ABSTRACT
Two recent developments have thrown into question NATO's forward defense strategy. The first was the announcement that the Bun deswehr would be reduced to 370,000 personnel. 1 The second is the certainty that there will be significant reductions as well in the levels of Allied forces in the western part of the united Germany. Just as NATO has been grappling with the means by which it could replace the former "layer-cake" deployment pattern with new, multinational structures, so too has France been forced to rethink the strategy of continental defense it has developed over the past 25 years, in close cooperation with the Federal Republic of Germany. France has already made it clear it would not participate in any multinational force placed under the command of NATO's SACEUR, and it has further indicated that should it keep troops stationed in Germany, they would be outside integrated multinational formations. President François Mitterrand announced in July 1990 that the prospect of German unification logically suggested a re-deployment of the Forces françaises en Allemagne (FFA) to their native soil, once all Soviet forces had been withdrawn from Germany. 2 This re-deployment will be done in phases; the first of these is to occur over a two-year period ending in 1992, and will see a reduction of some 20,000 of the FFA's 46,000 troops. Significantly, the decision to withdraw does not apply to the French elements of the Franco-German Brigade. 3
