ABSTRACT
Always resistant to exterior constraint, Mitterrand had been putting off the moment for making economic policy conform with political rhetoric. When as a result of Mauroy's resignation he was faced with an immediate need to choose a new prime minister, he picked the person most in tune with his new ideas, Laurent Fabius. Modernization was not, however, a complete break with previous Socialist ideas. The nationalizations had been justified on social grounds, but still more on nationalist ones, as the defense of French independence. The Socialist party by mid-1984 was groggy, like a spirited but inexperienced fighter who has led too often with his chin. Had the institutions of the Fifth Republic permitted it to retreat and nurse its bruises, it might have been happy to subside into resentful opposition. High officials of French intelligence had convinced themselves that the Greenpeace expedition was a major menace to their nuclear testing and heavily penetrated by agents of Soviet espionage.
