‘Oh bugger, they're in the tent’: British responses to French reintegration into NATO

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This article looks at the British response to the French decision to re-integrate into the military structures of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance. It outlines the official Whitehall position, expressed by officials within the British Ministry of Defence, that welcomes the decision as a sign that France has strategically converged onto the British position as outlined in the UK 1997/8 Strategic Defence Review. An alternative view, set out by prominent members of the British establishment and supported by the work of think tanks, notes that the most striking feature is the lack of any coherent British response. This view emphasises the ad hoc nature of contemporary British defence policy, its lack of strategic reflection and the prominence of many unanswered questions vis-à-vis British defence policy more generally. The article ends by suggesting that contemporary Franco-British defence cooperation is likely to be dictated more by the pragmatic requirements of budgetary stringency than power political considerations.