Tardieu and France's naval distrust paradox

Prime Minister André Tardieu personally handled much of the negotiation because French coalition politics left him unable to rely fully on his government. French political leaders wanted reconstruction and often regarded their own armed forces as a domestic threat, encouraging chronic underinvestment. In this interpretation, that distrust was an institutional failure: a government that doubts its officer corps must reform or replace it rather than simply starving the forces on which deterrence depends. At the same time, French leaders believed Washington had disadvantaged France and feared another Anglo-American arrangement. The result was a paradoxical policy: a government eager to reduce military spending fought to preserve naval strength against an external bargain it suspected but that Britain and America saw as necessary preliminary coordination.