Charles de Gaulle and Europe: The new revisionism

Abstract

Four distinguished analysts of French foreign policy under Charles de Gaulle provide in-depth assessments of the new book edited by Christian Nuenlist, Anna Locher, and Garret Martin, Globalizing de Gaulle: International Perspectives on French Foreign Policies, 1958–1969, published by Lexington Books. The commentators praise the book's wide scope and many of its essays and broad themes, but they raise questions about Garret Martin's contention (shared by a few, though not all, of the other contributors to the volume) that de Gaulle had a coherent if ultimately unsuccessful strategy to overcome the Cold War and move toward the unification of Germany and Europe. In article-length commentaries, both Andrew Moravcsik and Marc Trachtenberg take issue with Martin's view, arguing that de Gaulle's foreign policy involved more bluff and bluster than any genuine attempt to bring about the reunification of Germany or to end the Cold War. Moravcsik also provides a spirited defense of the “revisionist” conception of de Gaulle's policy toward Europe, which sees the general as having been guided mostly by his domestic economic and political interests—a conception that Trachtenberg has also come to accept. The forum ends with a reply by Nuenlist, Locher, and Martin to the four commentaries.