Word: arons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...colonial affairs has affected economic progress before, and may possibly wreck it eventually. After the Korean War, when the U.S. satisfied itself with a stalemate armistice, Georges Bidault insisted on victory in Indochina. "Resistance," or"immobilisme" was again the theme in dealings with Morocco and Tunisia, a policy which Aron explains by recalling French fears of another Munich or Vichy. The same fears have prevented the transfer of the rest of the empire, Algeria, into nationalist hands...
...French view of Algeria, of course, that Americans are most interested, and the Franco-American debate ("ridiculous," Aron calls it) on the morality and politics of the Algerian situation drags interminably through the editorial pages and literary journals of the West. "When, having learned by experience, the Americans recognize that nationalism in Africa or Asia is neither democratic nor liberal," (writes Aron with singular clarity,) "they plead the inevitable: it would be vain, in the modern world, to oppose the liberation of the colored races...If we assume that they are right, the Americans should not be astonished that...
This attitude, and of course the inability of the Government to get a majority in the Assembly, brought de Gaulle to power in 1958 on many respectable and some very disreputable coattails. "We prefer facism to the independence of Algeria," writes Aron of the position of the "Ultras" and adds in a revealing comment, "but the man to whom they have given absolute power has the soul of a paternal monarch or of a princo-president, not of a tyrant...
...feel constrained to go over the state of the Algerian situation here; that story has, basically, been told often enough. But Aron's views on the Fifth Republic's attempt to answer the question: "Is a democracy capable of waging a war of which an important element in the country disapproves?" are completely free of familiar cant, and remarkable in that respect at least. He speculates that two years ago de Gaulle could have acceded to the demands of the F.L.N. for compromise "without provoking a revolt by the French soldiers and citizens of Algeria," so strong was his prestige...
...Gaulle is only one man, and whether the center will disappear when de Gaulle goes, Aron refuses to guess. He notes earlier in the text that the Frenchman, "dissatisfied on principle," with a tax system, an industrialization program, or an Algerian policy, "tends to vote against." The parties of the extreme satisfy this need for opposition." Aron hopes that facism (or communism) will not have the chance to come to executive power under a constitution written for de Gaulle alone. He suggests "two courses still open": alliance with the Common Market Six to undertake a coalition great power's "task...