Mitterrand's France, the End of the Cold War, and German Unification: A Reappraisal

Abstract

France's role is often overlooked in the abundant literature on the end of the Cold War. In addition, most accounts tell of the country's alleged lack of understanding for the democratic revolutions in the East and of its supposed attempt to block German unification. Yet archival research, now becoming possible, which allows for a thorough reappraisal, categorically invalidates most of this. In spite of concerns over the risk of instability – which were shared by other key players – French diplomacy in fact played an important and constructive role in the events of 1989–91, not least through the relaunch of European integration which led to the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. The French case provides a useful reminder that the dominant narrative of these events – with its almost exclusive focus on the superpowers (the US to begin with) and its lack of interest in European actors or factors – needs to be revised.

Notes

 [1] Gaddis, The Cold War, 250.

 [2] These contentions are found e.g. in one of the most authoritative accounts of the diplomacy of the end of the Cold War: see Hutchings, American Diplomacy. Hutchings' almost thoroughly negative appraisal of French policy in that period is well summarized by his contention that France tried – no less – to ‘retard history's course’: see p. 17. The thesis of France's opposition to German unification and willingness to coalesce with the UK and the USSR is a leitmotiv in the book: see in particular pp. 90, 93, 96–8, 105–6, 112, and 116; Mitterrand's alleged accommodation with the 1991 coup attempt is mentioned on p. 330 (on this and Mitterrand' attitude towards the integrity of the USSR, see also below, note 57), and his eagerness to put off East European countries' EC membership is mentioned on p. 287. For a selection of other works conveying a critical analysis of French diplomacy at the end of the Cold War, see below, note 7.

 [3] Judt, Postwar, 639 (the author goes on to assert that ‘the first reaction from Paris was to try and block any move to German unification’, although he concedes that Mitterrand later on ‘adopted a different track’, that of setting the Germans a ‘price’ for their unity, i.e. ‘pursuing the European project under a Franco-German condominium’: see p. 640.

 [4] For a general introduction to France's role and Gaullist policies in the Cold War, see Bozo, “France, ‘Gaullism’, and the Cold War”.

 [5] On this, see Bozo, “France, German Unification and European Integration”.

 [6] The findings in the present article are drawn in part from Bozo, Mitterrand.

 [7] For the early journalistic studies illustrative of the emergence of a negative account of French policy at Cold War's end, see for example Pond, Beyond the Wall; for the academic production that has subsequently, to varying degrees, consecrated the negative reading of France's record, see in particular Zelikow and Rice, Germany Unified; Hutchings, American Diplomacy; and Weidenfeld, Außenpolitik. For a critical discussion of the American dominated narrative of the end of the Cold War, see Cox, “Another Transatlantic Split”.

 [8] After a critical article appeared in the Washington Post on 22 March 1990, in which France was described by an unnamed US official as ‘dragging its feet’ with regard to German unification, the French embassy in Washington reported the embarrassment of the White House and the State Department vis-à-vis declarations ‘once again’ emanating from the US ambassador in Bonn, Vernon Walters (the embassy ventured that entertaining a negative image of France's role, as done by ‘certain elements in the administration’, aimed, by contrast, at promoting the US stance): Ministère des affaires étrangères (MAE), Archives diplomatiques (AD), Série Affaires stratégiques et désarmement (ASD) 1985–90, Box 16, Telegram, Washington 775, 23 March 1990 (Walters clearly used the same device later on in his memoirs on German unification: see Walters, Die Vereinigung).

 [9] Although this has given rise to strikingly little debate, the fact is that most of the ‘standard’ academic production on the period hardly escapes criticism. For all their scholarship, Zelikow and Rice can hardly claim objectivity: although they had both returned to academia when they wrote their book, these two former senior aides in the George H.W. Bush White House never lost touch with politics, as their subsequent careers make clear, and yet they were allowed to base their research on exclusive access to the archives of their own former administration, arguably a unique case of confusion between scholarship and politics, thus raising methodological, if not ethical questions: to what extent can such writing of contemporary history be distinguished from official history? The same question applies to the standard German account by Weidenfeld, which after all was based on discretionary access to the archives of the Chancellery granted by Helmut Kohl himself (the remark also applies to the publication of documents by Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit).

[10] For a general discussion of the literature, especially with regard to German unification, see Spohr, “German Unification”.

[11] Védrine, Les Mondes, 455–6. Although clearly favourable to self-determination, Mitterrand's public discourse, in those months, remained guarded rather than actively supportive: ‘I am not afraid of reunification’, he declared in a joint press conference with Kohl on 3 November 1989 (one should note that Bush, at the same time, did not sound more upbeat: ‘I won't … dance on the wall’, he famously declared after its opening: see Zelikow and Rice, Germany Unified, 105).

[12] On these aspects, see Lacouture, Mitterrand; and Tiersky, François Mitterrand.

[13] Attali, Verbatim. On the unreliability of Attali's book, see Favier and Martin-Roland, La Décennie Mitterrand, vol. 3, “Les Défis”, 38, who describe the book as nothing short of an ‘imposture’; see also the comments by Pierre Joxe, a former Mitterrand associate and minister, who describes the book as full of ‘mistakes’ and, in some instances, of ‘lies’, in Cohen, Mitterrand, 426; and Carle, Les Archives. Attali not only contaminated most of the subsequent scholarly literature, but also, in some instances, memoirs of actors: see the recollection of Kohl himself, whose surprisingly negative evocation of his ‘friend’ Mitterrand in his recent memoirs (in which he frequently alludes to information on Mitterrand's attitude obtained after the facts and quotes ‘diaries’ of ‘close advisors’ of the president) has clearly been influenced by the reading of Attali: see Kohl, Erinnerungen, e.g. 954–5, where a whole paragraph of an alleged declaration by Mitterrand in the Council of Ministers, to be found on p. 322 of Verbatim, is reproduced uncritically; other implicit mentions of Verbatim and of Attali appear e.g. on pp. 984 and 1042. The ‘hardening’ of Kohl's testimony on Mitterrand – no doubt in part as a result of the ‘Attali’ effect – is clear when his memoirs are compared with his previous book of interviews with two German journalists: see Kohl, Ich wollte. (The unreliability of Attali's book is clear to anyone who has been able to compare it with original documents. One typical illustration is his account of Mitterrand's important conversation with Gorbachev in Moscow on 25 May 1990, in which a unified Germany's membership in NATO was discussed. Whereas Verbatim (p. 500) has Mitterrand suggest the possibility of a “French” status in NATO for unified Germany—a suggestion which was seen by some as a proof of Mitterrand's “duplicity” in this matter at a time when the U.S. was trying to obtain Soviet acceptance of a unified Germany's full NATO membership—the original document (handwritten notes by Attali himself, who was the note taker) shows the exact opposite, i.e. that this suggestion was made by Gorbachev; private papers, meeting between Mitterrand and Gorbachev, Moscow, 25 May 1990 (this is further confirmed by Gorbachev's own recollection, Wie es war, 134.) On this whole affair, see also below, note 49.)

[14] See for example Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Staatspräsident Mitterand, Latché, 4. Januar 1990, in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 685: ‘When the friends of Germany express themselves with caution’, Mitterrand complained to Kohl, ‘they are immediately seen [in the press] as bad friends’.

[15] Archives nationales (AN), 5AG4/7010, Letter, Hubert Védrine to Zbigniew Brzezinski, 31 July 1990.

[16] Carle, Les Archives, 240; in addition to the gathering of the relevant documents, memos about the key events and meetings of 1989–90 were drafted: see e.g. AN, 5AG4/CDM33, Caroline de Margerie, note pour le président de la République, Votre déplacement à Kiev le 6 décembre 1989, 23 January 1992.

[17] Mitterrand, De l'Allemagne.

[18] Védrine, Les Mondes; among memoirs of lesser significance, see those of Mitterrand's minister of foreign affairs, Dumas, Le Fil.

[19] Cohen, Mitterrand, 372.

[20] Schabert, Wie Weltgeschichte; on the reception of the book, see e.g. Mantzke, “Plaudereien an französischen Kaminen”; and Jacques Bariéty's review in Politique étrangère 2 (2004): 441–5 (one should note, however, that the kind of access given to Schabert in the Elysée was not different from that granted to Weidenfeld in the Chancellery: see above, note 9).

[21] The four volume history of the Mitterrand presidency by two former AFP journalists stands out as a work of reference both in terms of sources (in addition to interviews, the authors were granted informal access to archival material emanating from the presidency) and of treatment (although the book could be seen as verging on official history, they come up with a fairly balanced judgement of Mitterrand's record); yet the book remains a piece of journalistic investigation and it cannot be seen as a substitute for academic and, especially, historical work: see Favier and Martin-Roland, La Décennie (the relevant volumes are 3 and 4).

[22] See e.g. Jarreau, “Réformes”. Interestingly, Attali seized the opportunity to publish a new book which offers a far more favourable reading of Mitterrand's record than his previous books, in particular with regard to German unification and the end of the Cold War: Attali, C'était François Mitterrand. (Asked whether this amounted to a ‘rehabilitation’, Attali unashamedly answered that because ‘secondary controversies have become blurred’, now is the time ‘to set events back in their context while taking into account the work of historians’; see his interview in Le Monde, 6 November 2005.)

[23] The 1979 French law on archives establishes a 30 year accessibility rule for government documents (which is brought up to 60 years for documents relating to national security), but it also allows for derogations to this rule on an individual basis. Although the legislation has given rise to debates and controversies in the past few years – in particular with regard to the alleged lack of transparency in the granting of derogations – it is a fact that it has allowed many historians to work in satisfactory conditions before the completion of the 30 year period; on these issues, see Braibant, Les Archives.

[24] The archives of the Mitterrand presidency are accessible to historians by derogation under the 1979 law, but the authorization process – which involves, as for all presidencies since de Gaulle, the agreement of the former president or his representative in addition to that of the Archives nationales – has given rise to controversy on the conditions under which access has been granted; however, the archivists in charge of the collections emphasize that the system has been made more transparent and effective in the past few years, thus allowing access to an increasing number of historians: see Bos and Vaisse, “Les archives présidentielles”.

[25] On the internal workings of the Mitterrand presidency, see Védrine, Les Mondes, in particular 30 ff., and Carle, Les Archives, in particular 101 ff.

[26] The dominant narrative, particularly in the US or in the German literature, usually depicts the personal role of Roland Dumas as well as that of high officials in the foreign ministry as especially negative, in particular with regard to German unification to which the Quai d'Orsay had supposedly been historically hostile and remained so by the late 1980s: ‘the Foreign Ministry in particular’, writes Elizabeth Pond in her otherwise thoroughly negative account of French policy, ‘clung to the old suspicions of Germany’: see Pond, Beyond the Wall, 159; Kohl himself asserted that Dumas and the Quai d'Orsay ‘did not consider German unity to be desirable’: see Kohl, Ich wollte, 177 (Genscher, however, does not share this view, thus showing the relativity of political memoirs: see Genscher, Erinnerungen). Yet the archival records of the Quai d'Orsay (which for this period are also accessible by derogation to the 30 year rule) invalidate these assertions, showing rather a strong commitment to Franco-German relations and European integration and a clear acceptance of German unity.

[27] Although the practice of keeping photocopies of original documents has been customary for decades among officials in major capitals, the Elysée under Mitterrand constitutes a special case as a result of his willingness to systematically gather documents during his term – probably with a view to the writing of his future memoirs – thus leading to the constitution by former staff members of a ‘parallel’ archival collection, which some of them kept after their time at the Elysée: on this see Carle, Les Archives; this practice has been condemned by archivists and historians as entailing the risk of encouraging the writing of history on the basis of selected documents (Schabert's book, which is overwhelmingly based on this ‘parallel’ corpus, was heavily criticized for it: see above, note 20), but this risk becomes minimal when both the official and the unofficial materials are exploited, as by this author. (Since then, the ‘unofficial’ collection has been included in the official archives of the Mitterrand presidency at the Archives nationales; however, because access was given informally to the author prior to that, the corresponding documents are referred to as ‘private papers’ in the following footnotes.)

[28] The edited volume of documents from the Chancellery represents to this day the most accessible foreign source for investigating France's role, in this instance through Franco-German relations: see Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit; other useful non-French sources (with varying degrees of accessibility at this time) include the documents gathered by the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow, the records of the Bush administration at the George Bush Presidential Library in College Station (Texas) as well as UK documents emanating from the Thatcher Foundation and especially the Foreign Office (which should shortly publish a volume of documents on German unification).

[29] The author has interviewed about 40 former officials from France, the United States, the FRG and Russia.

[30] To illustrate the point on the interpretative problems involved when historically addressing the German question, it is enough to ask when that question was actually reopened (if it was ever closed), for this simple query immediately raises many complex issues, not least that of the relationship between official discourse and intimate persuasion; for a remarkable attempt at ‘thinking’ the German question historically, see Garton Ash, In Europe's Name.

[31] Mitterrand's trip to the GDR in December 1989 – which is often used as evidence of his eagerness to slow down the process – offers an illustration of the importance of the ‘what’ and the ‘when’: what did the French president do or say during his visit, especially with regard to German unification? Did he actually speak or act in favour of the persistence of the GDR as a separate state? As to the ‘when’, what was the exact context of the visit? Was the rapid collapse of the East German regime barely a month later already predictable at the time? How did other key actors treat the issue of contacts with the GDR in that period? (One should remember, for example, that James Baker made a visit to East Berlin only a few days before him.)

[32] This is the underlying line in most of the negative accounts of French policy: “for four decades the division of Europe had been good to France”, writes e.g. Elizabeth Pond in support of her contention that Mitterrand's France was hostile to German unification: see Pond, Beyond the Wall, 158 (the same logic pervades the analysis of Brzezinski, which Védrine tries to challenge: see above, note 15).

[33] Mitterrand's New Year's Eve televised speech, 31 December 1981, Politique étrangère , November–December 1981, 85.

[34] See e.g. MAE, AD, Europe, série URSS 1986–90, box 6670, Direction d'Europe, Sous direction d'Europe orientale, note a.s. L'URSS fin mai 1988 et les relations franco-soviétiques, 31 May 1988; and private papers, Hubert Védrine, note pour le président de la République, Le développement de nos rapports avec l'Europe de l'Est, 13 July 1988,. On this period, see Bozo, “Before the Wall”.

[35] See for example a think piece by the Quai d'Orsay's political director, MAE, AD, série Directeur politique 1988–91, box 305, Bertrand Dufourcq, note, De l'Europe d'aujourd'hui à l'Europe de demain, 20 February 1989; on Mitterrand's vision of the overcoming of ‘Yalta’ in 1989, see Bozo, Mitterrand, 94–102.

[36] AN, 5AG4/7708, MAE, Note du directeur d'Europe, Le réveil de l'histoire, 16 November 1989.

[37] Although the dominant US narrative can hardly dissimulate that Washington was equally surprised, one senses the temptation to do just that, sometimes at the expense of credibility: ‘while surprised by the speed of events, we had nonetheless seen unification coming sooner than others, including the Germans themselves’, writes Hutchings somewhat daringly, American Diplomacy, 97 (President Bush's personal account, it should be noted, comes out as much more modest: see Bush and Scowcroft, A World).

[38] AD, Europe, RFA 1986–90, box 6800, Telegram Diplomatie 25193–4, 4 December 1989.

[39] Hence Baker wrote to Bush on 20 December 1989, that Kohl may be going ‘too far, too fast’ on German unification: see Zelikow and Rice, Germany Unified, 148; Kohl himself had confided to Mitterrand a few days earlier that he was doing everything possible to ‘avoid a rush’ and that he was trying to ‘reduce the speed’: see private papers, account of the meeting between Kohl, Mitterrand and Jean-Pascal Delamuraz (president of the Swiss Confederation) in Switzerland, 15 December 1989.

[40] ‘I did not send a representative to the lecture [which Kohl held in Paris on German unification]’, he told Thatcher on 20 January 1990, ‘for I could not allow his words to bind me’: see private papers, account of the meeting between Thatcher and Mitterrand at the Elysée, 20 January 1990.

[41] Although French archival sources on the meeting are somewhat scarce, the evidence is sufficient to rule out the standard narrative of Mitterrand's attempt to enrol Gorbachev in a policy of blocking or even slowing down German unification; for a detailed discussion, see Bozo, Mitterrand, 156–60 and 416–18. (The parallel meeting between Dumas and Soviet foreign minister Edward Chevardnadze at Kiev, of which we do have detailed minutes, clearly confirms this: while the latter urged the French ‘to have the courage to say what [they] think’ and to take ‘a clear stand’, the former flatly objected that ‘the German people have a right to self determination’: see AD, Europe, URSS 1986–90, box 6674, Ambassade France en URSS, compte-rendu de l'entretien entre M. le ministre d'Etat et M. Chevardnadze à Kiev le 6 décembre 1989, 15 December 1989.)

[42] Private papers, account of the meeting between Thatcher and Mitterrand at the Elysée, 20 January 1990. Thatcher's recollection of her conversations with Mitterrand in that period – in which she claims that he shared her reservations vis-à-vis German unification – is often used in order to substantiate the ‘standard’ narrative: see Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, 790 ff., in particular 797–8. Yet this piece of evidence is weak. Although Mitterrand did often appear reluctant to contradict her head-on during their bilateral meetings – which could explain Thatcher's ex post tendency to enrol Mitterrand in her own germanophobia – the evidence confirms his clear rejection of her anti-German (and of course anti-European) policies. Thatcher's foreign minister, Douglas Hurd, understood that Mitterrand's apparent concurrence with Thatcher was ‘just intellectual play’ and that his actual policy was by no means to prevent German unification, a message he tried to convey to Thatcher: Hurd, Memoirs, 383 (one must also take account of the fact, reported by Kohl, that Thatcher, in her conversations with foreign leaders, ‘seemed always to hear what she wanted to hear’; see Erinnerungen, 958).

[43] Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Staatspräsident Mitterrand, Latché, 4. Januar 1990, in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 682–90; see also the French account, private papers (German and French minutes are generally concurrent, although the German ones are usually more detailed).

[44] Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Staatspräsident Mitterrand, Paris, 15. Februar 1990, in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 851; and French account, private papers.

[45] On this, see Bozo, “France, German Unification, and the European Integration”; the importance of European integration and of Franco-German relations is in fact vastly underestimated in the so far dominant US narrative of the events of 1989–90, which certainly helps explain to a large extent the myth of French opposition to German unity which it conveys (on this more below). A related, often overlooked, yet essential aspect of the issue is the fact that – in contrast with some sectors of the media or the political class, which showed some nervousness – the French people at large were overwhelmingly supportive of German unification, which they accepted as a matter of course, a reality which mirrored the effect of Franco-German reconciliation and cooperation in the long run and which evidently had a bearing on government policies: hence, according to a poll made late November 1989, 71% of the French believed that German unification was desirable (against 15% of the opposite opinion), a figure which did not change substantially in the following months; see Brand-Crémieux, Les Français, 33 ff. (the French approval rate, it should be underlined, is comparable to that measured in the US, and in sharp contrast to that in Britain).

[46] Védrine, Les Mondes, 425.

[47] See Mitterrand's interview with five European newspapers, in Politique étrangère , July–August 1989, 78–82.

[48] Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Staatspräsident Mitterrand, Paris, 15. Februar 1990, in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 851–2; French account, private papers.

[49] On France and the two plus four, see the account by the French chief negotiator, Dufourcq, “2 + 4” (Dufourcq's recollections are amply confirmed by the archival evidence: see Bozo, Mitterrand, 211–99); on Mitterrand's role in the NATO membership issue, which was at the centre of discussions during his visit in Moscow on 25 May 1990, see the transcript of his conversation with Gorbachev, private papers, and Gorbachev's own recollection in Wie es war, 131 ff. (on Attali's misleading account of the meeting, see also above, note 13). Although the dominant narrative gives all the credit for the Soviet acceptance of a unified Germany's NATO membership to the Bush administration, Mitterrand – by essentially arguing that there was no other choice for Moscow – did play a significant role to that effect, as confirmed to the author by Gorbachev's former aide Anatoly Chernyaev.

[50] Although the disintegration of Yugoslavia may be seen as the first chapter of a new, post-Cold War era, it is worth noting that Mitterrand's basic approach to the conflict stemmed from essentially the same set of premises as was the case for the events of the end of the Cold War and German unification; see e.g. a note for Mitterrand in which Védrine makes the case for a treatment of Yugoslavia's ‘de-unification’ along the lines of Germany's unification, i.e. within an international framework ensuring its ‘democratic and pacific’ character: private papers, Note pour le president de la République, Votre diner avec le chancelier Kohl. Yougoslavie, 3 December 1991. (Mitterrand's record against the backdrop of the disintegration of Yugoslavia has been, to this day, as controversial as in the case of German unification, with the dominant narrative – again wrongly – holding that French diplomacy simply tried to oppose the inevitable breakup of the federation: see e.g. Cohen, Mitterrand.)

[51] Védrine, Les Mondes, 464.

[52] Private papers, Meeting between Mitterrand and De Mita, Paris, 3 June 1988.

[53] See e.g. Cohen, Mitterrand, 373–4.

[54] While granting that he at times ‘personified’ French traditional anxieties in particular vis-à-vis Germany, Védrine argues that the French president above all attempted to ‘exorcize’ such fears: Védrine, Les Mondes, 445 (this reading of Mitterrand's now and then exaggerated expressions of worries – which abound in Attali's Verbatim – is, the author believes, validated by the archival documents, which help setting them in context).

[55] Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Staatspräsident Mitterrand, Latché, 4. Januar 1990, in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 685–6; and French account, private papers.

[56] Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Staatspräsident Mitterrand, Latché, 4. Januar 1990, in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 682; and French account, private papers.

[57] While Mitterrand has been – again wrongly – accused of at least implicitly condoning the coup, it is worth noting that his attitude at the time and in the next few months was guided by the same objectives as those of George Bush, i.e. to avoid a disorderly dislocation of the Soviet Union: see Bozo, Mitterrand, 363–71. For an interpretation of Mitterrand's attitude as stemming from a willingness to preserve the integrity of the Soviet Union at all costs, see Daniel Vernet, “Mitterrand, l'URSS et la Russie”, in Cohen, Mitterrand, esp. 41.

[58] On this, Bozo, “France, German Unification and European Integration”.

[59] Mitterrand asked this question bluntly to Genscher on 30 November, i.e. two days after Kohl's announcement of his ten-point plan for German unification, which had little to say about the pursuit of European integration and had come on top of Kohl's letter of the previous day which signalled the chancellor's unwillingness to defer to Mitterrand's timetable for the summoning of the IGC: see AD, Europe 1986–90, RFA, box 6800, Telegram Diplomatie 25193–94, 4 December 1989; and Genscher, Erinnerungen, 676 ff.

[60] Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Präsident Bush, Laeken bei Brüssel, 3. Dezember 1989, in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 607.

[61] Bitterlich, “In memoriam Werner Rouget”.

[62] Interview on French TV Channel TF1 on 15 December 1991, Politique étrangère , November–December 1991, 151–8. The outcome of Maastricht, of course, was a Franco-German as much as a French success: ‘I fully agree with you that our close and trustful personal cooperation has contributed decisively to the success’, Kohl wrote to Mitterrand: private papers, Letter, Kohl to Mitterrand, 15 December 1991.

[63] While firm on the need for a CFSP and on the longer perspective of European defence, Mitterrand was essentially pragmatic on the implementation of the concept, as showed by his attitude throughout the negotiations among the Twelve during the year 1991: ‘things are blurred, the text [of the treaty pertaining to CFSP] is more complicated, more confused’, he recognized in December 1991, while adding: ‘this is quite normal, for we are not going to build a [European] diplomacy at once’: private papers, meeting between Mitterrand and Austrian Chancellor Franz Vranitsky, 3 December 1991.

[64] On this unique episode of French–US rapprochement, see Bozo, “Un rendez-vous”; see also the stimulating analysis in Hutchings, American Diplomacy, 271 ff.

[65] AD, ASD 1985–90, sous-direction des questions multilatérales, box 13, Telegram Diplomatie 23614, 12 November 1990.

[66] On this, see Rey, “‘Europe is our Common Home’”; and “Gorbachev's New Thinking and Europe, 1985–1989”, in Bozo et al., Europe.

[67] On this, see Thomas, The Helsinki Effect; and Andréani, Le Piège.

[68] On this, see Bozo, “France, German Unification and European Integration”, as well as Helga Haftendorn, “German Unification and European Integration are but Two Sides of One Coin”, and N. Piers Ludlow, “A Naturally Supportive Environment? The European Institutions and Germany Unification”, in Bozo et al., Europe.

[69] See Patrick Salmon, “The United Kingdom and German Unification”, in Bozo et al., Europe.

[70] See Bozo et al., Europe; and Cox, “Another Transatlantic Split?”

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Frédéric Bozo

Frédéric Bozo is currently professor of contemporary history at the Sorbonne (University of Paris III, Department of European studies). His focus is on Cold War history, French foreign and security policy, and transatlantic relations. His most recent book is Mitterrand, la fin de la guerre froide et lunification allemande. De Yalta à Maastricht,Odile Jacob, 2005 (which will be published next year in English by Berghahn Books).