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Algeria: France's Nuclear Policy and Trans-Arab Resistance
Abstract
In her monograph The Radiance of France (2009), Gabrielle Hecht refers to de Gaulle's withdrawal from NATO, his prolonged refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and a global network of uranium mines. To her work, I introduce two groups of sources (transcripts of radio broadcasts and defense journalism) dating from the decade after uranium was discovered in Algeria and, on these bases, I assert that Algeria served as Arab laboratory for information warfare. Preceding the 1960 atomic bomb test at Reganne, I’ve identified a French threat to test nuclear devices in North Africa. The French military community's official journal, the Revue de défense nationale (which resumed publication during July 1945) developed the “guerre totale” doctrine at the dawn of the atomic age, as France staged counter-insurgency operations in North Africa. The "total war" doctrine doctrine permitted a wide range of targets suitable for attack, a narrow range of non-combatants or civilians protected from attack-- and depended on technical solutions (mass production of weapons, scientific development of war technology, mobilization of all members of any given society). Second, uranium deposits had been found in Algeria during 1950, when local communities began to develop their understandings of "information warfare" with regard to NATO-based nuclear proliferation. According to Radio Peking, Kouchi Mohamed (editor in chief of l'Algerie nouvelle), stated “in the face of growing dangers of war, the Algerian people attached great importance to a new and mighty demonstration of the will of peoples to unite in a struggle to impose peace.” North Africans' organized resistance to nuclear programs lead to collaboration with other Arabs (Egyptians, Iraqis, and Lebanese). Similar statements appear in transcripts of World Federation of Democratic Youth meetings; delegates from the Maghreb to the Third Congress of the International Organization of Journalists also used “the struggle for peace” to describe proliferation. Such a struggle for "peace" was imbricated with the national independence movement. Such a discussion remains relevant. Etienne de Durand uses French counter-insurgency materials of the Cold War period to derive contemporary counter-insurgency positions, inspiring a similar gesture with regard to "psychological operations." In Ideas as Weapons: Influence and Perception in Modern Warfare (2009), USMC Colonel Thomas Hammes notes, "insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated a clear understanding of the importance of information warfare: captured documents, prisoner interrogation, and insurgent day-to-day operations indicate … they consider information warfare to be central to their strategy" (p. 27).
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Arab States
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries