Analysis of France’s Continued Membership in NATO using the Prospect Theory

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Op Ed
French President Emmanuel Macron openly confided that the North Atlantic TREATY Organization (NATO) was in a state of “brain death” amidst stronger criticisms from leading candidates in France’s presidential race of the US-led transatlantic alliance (Yifan, 2022). However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced dissidents to reconsider their eagerness to pull France out of NATO’s integrated command. While France has always desired strategic autonomy, something it believes is impossible in the US-led transatlantic alliance, the threat of a nuclear-armed Russia that knows no bounds has weakened NATO skepticism in France (Dodman, 2022). This op-ed will argue for France’s continued membership in NATO using the prospect theory for application and analysis.
Prospect theory, a substitute of the expected utility theory, was first developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky to explain human decisions under conditions of risk. It details how people assess and select between available options and is therefore useful in understanding why people often deviate from the expectations of rational choice (Chung, 2014). One of the most frequently applied aspect of prospect theory in international relations is the “framing effect” where individuals typically accept risk when forced to choose between losses and typically avoid risk when forced to choose between gains (Vis and Kuijpers, 2018). In international relations, the framing effect has been invoked to try to understand decision-making that entails apparently illogical risks. On the whole, prospect theory states that people tend to make decisions in terms of gains and losses and that they are more likely to cautious in their decisions with respect to gains and less cautious with respect to losses (Han, 2012). The prospect theory also hypothesizes that increases in gains or losses are accompanied by lessening values attached to the same: as gains or losses increase, one’s sensitivity to their increments diminishes in equal measure for both the domain of profits and losses.
Another critical facet of prospect theory is the endowment effect where entities tend to overestimate the value of their present possessions. Even more notable is the tendency of individuals to give more consideration to outcomes that are certain than those outcomes that are merely probable. Moreover, individuals tend to consider dissimilarities more than similarities, sometimes ignoring similarities entirely. The prospect theory, especially the last three facets, are significant in analyzing the reasons why France has always called for withdrawal from NATO: (1) France has repeatedly expressed its dissatisfaction with the structural administration of NATO while ignoring the many similarities between the country and the bloc as relates to foreign policy; (2) France has tended to overestimate its influence, particularly its decision to take its defense into its own hands by building nuclear forces independent of its Western allies forgetting that these are not enough against aggressive world’...