CHARLES DE GAULLE had a genius for infuriating Americans on questions large and little. He frustrated grand designs for transatlantic harmony and military cooperation: he withdrew French forces from NATO, ordered U.S. troops out of France and built a costly independent nuclear deterrent, the force de frappe. Though a giant of his times, he could be petty on the smallest matter; three years ago, he refused to permit the annual memorial service for U.S. Army Sergeant Larry Kelly, fatally wounded in the liberation of Paris, to be held at the Invalides, the French national shrine that was its customary site. For a time, while the U.S. tried to keep relations between the two countries from getting worse, American tourism in France fell off, and an occasional U.S. restaurateur made news by dumping his supply of French wines into the gutter.
Yet even before De Gaulle fell last week, the Franco-American freeze was thawing. The U.S. bombing halt in North Viet Nam, coupled with the opening of peace talks in Paris, eased one major cause of tension. De Gaulle's own position lost some of its majesty, both within and outside France, after the student riots a year ago and the autumn monetary crisis that almost forced devaluation of the franc. De Gaulle had courted the Soviet Union during a triumphal tour in 1966 and had implicitly excluded the U.S. from his often-stated vision of a Europe "united from the Atlantic to the Urals." But his policy of détente with the U.S.S.R. suffered a violent setback when Soviet tanks invaded Czechoslovakia, and French critics of NATO suddenly fell silent. Rapprochement was further advanced by Richard Nixon's European trip in February, which he used to affirm both his personal admiration for the general and the continuing U.S. friendship for France.
Increased Flexibility. At the time, Nixon's tour seemed to be little more than a welcome gesture of reconciliation with Western European leaders who felt neglected by the Johnson Administration's preoccupation with Asia. The new U.S. President had no way of knowing that De Gaulle's political demise was imminent but, as it turned out, Nixon's timing was lucky. With De Gaulle's departure, Europe's statesmen must reappraise their direction. Nixon's meetings with the British, the Germans, the Belgians and the Italians, which seemed perfunctory at the time, may now turn out to have prepared the way for a significant U.S. consultative role in the shaping of Europe after De Gaulle.
President Nixon responded to the news of De Gaulle's defeat by writing a letter of regret and repeating his invitation to the general to visit the U.S., now as a private citizen. Said Nixon: "I have greatly valued the frank and comprehensive exchanges of views it has been my privilege to have with you." U.S. foreign policy experts responded cautiously to De Gaulle's debacle. "We've got a whole new ball game," said one, but nobody is yet certain of the game's exact rules. One thing at least is clear: De Gaulle's resignation will not automatically produce fundamental or necessarily rapid change.