French North Africa: an American Problem

Abstract

FOR SEVERAL YEARS, the French protectorates of Tunisia and Morocco have been asking the United States for help in their attempts to win independence. Although our refusal to give help subjected us to charges of hypocrisy, and although the Arab countries made our support of colonialism an excuse for neutrality in the cold war,1 Tunisian and Moroccan nationalism never was a paramount problem to American foreign policy makers. In recent months, however, this situation has changed. The British promise to evacuate Suez has left French North Africa as the only part of the nationalism-conscious Arab world still under European control. Although the Arab League had espoused the cause of North African freedom as early as 1946, the issue of removing France from the Mediterranean scene was always secondary to the Suez problem. Now that this is settled, animosity previously directed at London has been diverted towards Paris. French presence in Algeria, which is administratively part of metropolitan France, is not yet considered intolerable, but its continuance in the protectorates is. With Tunisian and Moroccan independence as a cardinal aim of its foreign policy, Egypt, the pacesetter of the Arab League, has shown no restraint in attempting to arouse francophobia, accusing France not only of wantonly exploiting North Africa, but even of plotting with Israel against the entire Arab world.2 Fortified by this support, the nationalist movements of Tunisia and Morocco have become forces to be reckoned with on the international scene. The large concessions wrested from a weakened France in recent months have encouraged the nationalists to intensify their efforts to obtain outside support. Their chief objective is the United States the one