Contesting France: Intelligence and Foreign Policy in the Early Cold War

This dissertation examines the role of intelligence analysis in the formulation of U.S. policy for France 1944-1947. By bringing together the traditional diplomatic record and undertreated U.S. intelligence and French sources, and by expanding focus beyond the French metropole to consider intertwined conditions and developments in French Indochina and North Africa, “Contesting France” carefully reconstructs transnational networks of state and private French informants and their American partners and traces the ways in which these sources contested American perceptions of France and sought to influence U.S. policy. Deep archival research in the United States and France shows that the entrenched American perception of France as weak and lurching toward communist revolution in the immediate postwar years was inaccurate and biased, based upon regular contact with French sources from particular factions. This jaundiced view—flowing in from a myriad of intelligence agents and diplomatic officials—seriously compromised U.S. ability to achieve postwar goals by freezing stereotypes into a permanent filter, with lasting consequences for Franco-American relations. This dissertation thus explains in sharper relief how the United States was drawn into French affairs and underscores an important French role in the development and course of the global Cold War. At the same time, this historical study makes very contemporary arguments about the role of intelligence in the policymaking process as well as the importance of dissent, of scrutinizing and recognizing the agendas and the influence of foreign sources, of resisting groupthink and political pressure, and ultimately, of developing good intelligence and policy.