Energy: France's Gaullist Solution
While many European states are scrambling to find impromptu ways to protect themselves from Russia's newly asserted ability to exert influence over them by manipulating energy supplies, France has already announced its adoption of 30-year strategy to ensure its energy security. More than the result of good planning, this seemingly casual preparation represents a direct outcome of France's Gaullist geopolitical strategies.The French strategy provides for investment in a new breed of nuclear power reactors to be active by 2020, improvements in building codes aimed at enhancing energy efficiency, increased biofuel research and a tight curtailment of the use of petroleum anywhere but in the transport and chemicals sector. Thus, while the rest of Europe is panicking about the consequences of being slightly in thrall to the Russians, the French have essentially said the equivalent of, "Oh that? Yeah, we've got that covered." France presently generates more than 70 percent of its power from nuclear plants.It is the independent capabilities that the Gaullist ideology requires that have made France the free actor it has been these past two generations. For the Americans, it means that France is annoyingly difficult to predict and co-opt. For the Russians, it means that France -- unlike the rest of the Europeans -- is largely immune to the energy card. Achieving this French flexibility not only took an overarching ideology, but also 30 years of hard work. Most of the rest of Europe, by comparison, began the same task just three days ago.
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