Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy

In 1969, Kissinger accompanied the newly inaugurated Richard Nixon on a state visit to Paris, where French president Charles de Gaulle straightforwardly challenged the US war in Vietnam and expressed profound skepticism for the multilateral institutions that the US saw as vital to European security. Two months later, de Gaulle resigned, unprompted by political crisis, marking one last mysterious move in a career full of them. De Gaulle first won fame as one of the highest-ranking French officials (undersecretary of defense) to escape the Nazi conquest of France, where he sought to rally a resistance movement from his sanctuary in London. With so many French officers pledging loyalty to the new Nazi-aligned government based in Vichy, Britain recognized de Gaulle as the leader of an army and a government-in-exile, even though he himself did not speak English.

A decorated soldier of World War I, de Gaulle was also a voracious learner with keen strategic insight even as a junior officer. Kissinger states that de Gaulle also possessed tremendous will, and “first as a leader of the Free French during the war, later as founder and president of the Fifth Republic, he conjured up visions that transcended objective reality, in the process persuading his audiences to treat them as fact” (59). At the lowest ebb in France’s history, he embodied a spirit of national revival, even if he never quite had the means to achieve it. He looked to the example of the 17th century Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister to Louis XIII, where France held Central Europe in check while Britain and its navy checked France. Napoleon’s grand ambitions instead brought ruin to France, ceding the supreme position on the continent to Germany. Two bloody wars with Germany had caused France to “withdraw into itself,” an attitude of paralysis that, says Kissinger, de Gaulle was “determined to reverse” (64).

As leader of the Free French, de Gaulle struggled to ensure a French role despite meager forces and little diplomatic sway. His forces scored some victories in French colonial territory in Africa and the Middle East, insisting on an independent role, even as he privately recognized his utter dependence on British assistance. Kissinger describes how de Gaulle likewise needled President Roosevelt over the restoration of French colonial territories, staging a brazen assault on the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon off the coast of Newfoundland. Despite testing the patience of his allies, he developed enough legitimacy and popularity within France itself to make himself indispensable. After the Allied landings in North Africa, de Gaulle clashed with another French general for control over the Free French, outmaneuvering him by agreeing to the establishment of a civilian authority who in turn followed the younger and more charismatic de Gaulle.

Kissinger observes that, once Allied forces liberated France in the summer of 1944, de Gaulle was quick to establish his own authority before a provisional government, likely including socialists and even communists aligned with the Soviet Union, could take root. De Gaulle followed on the heels of British and American forces to convey the impression of France liberating itself without relying on foreign help. He returned to his old office in Paris he had abandoned in 1940 and proceed to treat “the intervening four years as an ellipsis in French history” (77). He ignored both the role of the Allies in winning the country back and the occupation regime that had so thoroughly compromised so many French officials and citizens. De Gaulle would form a national unity government accepting of all, including many who collaborated with Vichy and the Nazis. He would also reject any postwar occupation in France, as well as demanding a prominent French role in the occupation of Germany. He promptly asserted France’s diplomatic importance with a visit to Stalin in Moscow, proposing a partition of Germany that would leave France in control of much of its industrial production. Kissinger adds that the British and Americans were unlikely to agree to this, however, given their own role in Germany’s occupation, and so de Gaulle was limited in what he could secure bilaterally with the Soviet Union.

De Gaulle insisted that France’s government had never truly fallen, thereby “portraying Vichy as an erroneous interregnum between a glorious past and a bright future” (83). Kissinger states that de Gaulle asserted a degree of autonomy for the newly reconstituted French army and took bold political and economic steps to deal with the desperate state of the French people while blunting the appeal of communism as a radical solution. This would require a firm hand, and the French state as it existed simply did not have the institutional capacity to make the needed changes, and so de Gaulle proposed a new constitution. Failing to achieve the desired results, he suddenly resigned, leaving the country without its most valued leader at a critical time but also giving those institutions time to reform without the singular influence of a potential strongman.

Retired from public life, de Gaulle still advocated for a new constitution with a strong president, checked by a separation of powers. His advice largely went unheeded, Kissinger observes, although the new Fourth Republic did stabilize with the massive financial assistance of the Marshall Plan. It was foreign policy, particularly the collapse of France’s empire, that would eventually prompt de Gaulle’s comeback in 1958. By 1954, French forces in Indochina (present day Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam) had suffered a grievous defeat at Dien Bien Phu, prompting their withdrawal and independence for those nations. In 1956, France joined with Israel in an invasion of Egypt to prevent the nationalization of the Suez Canal, but the United States came out stridently against this move, “creating a rift in perception that would achieve its full expression after de Gaulle’s return” (93).

According to Kissinger, the defining crisis of this era for France, however, was Algeria, a colony since 1830 and regarded quite literally as a part of France itself. As Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) began a sustained and bloody insurgency, the government’s inability to manage the crisis bred resentment against the army and European settlers in Algeria. De Gaulle proved the only figure acceptable to all parties for the formation of a new government, a role he accepted on the basis that he would assume temporary emergency powers and then introduce a new constitution.

Ruling by decree and popular referenda for six months, Kissinger says that de Gaulle tried to reimagine France’s empire as a “French Community” (99). This concept quickly collapsed, however, and Algeria in particular required a more fine-tuned solution. There, he proposed an “association” that granted substantial autonomy to the Algerians while maintaining their political connections to France (101). Sensing betrayal, elements of the army attempted a coup, and then unleashed a two-year terrorist campaign in France and Algeria. De Gaulle then decided to accept Algerian independence, prompting the mass expulsion of the settler population. Having initially tried to preserve Algeria, Kissinger claims, de Gaulle then decided that its independence “was the price France had to pay for the ability to conduct its own independent foreign policy and to fulfill de Gaulle’s vision of its role in the emerging world order” (104-5).

In Europe, de Gaulle made special effort to partner with Konrad Adenauer of West Germany, although he was reluctant to enshrine it in formal agreements. Most significantly, he broke from the Richelieu tradition, supporting a rehabilitated and united Germany that was firmly enmeshed within a broader European system. At the same time, Kissinger says, de Gaulle resisted any concept of NATO “that would place French forces under international command” (106), given his distrust of American promises to rescue France in a crisis. For de Gaulle, one major component of an independent foreign policy was an independent nuclear capability, which it achieved shortly after formally withdrawing from NATO’s military command (though not the alliance itself). Kissinger observes that de Gaulle also pushed back on British efforts to align their own nuclear capabilities with those of the United States and vetoed British participation in the European Economic Community (a forerunner of the European Union).

Kissinger then states that the United States ultimately acceded to sole French control over its own nuclear arsenal, and in turn de Gaulle proved loyal to the Atlantic Alliance “when there was an actual Soviet challenge to the international order, as during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 or the Soviet ultimatum over the status of Berlin” (113). The last great challenge of de Gaulle’s tenure came from within, as a massive student uprising swept across Paris. While implying that he might use military intervention, de Gaulle averted the crisis by calling for new legislative elections, which his party won by the first absolute majority in French parliamentary history. Shortly thereafter, de Gaulle retired, never again to participate in public life.

De Gaulle is often remembered in the United States as “the egotistical French leader with delusions of grandeur,” but Kissinger insists that “in his statesmanship, de Gaulle remains exalted,” adding that “[n]o 20th-century leader demonstrated greater gifts of intuition” (117). France may not have quite risen to de Gaulle’s lofty rhetoric, but under his leadership it managed to transcend the utter humiliation of its World War II experience. Kissinger claims that de Gaulle’s very ability to inspire his countrymen was no less important than any particular policy objectives. He crawled out from under the shadow of Winston Churchill to likewise guide his own people through their darkest hour and to reclaim a sense of national pride in the face of imperial decline.