Will Francois Hollande sour the NATO summit?

France’s Socialists want the country’s forces out of Afghanistan tout suite, and they want a bigger say in future NATO decisionmaking. Via Reuters: France’s Socialists will pull all combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2012, a year ahead of an accelerated withdrawal planned by the government, and has already discussed this with Britain ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

France's Socialists want the country's forces out of Afghanistan tout suite, and they want a bigger say in future NATO decisionmaking. Via Reuters:

France’s Socialists want the country’s forces out of Afghanistan tout suite, and they want a bigger say in future NATO decisionmaking. Via Reuters:

France’s Socialists will pull all combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2012, a year ahead of an accelerated withdrawal planned by the government, and has already discussed this with Britain and the United States, their chief defense adviser says.

In an interview, Jean-Yves Le Drian, chief defense aide to Socialist presidential frontrunner Francois Hollande, also told Reuters France would press for a review of long-standing demands for a bigger say in the U.S.-led NATO alliance’s integrated military command structure….

If Hollande wins the election that takes place in two rounds on April 22 and May 6, one of his first big international dates will be the successive summits of G8 and NATO leaders on May 18 and 20 respectively.

According to NATO’s latest figures, France has almost 3,500 soldiers in Afghanistan, making it the fifth largest contributor (behind the United States, the U.K., Germany and Italy).  

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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