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Announcing that France would not sign the treaty, De Gaulle pointed out that, after all, it could not erase the dangers of nuclear war or slow down the arms race. Only complete disarmament could do that, and De Gaulle suggested a four-power conference to discuss "practical" measures, such as the dismantling of nuclear delivery systems. De Gaulle, of course, knows perfectly well that there is virtually no chance of that happening in the foreseeable future. But the Moscow agreement, he said sarcastically, is so innocuous that it "cannot inconvenience anybody, and in any case, not us. France will not be diverted from equipping herself with the means of immeasurable destruction possessed by the other powers." If France disbanded its own embryonic force de frappe, De Gaulle explained, "her own security and her own independence would never more belong to her."
As for a possible nonaggression agreement between NATO and the Warsaw pact, which Russia & Co. are discussing in Moscow this week, De Gaulle dismissed it scornfully as "this assimilation between the Atlantic Alliance and Communist servitude." As if to illustrate the dangers of such "assimilation," he recalled Yalta, "that lamentable conference," which settled the fate of Eastern Europe. At any rate, said De Gaulle, the nonaggression proposal was the subject of "separate negotiations between the Anglo-Saxons and the Soviets, so far in the absence of the Europeans." France would not "subscribe to some arrangement that would be carried out above her head."
Fancied Wounds. While noting with utmost satisfaction France's new economic independence of the U.S., De Gaulle offered a paean to U.S.-French friendship since the Revolutionary War. Pouring on the "Lafayette sauce," as one Gaullist aide described it, he declared that "for the U.S. to imagine that France seeks to harm it would be ridiculous and absurd." In the case of war, France would stand with the U.S.: "The alliance is beyond question, except in the fancies of those who make it their profession to alarm the people by depicting each scratch as an incurable wound." One scratch: "Fits and starts of what in the U.S. they like to call public opinion."
De Gaulle's words, though haughty as always, lacked the venomous sarcasm of his performance in January, when he vetoed Britain's application to the Common Market. Washington is now sure that De Gaulle wants to visit the U.S.—the trip will probably occur early next year—and that he is just a shade readier than before to listen to U.S. proposals. In essence, the U.S. is willing to pass along nuclear know-how if, in exchange, the French are willing to accept some form of multilateral deterrent. President Kennedy indicated in his own press conference last week that the U.S. recognizes France as an atomic power and might offer new technology that would not require additional testing, depending on "what kind of a cooperative effort" France would be willing to make. But so far at least, De Gaulle apparently does not want to be indebted to the U.S. for nuclear know-how or anything else, and certainly not if it means giving up the grandiose independence of his embryonic deterrent.