ABSTRACT
In Africa, foreign aid was entangled in a network of trade, financial, and cultural relations that linked business interests, personal friendships, and the intrigues of French Intelligence. The Israeli attack into Lebanon in June 1982 had the effect of balancing the views of president and foreign minister. When Francois Mitterrand took office in 1981 his views on foreign policy and those of his party had undergone a number of changes from their pacifist and anti-nuclear positions of a decade earlier. A convinced European since the days of the Fourth Republic, Mitterrand was obliged to repel several leftist attempts to influence PS foreign policy in the early days of 1971–1973. French Socialist foreign policy experts had, since the collapse of de Gaulle's efforts to move West Germany away from its American ties, taken it for granted that German loyalty to NATO was absolute and unalterable.
