RW Johnson: De Gaulle and the perils of foresight

[Nat Quinn]

Key topics

• De Gaulle foresaw Europe’s need for military independence from the U.S.
• He correctly predicted Britain’s reluctance to fully commit to the EU.
• His nuclear strategy ensured France’s security against global superpowers.

 

By RW Johnson

I well remember, when Edward Heath was considering a run for the Chancellorship of Oxford University, he came to my study asking for my support. Ever since he’d been prime minister he’d been under a death sentence from the IRA, so he always had two armed guards with him, and they had to wait outside the door. We chatted away about this and that and at one point I rather idly mentioned what Charles de Gaulle had said on some subject. Heath reacted violently, denouncing De Gaulle as a malevolent and destructive figure, a man who had been wrong about everything. Heath’s great project, after all, had been gaining British entry to Europe and De Gaulle had twice frustrated that.

This was not uncommon: De Gaulle had his admirers but his detractors were often more numerous. When De Gaulle told the US to remove its military bases and personnel from France, Lyndon Johnson bitterly enquired if he would be charging a rental for the large cemeteries housing the graves of the thousands of Americans who’d died fighting to liberate France.

De Gaulle was certainly a difficult man. Throughout the war he and Churchill were frequently at odds. Asked about this, De Gaulle explained: “Winston only became angry when he was in the wrong, whereas I only get angry when I am in the right. So, one way and another, we were angry with one another most of the time” – doubtless not an interpretation with which Churchill would have agreed. But what made De Gaulle unpopular with many was his voicing of strong and unpopular opinions. Yet the fact is that many of those unpopular opinions have turned out to be quite correct.

Take Vietnam, for example. As the Americans got increasingly embroiled there they turned to other Western nations, appealing for their support. De Gaulle was having none of it: France had its own unhappy history in Vietnam and he thought that Washington ought to learn from that. In the age of decolonization it was pure folly to wage war against a nationalist insurrection. It was bound to end in tears. Americans were not amused, but of course De Gaulle was proved right.

Or again, in 1944 the advancing British and American troops allowed the Free French under General Leclerc to liberate Strasbourg. This had great symbolic value because along with Alsace-Lorraine in general that city had changed hands repeatedly – the Germans took it in 1871, the French got it back in 1918 and then the Germans took it again in 1940. So there was much patriotic rejoicing that the tricoleur was again flying over Strasbourg. Then, however, came the Battle of the Bulge and the German army under Gerd von Runstedt overwhelmed the Allies and forced them into headlong retreat. Eisenhower, trying to regroup, decided he should shorten his line by falling back from Strasbourg. De Gaulle erupted: it was unthinkable to allow the swastika to fly over Strasbourg again. He was so angry that he threatened – absurdly – to declare war on the Allies if Strasbourg was abandoned. In the end Churchill came to his rescue and persuaded Eisenhower to hold on.

However, when De Gaulle became President in 1958 and France acquired nuclear weapons – very much to the disapproval of the US and to a large chorus of criticism from all over Europe, De Gaulle insisted on the necessity of both France and Europe achieving maximum independence from the US. The conventional view, that Europe was protected by the US nuclear umbrella, was wrong, he insisted. Should a nuclear exchange with the USSR ever happen, America would follow its own interests. For example, De Gaulle argued, if war broke out and the USSR dropped a nuclear bomb on Strasbourg, would the US retaliate against a Soviet target if it knew that the Soviets would then launch nuclear missiles at Chicago ? Faced with the choice of Chicago or Strasbourg, he was sure the US would choose Chicago.

It was no accident that De Gaulle chose Strasbourg for his example: the Americans had been willing to sacrifice it in 1944, after all. His argument made Europeans uncomfortable – after all, who could be sure that he wasn’t right ? Every country would, in a crunch, choose to save its own cities. But for De Gaulle the corollary was that if that was so, French security could only be guaranteed if France had its own nuclear weapons because then Moscow would know that an attack on Strasbourg would lead to French retaliation against Moscow itself or Leningrad/St Petersburg.

This caused his critics to shift their ground and ridicule the notion that France might fight the (vastly stronger) USSR. De Gaulle replied that French nuclear weapons would guarantee French security against all-comers. Of course, the USSR and USA were stronger, he admitted, but any opponent would know that, at the least, France would “tear off an arm and a leg – and few want to fight an opponent capable of doing that.”

In the age of Trump, De Gaulle’s argument sounds not only right but prescient. Europeans are not only aware that they can no longer rely on American protection but they realise they need to build a far more powerful military and make it maximally independent of America. They also wish they had done this a great deal sooner – as De Gaulle did. Germany and other European nations are now enquiring if they may shelter under the French (and British) nuclear umbrella.

During the war De Gaulle had once discussed with Churchill the possibility of a united Europe: how would Britain react to that ? Churchill, always conscious of Britain at the centre of a world-wide Empire, replied that if ever Britain had to choose between Europe and the wide blue sea, it would always choose the latter. This too stuck in De Gaulle’s mind. When, in the 1960s, the question of British admission to the European Economic Community (today’s European Union) was at stake, De Gaulle twice vetoed the idea in 1963 and 1967. He argued flatly that Britain’s heart and soul were not in Europe, that Britain saw itself as essentially an Atlantic power with a special relationship with their American cousins.

This was greatly resented by many British politicians and by elite opinion in general, but here again De Gaulle was borne out. Britain finally entered the EEC in 1973 but it demanded and got exemption from one European scheme after another, rejected the idea of a common currency and in 2016 finally voted to leave the EU altogether. At the time the result of the referendum was greeted as a surprise but the fact was that British opinion had never warmed to the EU – opinion polls had for years showed a large and steady majority disliking it. It was, though, difficult not to see the referendum result as a vindication of De Gaulle’s views expressed fifty years before.

This is not to say that De Gaulle was always right. His championing of Quebec separatism during his visit to Canada in 1967 infuriated his hosts, forced his early departure back home – and led absolutely nowhere. And his decision to lead France out of NATO’s integrated command has, in effect, been repudiated by his successors. But over all he had better and clearer political foresight than any of his contemporaries. His campaign against the dollar and to restore gold’s pride of place in the international financial system largely succeeded. The dollar devalued and had to go off the gold standard and the gold price went through the roof, greatly enriching France which, at De Gaulle’s bidding, had hugely built up its gold reserves.

Some of De Gaulle’s foresight was downright eerie. De Gaulle admired President Kennedy but when the Kennedys visited France it was the glamorous, French-speaking Jackie who was the centre of attention. The French elite and the Paris media simply couldn’t get enough of her.  Indeed, JFK, amused at thus being eclipsed, joked that “I’m just here to accompany Mrs Kennedy”.

When Kennedy was assassinated De Gaulle flew to Washington for the funeral and on his return lectured the French cabinet at length about the great loss the world had suffered. At last one of the ministers asked the question in many minds: “But what will happen to Jackie Kennedy now ?”

“Ha !” said De Gaulle. “She’s just a starlet. She’ll end up on some shipowner’s yacht.” Which, of course, is exactly what happened to Jacqueline Onassis.

SOURCE:🔒 RW Johnson: De Gaulle and the perils of foresight

 

[Author]

Posts