22. THE LATER 1960s

THE WORLD GOES ON WITHOUT AMERICA

De Gaulle attempts to undercut American leadership in Europe. Johnson was so completely caught up in the challenge of his war in Vietnam that diplomatic interests and issues elsewhere in the world tended to be pushed aside.  This certainly was the case in Europe.  And because of this grand American distraction caused by the Vietnam War, French President Charles de Gaulle saw a grand opportunity to finally pull Europe away from its dependency on American protection, and bring Europe under the more traditional lead of France, or, more precisely, under the leadership of de Gaulle himself.

The personal ambitions of de Gaulle had provided a regular dose of annoyance to France's allies as far back as World War Two (but what egotistical generals had not themselves been a pain to deal with in an alliance that required close cooperation in order to defeat the Germans?)  Certainly de Gaulle had been the loudest of the few French leaders who in 1940 had not decided simply to surrender to the Germans, hoping for the best deal possible under German occupation (sort of a reversal of the Versailles Treaty arrangement that followed World War One when Germany got placed under the direction of its former enemies).  De Gaulle would have none of that.  But he also did not have much to work with.  The French army and navy had come under the authority of the Vichy Government, and so de Gaulle at first actually commanded very little.  Yet his French voice would prove very useful to England and America when it was time to get the French "Resistance" fighters moving in support of the Allied offensive across France in pursuit of a retreating Nazi army in 1944.

But the cost of letting de Gaulle take the lead (such as leading the victory parade through Paris, as if it had been de Gaulle's troops themselves that had liberated their own capital city) would prove to be great.  Other French generals had actually been much more useful in coordinating French military efforts with the American and British allies.  But the name "de Gaulle" was better known (the British had let him deliver encouraging broadcasts beamed weekly to France in the time period prior to the Allied invasion of France itself).  And thus it was that de Gaulle came simply to see himself as the voice (and conscience) of France – all of France.

As a devoted Catholic, de Gaulle was fervently anti-Communist, which also made him very useful to Roosevelt, who (along with Churchill) was quite concerned about how the large French Communist party, through its belated involvement in the French Resistance, might move to take control of France in all the confusion of 1944-45, and the potential post-war period.  Personally, Roosevelt detested de Gaulle and kept him away from the big-power conferences (such as Teheran and Yalta) held among the "Big Three" of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin.  This hurt de Gaulle's immense ego, so much so that he developed a very bitter attitude towards the Anglo-Saxons (Britain and America) that would remain with him for the rest of his life.

And therein lay a big part of the problem that de Gaulle would bring to American-European relations.  This would develop not only immediately after the war, but even more so during the 1960s when de Gaulle was French President, and on a huge anti-Anglo-Saxon political-cultural campaign.  During the Truman and Eisenhower years, America had been not only highly supportive of but even rather insistent upon America's allies in Europe putting their nationalist differences aside and start working closely together, largely as a matter of defense against expansive Communism.  Thus the NATO military alliance had been birthed in 1949. But the matter went well-beyond military strategy.  Closer "economic integration" had been pushed by America, in making the dollar freely interchangeable with all European currencies, and then also in encouraging the integration of Europe's strategic industries of coal and steel production (the European Coal and Steel Community set up in 1952), and eventually the birthing of a more comprehensive economic integration through the European Economic Community (EEC) brought together in 1957 by way of the Treaty of Rome.

De Gaulle himself had been involved in none of this "European integration" during its formative post-war years.  But in coming to power as head of the new French 5th Republic in 1958, he found himself at the very center of this dynamic.  But he was not wild about the European integration dynamic such as it was structured.  He wanted to change it from a system of governing by bureaucratic centralization to one simply of diplomatic cooperation on the part of fully sovereign European nations, a community of nations that would exclude America – and "offshore" Britain as well.

The primary target for de Gaulle's new diplomatic offensive was NATO.  Despite the fact that NATO's European headquarters were located in France, de Gaulle saw NATO simply as an unwanted American intrusion into the affairs that belonged only to the Europeans themselves.  Thus he took what he hoped would be the lead in withdrawing from NATO by pulling his French Mediterranean fleet from NATO direction in 1959.  Then that same year he demanded that the Americans and the British remove all nuclear weapons from French soil, as he wanted Continental Europe to come under the protection of his own French nuclear "Force de Frappe."

De Gaulle was just as busy on the diplomatic front, encouraging the Germans to join him in taking a road independent of America.  But Konrad Adenauer, German Chancellor at the time (1949-1963), though certainly friendly with de Gaulle, had no intentions of pulling away from the only serious power, namely, American power, that kept the Russians from attempting to extend their grip into Western Germany.  To Adenauer, France was not a serious alternative to America as a power patron.

Then Britain finally changed its mind about not joining the European "Common Market" (EEC) and in 1963 finally applied for admission.  Previously Britain had tried an alternative route to economic cooperation with various other European countries, but found that this was not working as well as the EEC's Common Market, and thus decided that it was time to join the EEC.  But de Gaulle simply vetoed the British application, leaving an embarrassed Britain out in the economic cold.  De Gaulle was finally getting his revenge against Britain for being excluded from the Big Power club during World War Two!

Also in 1963, he withdrew the French naval fleet from NATO's vital North Atlantic command, hoping that other Atlantic members of NATO would follow his lead. None did.

Then with Johnson in the White House, de Gaulle really ramped up his anti-Anglo-Saxon campaign – although with the crushing of Britain's European plans, his campaign at this point was purely an anti-American matter.  Despite his own anti-Communist instincts, his desire to break from the diplomatic front led by America caused him in early 1964 to drop his support of Chiang's Nationalist government in Taiwan and instead offer full diplomatic recognition to Mao's Communist regime ruling (or, at this point, actually destroying) mainland China.  He also made a personal visit to the Soviet Union that same year, in an attempt to restore a friendship that traditionally France and Russia had enjoyed.  De Gaulle in fact refused to refer to the Soviet Union as anything other than "Russia," not only downplaying the ideological differences that separated East and West but also now posing France as a truly neutral country in the Cold War.  Then that autumn de Gaulle visited Latin America, taunting America's southern neighbors for having allowed themselves to have fallen under U.S. economic and political domination.

1965 was another big year for de Gaulle.  In February he announced that France would demand the exchange of its dollar reserves for America's gold reserves, hoping to create a dollar crisis that would bring down the American economy.  But none of the other nations followed his lead, even when he made a huge show of things by sending the French navy to America to bring back the American gold reserves.  That same year he pulled out of the American-led Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) that had been formed to block the expansion of Communism throughout the region. But again, none of the other members followed his lead.

But the big hit occurred in February of 1966 when de Gaulle ordered all foreign troops out of France, that is, troops of any of the NATO members, though most notably American troops stationed in France.¹  He did not actually order the NATO civilian staff out of France, although everyone understood that this humiliation was probably coming soon and so the whole of NATO command simply left France, and relocated itself in Belgium just south of its capital city of Brussels. This would actually work awesomely well for the Belgians, helping Belgium get out of its persistent French-Dutch language dispute by now refocusing itself as the headquarters of a United Europe (the EEC was also headquartered there).

Oddly enough, France officially remained part of the defense treaty that NATO was built on, and would even continue to cooperate with various NATO operations (finally returning officially to full NATO membership again in 2009).  But de Gaulle believed that he had sent a very clear message to the world: France wanted to have nothing to do with Pax Americana (the great "American Peace").

Perhaps there was nothing that Johnson could have done to "fix" the de Gaulle problem.  But in any case, no effort was attempted.

However finally, in 1968, the French themselves got so tired of de Gaulle's imperious ways that they failed to bend under his threat of an immediate departure as their president if the French did not approve a referendum for a constitutional amendment he put before them, one giving him even more powers as French president.  They did not approve his referendum, and, as promised, de Gaulle quit, fully expecting France to fall back into such a crisis that the French would have to call him back to power – but once again (as in 1958) under his own terms.  But France ignored him, and indeed, continued quite nicely without him.  And with him gone, Britain was finally able to gain membership in the European Common Market.  And America and France could get back together as friends.

¹American Secretary of State Dean Rusk sarcastically asked de Gaulle: did this order to evacuate all U.S. troops from France include the 50,000 American war dead buried in French cemeteries?