A European Deterrent?

It all began on September 17, 1958, when President Charles de Gaulle wrote his famous memorandum to President Dwight Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, proposing a three-power directorate of the Alliance. At the time, he was not long back in power after his 12 years in the wilderness. Neither Ike nor Supermac was impressed, the first even less so than the second.

What the general was proposing, in effect, was superpower status for Gaullist France. In Eisenhower’s and Macmillan’s eyes, France hadn’t paid its dues: It lacked nuclear weapons and thus could not claim superior status to, say, West Germany or Italy. The general didn’t see things that way. In fact, he spelled it out: France was ready to buy nuclear weapons. The condition he stipulated, however, held no appeal for the American Administration: Once any such weapons system was delivered, it had to be clearly understood that it would be under France’s sole and sovereign control. Failing that, France was going to become a nuclear power in its own right and by its own efforts.

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Brian Crozier

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It all began on September 17, 1958, when President Charles de Gaulle wrote his famous memorandum to President Dwight Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, proposing a three-power directorate of the Alliance. At the time, he was not long back in power after his 12 years in the wilderness. Neither Ike nor Supermac was impressed, the first even less so than the second.

What the general was proposing, in effect, was superpower status for Gaullist France. In Eisenhower’s and Macmillan’s eyes, France hadn’t paid its dues: It lacked nuclear weapons and thus could not claim superior status to, say, West Germany or Italy. The general didn’t see things that way. In fact, he spelled it out: France was ready to buy nuclear weapons. The condition he stipulated, however, held no appeal for the American Administration: Once any such weapons system was delivered, it had to be clearly understood that it would be under France’s sole and sovereign control. Failing that, France was going to become a nuclear power in its own right and by its own efforts.