This week, on the banks of the River Meuse, France's ex-President Charles de Gaulle broke a long silence. He called for a Western European bloc, built around a Franco-British alliance, to stand as arbiter between the two giants of the East and West. De Gaulle quoted a prophetic countryman, Historian Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote 111 years ago:
"Two great peoples, starting at different points, go forward toward the same end; these are the Russians and the Americans. The others seem to have attained the limits that nature traced for them; these two alone go forward in a race of...