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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…
