De Gaulle's Policy: Prophecy or Atavism?
Abstract
No post-war leader has had so strong a sense of personal mission as President Charles de Gaulle. Nor has any stamped his nation's policy so indelibly with his own unique style. De Gaulle's vision projected a Europe once again a community of several, free nation-states forming their policies according to the old rules of balance of power, but with France once again playing the dominant role. His approach was manipulation of France's position in the alignments of his day to reduce her supranational commitments and to regain her freedom of action. De Gaulle demanded French equality with the United States and Britain in a condominium outside NATO, and NATO's virtual undoing as a military alliance. He played off a not yet resurgent Germany and the European Community against "Anglo-Saxon hegemony," the overthrow of which was his second major goal. And in pursuit of the primacy of France, he dealt with the Germans and other European community countries as junior partners toward whom France might at will reduce her commitments. In time De Gaulle's policy reached beyond Europe in overtures to enemies of the West in Moscow, Beijing, and Hanoi. De Gaulle's policy set at naught the costs to Western cohesiveness and coordination which it inflicted at a time of great threat from Khrushchev's Soviet Union. He alienated allies who sought to accommodate French demands even as he supported basic lines of Western resistance to Soviet encroachment. For de Gaulle, however, the goal and payoff was the restoration of France as a great power in world councils and in the eyes of her own people.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 20, 1991
- Accession Number
- ADA437168
Entities
People
- Oscar W. Clyatt Jr
Organizations
- National War College