Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter One Organizing the West: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and De Gaulle’s ‘Tripartite’ Memorandum Proposal, 1958-1962
- Chapter Two Whose Kind of ‘Europe’? Kennedy’s Tug of War With De Gaulle About the Common Market, 1961-1962
- Chapter Three The Clash: Kennedy and De Gaulle’s Rejection of the Atlantic Partnership, 1962-1963
- Chapter Four The Demise of the Last Atlantic Project: LBJ and De Gaulle’s Attack on the Multilateral Force, 1963-1965
- Chapter Five De Gaulle Throws Down the Gauntlet: LBJ and the Crisis in NATO, 1965-1967
- Chapter Six Grand Designs Go Bankrupt: From Divergence to Accommodation, 1967-1969
- Conclusion: Atlantis Lost: The Reception of Gaullism in the United States
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Abbreviations
- Index of Persons
- Curriculum Vitae
Chapter Five - De Gaulle Throws Down the Gauntlet: LBJ and the Crisis in NATO, 1965-1967
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter One Organizing the West: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and De Gaulle’s ‘Tripartite’ Memorandum Proposal, 1958-1962
- Chapter Two Whose Kind of ‘Europe’? Kennedy’s Tug of War With De Gaulle About the Common Market, 1961-1962
- Chapter Three The Clash: Kennedy and De Gaulle’s Rejection of the Atlantic Partnership, 1962-1963
- Chapter Four The Demise of the Last Atlantic Project: LBJ and De Gaulle’s Attack on the Multilateral Force, 1963-1965
- Chapter Five De Gaulle Throws Down the Gauntlet: LBJ and the Crisis in NATO, 1965-1967
- Chapter Six Grand Designs Go Bankrupt: From Divergence to Accommodation, 1967-1969
- Conclusion: Atlantis Lost: The Reception of Gaullism in the United States
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Abbreviations
- Index of Persons
- Curriculum Vitae
Summary
Having imposed restraint toward de Gaulle on his administration in the MLF crisis, Johnson could no longer be seen as the wrecker of the alliance. Yet the most severe transatlantic crisis of the Johnson years still lay ahead – and much would depend on how the Texan would deal with it. On March 7, 1966, de Gaulle informed Johnson that France would end its military participation within NATO. In addition, he requested the removal from France of troops not under French command. This chapter will examine Johnson's response to this blunt challenge to the postwar architecture of Western defense.
De Gaulle's distaste for NATO, of course, was not new, nor was his distinction between the alliance and the organization (even though this distinction rarely occurred to Americans). De Gaulle stressed that he favored military alliance with the United States as long as there was a Soviet threat – and that France would therefore remain party to the North Atlantic Treaty. But NATO's integrated military structure did not fit his strong belief that a nation – certainly France! – must be in charge of its own defense. De Gaulle also objected to the subjection of French armed forces to a system of military integration under American dominion. NATO was, in de Gaulle's unsentimental view of international relations, above all a tool for US hegemony. What is more, de Gaulle argued that the institutionalized character of the alliance codified the bipolar system in world politics and perpetuated the Cold War. NATO was certainly incompatible with de Gaulle's oft-cited aim of persuading “the states along the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees to form a political, economic, and strategic bloc” and “to establish this organization as one of the three world powers and […] as the arbiter between the Soviet and Anglo-American camps.” While de Gaulle had been willing to admit that NATO had been useful when there had been a plausible threat of a Soviet military attack on Western Europe in the early 1950s, he had long since argued that events had overtaken NATO's usefulness. If anything, he considered NATO an impediment to the gradual political rapprochement with the Soviet bloc that would usher in an end to the Cold War and the creation of “a Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals.”
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- Atlantis LostThe American Experience with De Gaulle, 1958–1969, pp. 249 - 306Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2012