Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up to the EU economy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
The writer is editorial director and a columnist at Le Monde
In November 1959, French president Charles de Gaulle wondered during a press conference: “Who can say what will happen tomorrow? Who can say that the two powers who have the monopoly of nuclear weapons will not agree to share the world” between themselves?
Determined to build a French force de frappe and go ahead with atomic tests in defiance of the US and the Soviet Union, de Gaulle had openly discussed the issue with President Dwight Eisenhower two months earlier. Despite their disagreement, the French historian Maurice Vaïsse recalls, Eisenhower later admitted: “We would react like de Gaulle if we were in his shoes.”
President Lyndon Johnson was less understanding when, a few years later, he received a letter from de Gaulle informing him of France’s decision to withdraw from the integrated command of Nato and demanding that US troops leave the country. Johnson was tempted to ask de Gaulle if he wanted the Americans who died in the two world wars to be removed as well. Americans were so upset that they stopped buying French wine. Yet France stayed firmly on America’s side during the cold war.
The austere general must be turning in his grave as Europe experiences a Gaullist revival of sorts, courtesy of Donald Trump. Suddenly, de Gaulle’s nightmare of the US and Russia co-operating over the heads of Europeans looks terribly realistic. His quest for independence appears wise in retrospect. Germany and others now want to start talks about extending the protection of the French nuclear umbrella. Alarmed by restrictions on US-made military equipment, European countries are flocking to the French missile-maker MBDA to inquire about weapons with no American strings attached.
But history never repeats itself exactly. A true Gaullist moment would not see such close Franco-British co-operation, aimed at taming American fury, as President Emmanuel Macron and Sir Keir Starmer, the UK premier, have struck up in recent weeks. De Gaulle did not trust the British more than the Americans after the 1956 Suez debacle. The US and the UK quickly resumed their special relationship, while France felt betrayed. Later, de Gaulle blocked Britain’s accession to the European Economic Community.
De Gaulle’s vision of a “Europe of nations” united only by a common market is at odds with the current integrationist trend. Gaullism was about making France great again, not making Europe great again. In fact, more than a Gaullist moment, Europe is going through a Macronist moment.
Macron may not yet be bragging about it, but his crusade for European strategic autonomy seems at long last to be vindicated. In September 2017, early in his first term, Macron warned against “the gradual and inevitable disengagement by the United States”. He advocated building “Europe’s autonomous operating capabilities, in complement to Nato” and “a common strategic culture”, lamenting that “our inability to work together . . . undermines our credibility as Europeans”.
Clément Beaune, then Macron’s adviser for European affairs, recalls that “Brexit and Trump were the trigger” for that part of the speech. But Macron’s ideas were anathema to diehard Atlanticists. The young, ambitious French president was peeved by the lack of reaction from Germany to a speech he saw as seminal. Dismissive comments poured in from other corners, suspicious of French ambitions. “They thought I was crazy,” he recalled. Yet he doubled down in 2019, declaring: “We need . . . increased defence spending, a truly operational mutual defence clause, and [a] European Security Council with the United Kingdom on board to prepare our collective decisions.”
Later that year, his comment about Nato’s “brain death” did not win him any friends either. Meanwhile he did increase the French defence budget, maintaining the tradition of a defence industry free from American dependency. Where he erred was in his policy towards Russia, when he single-handedly tried his own “reset” with Vladimir Putin, a strategy that crashed on February 24 2022 with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Macron has learnt his lesson. In the face of a US retreat, he has adopted a more collective approach, boosting European solidarity with crucial British support. Yet unlike most of its European partners, a more detached France does not entertain the hope that transatlantic relations can go back to what they were. It is merely trying to avoid a catastrophic rapid American withdrawal. This pragmatism is part of the Gaullist legacy.
