The Algerian Conflict — a Cold War Front Line?

Abstract

Was France fighting the Cold War on behalf of the western alliance in North West Africa? If so, then the Algerian conflict would have to be recognised as far more than a colonial struggle over national independence. Algeria was included within the southern perimeter of NATO’s strategic theatre during the original North Atlantic treaty talks in 1949. Articles 5 and 6 of the treaty brought Algeria within the collective defence provisions of the alliance, effectively acknowledging it as an integral part of a European state.¹ French operations thus took place within territory which NATO signatories were theoretically obliged to defend. But since this was constitutionally French soil, successive Paris governments insisted that their NATO partners had no claim to help direct the conflict. Yet, as we have seen, once the war escalated and the FLN’s ideological sympathies became clearer, so French ministers pressed for dispensation from France’s alliance obligations and justified requests for material aid in Algeria on the grounds that French forces were working on NATO’s behalf.