Seeing De Gaulle Plain

Even by his own Olympian standards, Charles de Gaulle enjoyed a vintage year of mischief-making in 1967. Among other feats, he expelled NATO from French soil, summoned the Quebecois to rebel against Canada, egged the British pound on to devaluation and--once more with feeling--vetoed British entry into the Common Market. The most commonly accepted diagnosis of Gaullist behavior credits the general with an obsessive but essentially honorable devotion to la grandeur of France. Such a view is entirely too charitable, argues Harold Kaplan in an article in the current New Leader, entitled "The New Cold War." A Bennington College professor now on a year's leave in France, Kaplan presents an interesting and disturbing thesis: "The time has come to face French policy under De Gaulle for what it is--a destructive, divisive, peacebreaking policy that may endanger the world."

De Gaulle, suggests Kaplan, is really a scavenger, out to exploit the battle between the two super powers, the U.S. and Russia: "to take his prizes while the big antagonists are deadlocked--witness the oil deals France is busy making in the Middle East." The French President makes no secret of the fact that he considers the U.S. his best target. In fact, Gaullist logic makes the U.S. out to be the necessary target for France in the interest of world harmony "by contending that American power is dominant in the world, most secure in its seat, and most threatening to small nations."

Dissolving Empire. The truth, as De Gaulle privately sees it, is really quite the reverse, according to Kaplan. Driven by dissent at home over race relations and the Viet Nam war, "surrounded on all sides by enemies and cool allies," the U.S. must appear to De Gaulle like "an emasculated monster." Far from picking on the strong, De Gaulle hopes that he is lunging at the weak. "The chief aim of De Gaulle's policy is to divide the spoils of the American empire that he sees as dissolving or at least contracting."

Thus, French policy's specific aim is "to break American power wherever it can." The most obvious place is Viet Nam, and in constantly calling on the U.S. to withdraw its forces from Viet Nam, De Gaulle, like some of the protesters elsewhere in the world and even the U.S., has more than merely the ideal of peace in mind. "Under the cover of anti-Viet Nam activity," says Kaplan, "it is not world peace that is being organized and restored; it is a campaign to bring about a dramatic defeat for one of the world super powers"--the U.S.

The real mischief in De Gaulle's actions, says Kaplan, is that his goal, once achieved, would upset the delicate balance of power between Russia and the U.S. that has kept the peace since World War II, thus producing a Balkanized world and bringing the danger of nuclear war much closer. Looked at in this fashion, he says, Charles de Gaulle's present policies constitute "an adventurist and irresponsible nationalism" that has already "helped bring the world closer to a disregard of the deadly facts of the nuclear age."

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