Le scelte politiche di quest’uomo non sono mai state così utili come lo sono oggi.

As a Brit I never thought I’d say it, but the French were right all along. 

France will lead the way in this new fight. Vive la France 🇫🇷

General De Gaulle was wise to not trust the United States.

For those who don’t know, de Gaulle never hid his distrust of the American nuclear guarantee. It was always one of the pillars of his strategic thinking. From the 1950s, while NATO relied on the concept of massive retaliation promised by the United States, De Gaulle already harbored deep doubts that nothing would ever manage to dispel. He considered it a geopolitical certainty that no nation, however allied, would risk its very existence to defend another against an existential threat. When one searches through the archives, we see that he even posed the question – “Would the Americans sacrifice New York to save Paris?” – a question that wasn’t rhetorical but expressed his conviction that, faced with the ultimate choice between defending Western Europe and their own survival, American leaders would naturally choose the second option. This conviction was strengthened after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, where De Gaulle had observed that, even when faced with a proximate threat on the American continent, Washington had initially hesitated to risk a direct nuclear confrontation with Moscow.

This distrust was also fueled by the very evolution of American strategic doctrine. The gradual shift from massive retaliation to flexible response under Kennedy and McNamara confirmed, in De Gaulle’s eyes, that the United States was seeking to free itself from the automaticity of its nuclear response. The flexible response introduced conventional escalation levels before resorting to nuclear weapons, which De Gaulle interpreted as a dilution of the American guarantee and an attempt to confine a potential East-West conflict to the European theater alone. In his private discussions with his military advisors, he constantly emphasized this inherent contradiction in the Atlantic Alliance: the Americans promised protection they hoped never to have to honor, while the Europeans demanded a guarantee they knew deep down was uncertain. For De Gaulle, this situation created a dangerous “psychological dependence” that prevented Europe from taking its own security in hand. He saw in this dependence not only a strategic risk but also a major obstacle to the emergence of a truly sovereign Europe capable of acting as an autonomous geopolitical actor.

De Gaulle’s solution to this dilemma was therefore as logical as it was radical: only a national, independent deterrent force, under exclusively French command, could guarantee that France’s vital interests would be defended under all circumstances. De Gaulle did not reject the alliance with the United States in itself – which he considered natural in the face of the Soviet threat – but refused to make it the sole foundation of French security. His doctrine was based on the principle that nuclear deterrence is only credible when it defends interests that are truly vital to the power implementing it. In his conception, the French strike force, although limited in comparison to the superpowers’ arsenals, established an inviolable “national sanctuary.” The very famous concept of “deterrence of the strong by the weak” that he developed precisely theorized this capacity of a middle power to deter a superpower by the threat of unacceptable damage. It is this distrust of the American umbrella that also explains France’s withdrawal from NATO’s integrated command in 1966, a decision that allowed Paris to maintain its freedom of assessment and action in case of crisis, while maintaining the political alliance with Washington. Until the end of his presidency, De Gaulle would remain inflexible on this principle: France’s ultimate security could only depend on itself.

Please, enough with the De Gaulle wanking.

all iknow about de gaulle is that he was a git who loved his country

Merci Charles

Has to be this: every nation in Europe posses a minimal nuclear deterrent, perhaps 30 tactical battlefield nukes and 5-10 city busters for the Baltic states, maybe x5-10 times that for the larger nations. French and British made and maintained. Won’t be cheap, but will be effective.

And open to selling to Canada and Mexico…

It’s going to have to be a new world.

Erm yes but mostly no. It is true he advocated for an independant French defense and nuclear deterrent but he also opposed the creation of a European army. His choices may prove useful now but let’s not glorify a man that was a vile nationalist. He may have made the right choices but for the entirely wrong reasons.

If he would revive today, he would call us all stupid for not having a common European military 80 years after the end of WW2.

The second best thing coming from Liile after my wife.

Le général De Gaulle. Il avait dit de supprimer tous les anglicismes dans la vie quotidienne en France. Si il voyait ce qu’est devenu la France 😟 Et les discours de De Gaulle. A lire : C’était De Gaulle, de Alain Peyrefitte. Si cela vous intéresse.

Uhm… well… ugh… I just leave it there… damn…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French-Soviet_Joint_Declaration_of_June_30,_1966

Are you sure? 😒

Ah, the policeman guy from Allo Allo, Good mÿrning!

The past weeks showed your cant trust a whole nation per se. One change in power and your friend becomes the villain. What is after Macron?

Every nation who can should try to get their own nukes.

Yet politicians and self-styled intellectuals will never admit it.

Useful? Useful to whom? Who the fuck followed his lead? You’re all 70 years late to the game. Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland, the only other European countries to have nuclear weapon programs to my knowledge all suspended their programs after US pressure—although the real question is: What role did MI6 and the UK have in it?