealand). A photographer is killed. On 16 August L'Express [a Parisian newsweekly magazine] reveals the responsibility of the French secret services; Charles Hernu, minister of defence, resigns. [p. 696]

Greenpeace was in Auckland to protest against nuclear tests being resumed by France. Commenting (p. 536) on the revelations made by the mass media, the authors state, “If a fair number of incidents can be suppressed over the long run, the news of the day manages sometimes to thwart censorship. This was the case with the Rainbow Warrior … ”

Histoire secrète may not show one of the world's strongest democracies in the best possible light, but the record of many other free republics is probably not much better. One thing is sure: chroniclers Roger Faligot, Jean Guisnel and their colleagues – transposed to reporting on events in Russia or China – would never have been able to publish their work in other than a democracy.