Charles de Gaulle, the International System, and the Existential Difference 9781472437556, 9781315571348

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Charles de Gaulle, the International System, and the Existential Difference

This innovative account of Charles de Gaulle as a thinker and writer on nationalism and international relations offers a view of him far beyond that of a traditional nationalist. Centring on the way de Gaulle regarded nations as individuals the author frames his argument by rationalising de Gaulle’s nationalism within the existential movement that flowed as an intellectual undercurrent throughout early and mid-twentieth-century France. Graham O’Dwyer asserts that this existentialism of the nation and ‘the presence of the past’ allowed de Gaulle to separate the ‘nation’ from the ‘state’ when looking at China, Russia, Vietnam, and East European countries, enabling him to understand the idiosyncrasies of specific national characters better than most of his contemporaries. This was especially the case for Russia and China and meant that he read the Cold War world in a way that Washington and London could not, allowing him a unique insight into how they would act as individuals and in relation to other nations. Graham O’Dwyer is a lecturer at the University of Reading.

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Charles de Gaulle, the International System, and the Existential Difference

YORK YORK

Graham O’Dwyer

~~o~;J~n~~~up

LONDON LONDON LONDON

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Graham O’Dwyer The right of Graham O’Dwyer to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: O'Dwyer, Graham, author. Title: Charles de Gaulle, the international system, and the existential difference / Graham O'Dwyer. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016040556 | ISBN 9781472437556 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315571348 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Gaulle, Charles de, 1890-1970--Political and social views. | International relations--Philosophy. | Nationalism--Philosophy. | Existentialism. | World politics--1945-1989. | France--Foreign relations-1945-1958. Classification: LCC DC420 .O38 2017 | DDC 327.101--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040556 ISBN: 9781472437556 (hbk) ISBN: 9781315571348 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents

Acknowledgements

vi

1

Introduction to the work

1

2

Haunted by history, preoccupied with nations

21

3

Ethno-symbolism and the ‘content’ of the international system

57

4

Existence preceding essence: The individuality of nationhood

92

5

Nationalism is an existentialism

128

6

De Gaulle, political science, and the problem of pessimism

166

Index

199

Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to a number of people for their generous help and valuable contributions to this book. In particular I would like to thank my former colleagues at the University of Kent who read through the initial draft chapters and offered their valuable insights on various philosophical and ontological aspects of international relations (IR), the existential tradition, and the course of recent French history (thank you in particular to Iain MacKenzie, Adrian Pabst, and Jane O’Mahony). I would also like to thank Andrew Wroe and George Conyne for acting as an endless source of wisdom and knowledge on all aspects of the United States over the past few years and for putting up with my never-ending questions on American politics and American diplomatic history (thank you for all the coffee too!). I also thank Andrew Williams at the University of St Andrews whose encouragement for this project and his reading of my very early draft chapters was certainly heartening and contributed greatly to the finished product. Thanks also go to the editorial team at Routledge and my anonymous reviewers for their enthusiasm for the book. In particular I thank Rob Sorsby whose infinite patience and guidance has been most welcome (and very much needed), and to Claire Maloney for her careful reading of the final manuscript (although any errors in the text remain entirely my responsibility). I would also like to offer a special thank you to my former students at Kent whose genuine diligence, intellectual curiosity, and good nature have been a constant source of inspiration and humour. In particular I thank those who took my modules on ‘Foreign Policy Analysis’ and ‘US Foreign Policy’ between 2010 and 2014 and whose questions, criticisms, and comments on some of the themes presented here helped to develop the text. Finally, and above all, I offer my boundless gratitude to my parents (Norma and Wayne O’Dwyer) for their unwavering support and constant inspiration, and for acting as a constant source of good humour in my life. Please keep feeding Ginny and looking out for the barn owls.

1

Introduction to the work

French philosopher Régis Debray once claimed that history’s giants are history’s great ‘political myths’. They appear, that is, as fleeting intrusions in our lives that ‘decimate or exhaust us’ and leave a lasting mark on the world. In using the term ‘myth’, Debray does not mean to imply that history’s giants are some form of ‘imagined beings’ that lack a tangible existence, rather that certain personalities exert an omnipresent ‘force that leaves a wake behind it’ and which, at least for a time, ‘turns the world upside down’.1 It is true to say that most of us will never meet such an individual and instead we tend to create subjective narratives that, while containing certain kernels of truth, are largely fictionalised accounts. It is in this sense that man becomes myth and, while we may have no formal acquaintance with such ‘giants’, we nonetheless sense the aftershocks of their actions. As inheritors of the historical, that is, we live with the legacies of their actions and are condemned to swim in the ‘wakes’ that transcend the era in which they lived. This is true of figures such as Bonaparte and the two decades that he dominated European affairs, of Vladimir Lenin and his sense of the ‘natural laws of history’ in relation to Czarist Russia, of Franklin Roosevelt and his radical expansion of the American state in the 1930s and 1940s, of Margret Thatcher and her injection of a dose of Hayekian economic thought into the heart of British political life, and of Deng Xiaoping’s reorientation of the Chinese economy in the latter years of the twentieth century. As ‘conductors’ of their time such giants seem to condition and orchestrate the world around them in a way that few others do. While the consequences of Vladimir Putin’s vision of politics both within Russia (and the ‘democratic recession’ that he possibly represents) and on the international stage may see him join such illustrious company it is surely the case that this book’s central focus, Charles de Gaulle, sits among the cast of historical leviathans and ‘myths’ as a consequence of his potent sense of France, his actions in ‘saving’ France in the 1940s, his creation of the French Fifth Republic in the 1950s, and his actions on the world stage which he sought to influence and bend to his cast-iron will during the 1960s. Indeed, de Gaulle understood that for most Frenchmen and Frenchwomen he was a ‘mythical’ figure and spoke of how his subsequent political career was conditioned by the public image that had formed around him. There was, in other

2

Introduction

words, a self-conscious understanding that ‘de Gaulle’ was largely a public ‘invention’ over which ‘Charles’ had little control. This had been formed during the Second World War when he became aware that he had entered the national consciousness of France. ‘I realised that “General de Gaulle” had become a living legend’, he once claimed. ‘The French had formed a certain image of him…they expected many things of him…they thought of him as behaving in a certain way. From that day on I knew I would have to reckon with this man, this General de Gaulle’. ‘There were many things’, he recalled, ‘I would have liked to do but could not, for they would not have been fitting for General de Gaulle’.2 This is why he stressed to André Malraux that ‘I too am a myth’.3 It is also why, after giving his inflammatory ‘Vive le Québec libre!’ speech in 1967 (where he was seen to stir certain secessionist sentiments in Canada), he told his aides that, in the context of the occasion, diplomatic niceties were not available to him; ‘When one is General de Gaulle one does not get away with those kind of expedients. What I did, I had to do.’4 It is interesting to ponder how true this is for other world leaders who, due to their stature and importance, take on a similar status within their respective nations. It is because figures such as de Gaulle have a profound impact on their political environment, in both a domestic and international sense, that they transform souls and have a propensity to divide people into supporters and adversaries during their lifetimes but also long after they have passed on. While we spill endless ink debating their respective influences and the merits of their ideas, visions, and actions it is certainly the case that to be great is to be controversial (although it is clear that the relationship does not always work the other way around). Of course, as the quintessential contrarian of his day, controversy was de Gaulle’s life-long companion. Whether as a young student at Saint-Cyr, as writer and critic on the antiquated nature of French military strategy in the 1930s (de Gaulle saw this as being too defensive, theoretical, and rigid, and thus lacking in mobility; a quality that he treasured in political life), as self-proclaimed leader of France in the 1940s, or as premier of the Fifth Republic in the 1950s and 1960s, de Gaulle habitually courted the controversial. This is why, in the twilight of his political career, Alexander Werth once described the General as ‘the most controversial figure on the international scene’. ‘Perhaps’, as Werth was to write, ‘his Stendhalian qualité suprême has been his tendency to always rebel against something’ and is why de Gaulle liked to say that ‘in politics one must always vote against something’.5 This he most certainly did.

The study of individuals in the context of international relations Irrespective of the reasons we are drawn to the world’s historical giants I begin this study by assuming that figures such as de Gaulle do matter and should be studied in some capacity. This may, it is true, appear as an odd caveat to offer in the opening chapter of this volume but in all honesty it

Introduction

3

probably (read certainly!) exposes my background in international relations (IR) where individuals are seldom studied. Indeed, as a scholar of the relatively minor sub-discipline of IR that is ‘Foreign Policy Analysis’ (FPA), where individuals are one of the central points of focus or ‘levels of analysis’ (what is usually referred to as ‘actor-specific theory’), I often find myself at odds with academic colleagues regarding the importance of ‘the individual’ to international affairs and events and am constantly assured that the individual is of peripheral importance. Needless to say I do not believe this to be the case and hope that this study goes someway to supporting this way of thinking about the world, but given the countless discussions that I have (genuinely) enjoyed on the issue over the years I find it somewhat difficult to proceed without touching on this rather elementary point. That said, and in relation to this question, it must be noted and indeed conceded that the intellectual foundations of my opponents’ position sit upon solid ground as theirs is largely representative of the ‘default’ position in contemporary IR scholarship regarding certain ontological assumptions. By this I mean the claim that individuals are of peripheral importance to global affairs stems, in large part, from the dominance of systemic theories in IR such as neorealism (perhaps better understood as ‘structural realism’) and neoliberalism that have shaped the ontological ground of the discipline whereby ‘the state’ is seen as the central, and often solitary unit of analysis (although supranational bodies have increasingly figured into theories of IR in recent decades). States in other words, and the structural forces that condition their actions matter, people and human-agency generally do not. Alexander Wendt captures IR’s consensus on this question when he writes that scholars ‘have mostly ignored individuals on the assumption that their effects mostly washout in a world of Leviathans like States, Multinational Corporations, and International Organizations’.6 This is certainly the case. In a sense I raise the essence (if not the full extent) of this debate right away as I wish to cut off any significant discussion on the matter and focus solely on framing de Gaulle’s interpretation of the Cold War international system, and the foreign policy that was produced by this, through the logic of Bergsonian ‘duration’, ethno-symbolic nationalism and, ultimately, Sartrean existentialism in order to offer a fresh perspective on the broad themes of French foreign policy under his stewardship. Indeed, my central claim in the work is that de Gaulle’s views, actions, and pronouncements in relation to international politics were inherently Bergsonian, ethno-symbolic, and existential in nature and led him to see the world, what we may call the ‘content of the international system’, differently than that of his Anglo-American counterparts. This, as I go on to argue, bears much responsibility for the deterioration in trans-Atlantic relations during his presidential tenure. In short, and in seeking to pinpoint de Gaulle’s ‘operational code’ (a term that is often employed in FPA that seeks to explore an individual’s ‘belief system’) I set out to explore Debray’s remarkably astute comment that ‘de Gaulle was an existentialist of the nation’.7 While this may be a somewhat cryptic remark

4

Introduction

and hence one that is not easily ‘unpacked’, I argue that it is worth pursuing, given its explanatory power in relation to de Gaulle’s foreign policy. I seek to make no broader claims in the work and offer no substantial discussion or analysis on French domestic politics during the 1960s. That said, it is perhaps wise to offer a few words on the ontological questions that I have alluded to before progressing. To whom this debate is of little importance I offer my apologies as this may seem to be a redundant monologue that highlights nothing other than that which is patently self-evident. In many ways I share such views and hence to the ranks of ‘de Gaulle’ scholars and my FPA colleagues this may be nothing more than an unnecessary digression. But in another sense I feel that it helps to frame the work in a broader intellectual context which, in turn, offers a clear justification for a focus on de Gaulle as a decision-maker, but also individual decision-makers in a wider context, thereby contributing to the growing sense that we cannot understand the world’s major events through structural forces alone. Here is not the place to delve into a substantial genealogy of the importance of the individual to IR as this would be a project of ambitious scale in itself. Indeed, Quintin Skinner’s seminal lecture at the British Academy (in May, 2008) on the genealogy of the modern state tells us something of the immense scope of tracing the lineage of a multifarious and similar concept back through time.8 But it is worth noting that this way of thinking (the peripheral importance of the individual that is) is largely a reflection of the dominance of the neorealist school of thought within IR that since the publication of Kenneth Waltz’s 1979 seminal work, Theory of International Politics, has sought to develop, and what is in essence a laudable endeavour, a scientific approach to IR whereby states are seen to be ‘like units’ that all share the same assumptions and goals and whereby the structural forces of the international system are more important than individual states per se and certainly the individual decision-makers that govern these. This is an act or method that is often called ‘black boxing the state’ whereby these entities are stripped of any significant idiosyncratic content and differences, thusly becoming ‘metaphysical abstractions’. The centrality of Waltzian logic, it must be noted, is not that states are identical in any meaningful sense, rather ‘states perform or try to perform tasks, most of which are common to all of them’.9 In other words, and although significant cultural, historical, and geographical differences exist between China, Russia, India, France, and the United States (for example), all are driven by the same logic and pursue similar goals in relation to security, the accumulation of hard and soft power, and acts of war. This ontological principle, in turn, provides the basis from which universal claims and theories may be postulated to explain generic state action through the ‘billiard ball’ model of IR and which sits at the heart of most neorealist works that explore how state behaviour (often in a negative sense) is a product of external pressures and assumptions. The essence of this is captured by the title of John Mearsheimer’s seminal work, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), where

Introduction

5

he explores how the inherent logic of the international system forces states to act in a certain way. ‘This situation’, he writes, which no one consciously designed or intended, is genuinely tragic. Great powers that have no reason to fight each other – that are merely concerned with their own survival – nevertheless have little choice but to pursue power and to seek to dominate the other states in the system. This dilemma is captured in brutally frank comments that Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck made during the early 1860s, when it appeared that Poland, which was not an independent state at the time, might regain its sovereignty. ‘Restoring the Kingdom of Poland in any shape or form is tantamount to creating an ally for any enemy that chooses to attack us’, he believed, and therefore he advocated that Prussia should ‘smash those Poles till, losing all hope, they lie down and die; I have every sympathy for their situation, but if we wish to survive we have no choice but to wipe them out’.10 Of course, focusing on states rather than individual decision-makers is essential to the development of grand IR theory (at least in systemic terms) as this removes the thoroughly unpredictable ‘human element’ from any universal model and allows us to focus on scientific units that (nominally) conform to rational choice theory (RCT) and hence behave in a certain and predictable way. Indeed, states, to most IR theorists, are rational actors and their behaviour is marked by this. They are, as Mearsheimer notes, rational actors in the sense that they are aware of their external environment and they think strategically about how to survive in it. In particular, they consider the preferences of other states and how their own behavior is likely to affect the behavior of those other states, and how the behavior of those other states is likely to affect their own strategy for survival. Moreover, states pay attention to the long term as well as the immediate consequences of their actions.11 Of course, focusing on decision-making in foreign policy that is the product of the human mind rather than the structural forces of the international system may allow us to explore global events through RCT but this also implies varying degrees of emotion, cognitive bias, and ideological underpinnings that grand theory is unable to account for. The subjectivity of human existence, in other words, produces endless variables and views of the world that grand theory cannot work with and hence working with the state rather than the individual decision-maker allows the discipline’s scholars to develop complex theoretical models of state action. In many ways this ‘sidesteps’ the significant challenges to IR’s reliance on RCT that cloud an individual’s ability to act in a rational way such as confirmation bias (seeing what one wants to see or

6

Introduction

seeking out information that confirms pre-existing views), the availability heuristic (believing that solitary, local, and immediate examples are representative of wider trends or processes), the Texas sharpshooter effect (seeing patterns, coincidences, and relationships where none exist), or the Dunning– Kruger Effect (the belief that one’s own abilities and skills are better than they actually are; this is sometimes called the American Idol Effect for obvious reasons).12 It is the removal of the individual that differentiates neorealism from classical realist works such as E. H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis (1939) and Hans Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations (1948) which largely saw state action as a reflection of the personalities, egos, and emotions of world leaders and which causes a problem for scholars of FPA who look to individuals and leaders to explain world politics. To be sure, although contemporary figures such as Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin are certainly products of their respective political environments, national histories, and security concerns, and are also constrained by limited resources and the geographical positioning of their respective states, I find it difficult to believe that individual personalities, and the decisions they produce, can be so easily discounted. One good example of this is Steven Yetiv’s 2013 work, National Security Through a Cockeyed Lens: How Cognitive Bias Impacts U.S. Foreign Policy, on the ways in which human irrationality and personality have driven key elements of US foreign policy since 1945 (such as US energy policy, the Iran-Contra episode, and Jimmy Carter’s response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979), suggesting that the human element in IR cannot be ignored and may in fact undermine any attempt to formulate a grand theory of IR that is able to withstand new attempts to falsify it. As Yetiv writes, ‘people don’t usually make decisions like programmed computers. Instead, they sometimes malfunction in ways that make it harder to produce good decisions.’13 Of course, on the intellectual margins of IR the claim that individuals do not matter has never been universally accepted. Indeed, works such as Gardener Murphy’s Human Nature and the Enduring Peace (1945), Richard Snyder’s Decision-Making as an Approach to the Study of International Politics (1954), Harold and Margret Sprout’s Man–Milieu Relationship Hypotheses in the Context of International Politics (1956), and Otto Klineberg’s The Human Dimension in International Relations (1966) were reasonably common two or three generations ago but became somewhat less so in the years that followed the neorealist triumph of the late 1970s. Needless to say, to FPA specialists such as myself, IR’s ‘default’ method of understanding the world is a little irksome in that it overlooks, indeed ignores, the central aspect of international politics – the individual decision-maker. While such protestations were somewhat muted during the Cold War, largely because the essence of IR was relegated to the East–West split (as I demonstrate throughout the work this was an element that de Gaulle saw as being largely illusory) providing ample evidence to demonstrate that structure trumped agency, the years that followed 1989 have seen these become more pronounced largely as a consequence of

Introduction

7

the failure of systemic theories to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union and the broadly peaceful nature of Soviet decline. ‘Students coming of age in the post-Cold War era’, as Valerie Hudson was to write in 1995, ‘seem to grasp intuitively that the study of international relations is ultimately about human beings…the catalytic shock of the end of the Cold War and the apparent inability of IR theory to predict this profound change have raised questions about how we should go about understanding today’s world.’14 Hence, and in a temporal context, there is a growing sense that it is time we let individuals ‘back in’ to our thinking.

Ghosts, tooth fairies, and the state My reason for studying de Gaulle in such a capacity also stems from a complex ontological basis that goes beyond any assumptions regarding the selfevident importance of individuals to global affairs or the challenges posed to RCT by the study of cognitive biases. By this I allude to my broad sympathy for Wendt’s claims that if IR’s social scientists are serious about the ‘scientific’ nature of their discipline then, and in ontological terms, they should be constrained by the natural sciences and physics in particular. This is a principle that, in the final analysis, pushes us away from the study of states and towards the study of individuals. If, in other words, political scientists and theorists are to be truly ‘scientific’ in relation to their work then they must adhere to the generally accepted principles that govern contemporary scientific enquiry or back away from their claims to be scientists in any meaningful sense. While this is a strong and relatively straightforward claim it is, nonetheless, incredibly difficult to work with given that it challenges, at the most fundamental level, the foundational ground that grand theories of IR depend on – the state as the central unit of analysis. Put another way, if states lack any tangible, physical basis then most scholars of IR spend much of their time talking about abstract entities that do not really exist. At least not really. Here is not the place to explore the deep complexities of Wendt’s rationale in any considerable depth but in his 2010 piece he asserts that, It is because physics is our most elementary science, describing the ultimate constituents of all reality, whatever objects and processes social scientists posit must be consistent with physical law – a philosophical principal known as the ‘causal completeness of physics’ (CCP). So if physics tells us that there is no such thing as action at a distance, backwards causation, or ghosts, then these should be regarded as in effect supernatural phenomena, and as such not used in social science…The physics constraint makes the state’s object-hood puzzling, since within macroscopic or classical physics there are no objects or processes that are not purely and wholly physical. And whatever else they may be, as phenomena that cannot be seen, touched or heard states don’t seem to be like that. It’s as if IR were indeed about ghosts.15

8

Introduction

One may, it is true, argue that if modern science is able to evoke theoretical phenomena such as ‘dark energy’ and ‘dark matter’ whereby we have no way to observe such things but are nonetheless able (in theory) to see their effects (largely the quickening expansion of the universe that goes against the older assumptions that it should, in fact, be slowing down or exist in a ‘steady state’) then using states in our models of IR is not problematic, but this strikes me as being an argument for another time. Nonetheless, the consequence of imposing the physics constraint, or ‘flatland’ ontology, on social science tears out the heart of the discipline as it implies that states share the same ontological status as ghosts, the Tooth Fairy, and Bigfoot. Hence, it seems clear that when IR scholars talk about states acting or thinking, ‘what they really mean is individuals acting’.16 Indeed, when states ‘act’, Wendt argues, very few people are ‘acting’ at all nor are they ‘aware’ that an action is formally taking place. This is true of international diplomacy, the conduct of NATO’s various members, and all acts of war. The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq is a good example of this. ‘It is not the “United States” that is making war in Iraq’, Wendt asserts, ‘since in real reality most U.S. citizens are not involved. Our imagery here should be the horizontal image of warring ant colonies rather than the vertical image of duelling Leviathans.’17 Of course, Hobbesian imagery may be largely responsible for the traditional view of the state in the international system but it is clear that the ones really doing something are those who are authorised to speak in the name of the respective state (leaders or ‘dominant monads’, a term Wendt borrows from Leibniz) which helps to answer the logical question of which individuals matter. To my mind this is a claim that leads us to the study of individuals in IR, hence something akin to the traditions of the preWaltzian period, and de Gaulle in particular if we wish to rationalise French foreign policy during the 1960s; not a structural interpretation of IR that strips this most human of activities of individual decision-makers. As Wendt goes on to argue, the claim that individuals are of peripheral importance may be true of ‘lower-level functionaries, however the charge that individuals don’t “matter” rings less true of leaders – think of Adolf Hitler, George Bush, or Mikhail Gorbachev’.18 It is in this sense that Wendt’s term of ‘quantum individualism’ not only embraces the notion that human individuality and the decisions produced by this matter in foreign policy, but that this should form the central component of analysis. This suggests, in turn, that if scholars of IR wish to reclaim human agency from the dominance of Waltzian logic and hence structural realism then ‘it is to the much neglected study of individual leadership that we should turn’.19 Of course, I foresee no point in the immediate future whereby neorealism will be knocked from its lofty, academic perch as, although question marks hang over its explanatory power, there exists, and as with all dominant scientific theories, an emotional attachment to this approach by the discipline’s scholars. In the language of cognitive psychology this may be characterised as the ‘anchoring effect’ whereby a student and eventual scholar of IR (and as is predominantly the

Introduction

9

case in Anglo-American academia) is exposed to IR theory very early on in their academic career and is habitually introduced to neorealism as the ‘default’ method of intellectual engagement and hence this perception lingers in the mind, subsequently tainting all else (this is probably reinforced by the fact that most courses and textbooks on IR theory begin with classical and structural realism which, in my experience, conditions the student mind whereby they resist the subsequent approaches they are taught). Nonetheless, it is this way of thinking that has led me to undertake this study of de Gaulle and stressing this point in the introductory chapter is, at least in an IR context, important to note. Indeed, for a long time now I have held significant reservations concerning the ability of systemic theories of IR to formally explain or predict specific state action such as the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq (which to my mind was far more of an emotional response than a rational one), the rationale behind the Vietnam War, and the Soviet logic that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. To this list one may add the actions of France on the world stage during the 1940s, 1950s, and especially the 1960s. For example, and as noted above, a central element of neorealist logic implies that all states are ‘rational actors’ and pursue the goal of ‘survival’ in the anarchic international system and hence a ‘correct’ action should usually be identifiable to the foreign policy analyst, but quite how this maps onto the ‘actions’ of France after the German invasion of 1940 is difficult to see. Within General de Gaulle (the illegitimate ‘leader’) and Marshal Philippe Pétain (the lawful and legitimate ruler) two radically different visions of the ‘correct’ French response emerged with the former favouring symbolic resistance from London and the latter opting for surrender and collaboration under the guise of Vichy France. It may well be that de Gaulle, as he claimed, was trying to save the historical idea of France while Pétain was trying to save the French, but to imply that there was a ‘rational’ and thus correct response seems to be somewhat subjective in itself. To my mind, this also demonstrates that individuals are not interchangeable (as the act of ‘black-boxing the state’ implies) as leaders will see the world differently and act in relation to this. Hence who is in charge does matter. It is also a useful example to explore in the context of FPA as we are not blessed with too many examples of two competing leaders reacting differently to the same events and circumstances. Of course, history has been far kinder to de Gaulle than Pétain as the General’s wager certainly paid off (not least because de Gaulle wrote some of this ‘history’). But this is a conclusion of the historian where hindsight bias is a wonderful thing as we know that de Gaulle’s success was highly uncertain during the dark days of 1940. Yet let me be clear on two specific points before moving on. None of this is intended to claim that IR’s dominant theories have no ability to explain why certain states have acted as such and this is certainly not the position I wish to defend in this study (I merely wish to outline why I approach IR in such a way). Indeed, in making sense of the Westphalian system of states and the broad themes of state action within this, I have much sympathy for the

10

Introduction

explanatory power of neorealism. That is to say that the themes of state sovereignty, the accumulation of military power as a means to survive in an anarchic world, and notions such as the ‘balance of power’ and the ‘security dilemma’ are useful themes that explain much in terms of state action. Nonetheless, and in light of the discussion thus far, in terms of specific events at a ‘lower’ and perhaps less ‘grand’ level, and to understand why, for example, ‘France’ acted as she did during the ‘de Gaulle years’ then de Gaulle’s views, values, and concerns must be the primary focal point of any such investigation and not an abstract theory based on states as ‘metaphysical abstractions’. Furthermore, none of this implies that I do not talk of states as ‘unitary actors’ here. Indeed, as this work is largely an analysis of de Gaulle’s sense of the international system, presented in the existential tradition of Jean-Paul Sartre, I do not see myself as being tethered to the CCP that social scientists perhaps should be and I thusly talk of ‘the state’ throughout the work. However, and this is the vitally important point to note here, as I am studying de Gaulle’s views and the foreign policy that this produced, it is his sense of France, his sense of states and nations, his sense of the international system, and his sense of the forces within this that I am bound to throughout, not the state as a metaphysical abstraction. This is to say that when attempting to explore or analyse an individual’s foreign policy (in a protracted study such as this) one must work with the specific decisionmaker’s sense of the world in relation to ideology, norms, ontology, and epistemology. For de Gaulle, and as I argue in Chapter Three, the state was (or at least should be) the expression of the nation, nation-states were the only true realities in the international system, and the ontological basis of these is best understood as being ethno-symbolic in nature. In other words, de Gaulle’s sense of the national entities that inhabit the international system are best described, in an ontological sense, by the work of Anthony Smith and Myths and Memories of the Nation (1999), in particular. That said, there is also an ever-present anthropomorphic ‘character’ to de Gaulle’s vision of nations and states that Smith cannot account for and which leads me into the realm of existentialism in terms of how states develop into individuals with specific ‘personalities’, but also de Gaulle’s sense of how states should act and interact with one another. It is in this sense that de Gaulle’s vision of international order was, perhaps, an exaggerated and anthropomorphic expression of Henry Kissinger’s recent musings on this (see World Order, Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History, 2014), but as I assert throughout the work it was France’s individuality, authenticity, and existential example to the world that was fundamental to de Gaulle’s vision of foreign policy and international relations in a broader sense and it strikes me that much of this same logic is expressed throughout the writings of Sartre. Of course, Sartre’s existential logic was applicable to the human individual while de Gaulle’s was expressed in relation to national ‘individuals’, but despite this ‘ontological separation’, I feel that both were fundamentally concerned with the same philosophical questions on existence,

Introduction

11

action, and example, and produced similar answers, and this is why, to my mind at least, Debray was able to claim that de Gaulle was an existentialist of sorts. It is in this sense, and as Sartre explained his logic far better than de Gaulle ever did, that it seems pertinent to transpose this onto an analysis of France’s foreign policy under his leadership. Hence, at the most basic level and in my capacity as a foreign policy analyst, my aim in the book is to use Sartrean existentialism as an external lens to offer scrutiny of de Gaulle’s foreign policy.

Aim and structure of the book The intention of the discussion thus far has been threefold. First, to provide a sense of my overall topic (an existential reading of Charles de Gaulle’s foreign policy); second, to provide the intellectual context in which I write (my background as a scholar of IR and FPA in particular); third, to provide some indication concerning my reason for focusing on de Gaulle and hence my preference regarding the ontological basis of exploring foreign policy in an ‘actor-specific’ manner. With this discussion concluded I now wish to offer a few words on the fundamental aims of the book and the structure of this in terms of specific chapters. Irrespective of why we write on figures such as de Gaulle one cannot help but be struck by the vast literature and scholarly output on him. Indeed, in terms of numbers there are presently well over three thousand items on the General which must surely say something profound concerning his importance but also something of his enduring popularity.20 As such a French poll taken in 2005 found him to be the most popular Frenchman of all time.21 That said, and given the vast array of talented Frenchmen, I would be rather quick to question this claim (Hugo, Voltaire, or Rousseau may have something to say of this!). Quite how much of this popularity is grounded in the ‘facts’ of de Gaulle’s life and quite how much is a product of the fictionalised narrative of the General as ‘political myth’ or one of ‘history’s giants’ is impossible to say. Nonetheless, while the literary output on de Gaulle is impressive, offering the scholar a rich vein of literature to draw upon, it also poses the obvious challenge of originality when writing on the General. Thus we arrive at the obvious question – what is it that the present volume seeks to add to both the ‘de Gaulle’ and FPA literature? As outlined above the work is largely an existential reading of de Gaulle’s foreign policy and I wish to offer a little more context to this assertion here, but needless to say the work should not be understood as belonging to the biographical tradition in any tangible sense, nor seen as a treatise on French domestic politics during the formative years of the Fifth Republic. Indeed, there exists a host of truly excellent biographies on the General and I would have little hope of bettering these here. To my mind the best of these have been produced by French biographers Jean Lacouture and Max Gallo whose three and four volume-works (respectively) offer unsurpassed overviews of de Gaulle’s eventful life from his

12

Introduction

beginning as a young Lillois living in Paris through to his surprising retirement from political life in 1969.22 A shock that was captured in the AngloAmerican world by Time magazine – ‘it hardly seemed possible, but Charles de Gaulle was gone. At one moment he had been there, seemingly as durable as the Arc de Triomphe, the most commanding figure ruling any nation, large or small, on the face of earth. Now, abruptly he was a country gentle man.’23 Serge Berstein’s impressive Histoire du gaullisme (2002) comes close to rivalling these while noteworthy English-language works include Charles Williams’, The Last Great Frenchman (1993) and Aidan Crawley’s De Gaulle (1969), and more recent volumes such as Johnathan Fenby’s, The General: Charles de Gaulle and the France he Saved (2010) and Douglas Boyd’s rather polemical but highly readable work, De Gaulle: The Man Who Defied Six US Presidents (2013). Rather than add to the vast array of biographies the present volume is best understood as an attempt to offer a fresh analysis of the intellectual and philosophical basis of de Gaulle’s sense of the Cold War international system, an exploration of how this formed the basis of his conduct of foreign policy, and how this contributed to his diplomatic fallouts with his Anglo-American contemporaries in the 1960s. It is in this sense that the work, and although the next chapter provides an overview of de Gaulle’s life, is far closer to diplomatic history and political philosophy than biography. As Boyd has shown, de Gaulle was respected by all US presidents who served as his contemporaries (in terms of de Gaulle’s time in politics, thus from Franklin Roosevelt through to Richard Nixon), but in the realm of international politics he antagonised and frustrated them at every turn. Sometimes this was done with reasonable cause (such as the development of France’s independent nuclear deterrent, the force de frappe), other times not so much (such as the attack on the US dollar), but to many in Washington, and given the widely held belief in the United States that America had ‘saved’ France during World War II, de Gaulle’s actions in the field of foreign policy were both puzzling and offensive and is why one US Congressman (Mendel Rivers) once declared that de Gaulle was ‘the most ungrateful man since Judas Iscariot betrayed his Christ’.24 Of course, why de Gaulle acted as he did is habitually explained in rather straight-forward terms whereby the General is seen as an ardent Gallic nationalist, often encapsulated by the term ‘Gaullism’ and the expression of this in the form of grandeur, whose pursuit of French independence at all costs brought him into perpetual conflict with his fellow leaders of the West. There is, it must be said, much truth in this sort of analysis as de Gaulle’s ubiquitous political principal in international affairs was French independence even if (or perhaps because) this served to fragment the political cohesion of ‘the West’ during the height of the Cold War thereby allowing the world’s nations greater autonomy and manoeuvrability relative to the confines of the East–West split. In this sense de Gaulle was perhaps unfortunate to find himself in The Élysée during a period where the bi-polarity of the international system, the development of the European Economic Community,

Introduction

13

French membership of NATO, and reliance on the US for security ‘chipped away’ at French independence. That said, it is impossible to read de Gaulle’s works and not conclude that he greatly enjoyed the fight against this. Nonetheless, rather than offer an overview or description of his activities as ‘a nationalist’, the work, at heart, seeks to explore de Gaulle as a genuine thinker in terms of the nation-state and the interaction of such polities within international society, and it is both his sense of the historically imbued individuality of the nation-state and his views on the importance of authenticity, action, and example of each of these on the world stage that compels us towards an existential analysis of his worldview. Indeed, Olivier Guichard, and in quoting Kissinger, once wrote that ‘the fundamental question that de Gaulle constantly wrestled with was: “how must nations cooperate?”’ and to my mind a Sartrean answer offers an appropriate response to this enquiry.25 In particular, and as noted above, the book relies on three platforms that help to build and explore the claim that de Gaulle’s sense of the international system was existential in nature: (1) Bergsonian method – which characterises the intellectual basis of his thought; (2) ethno-symbolic nationalism – which characterises his ontological sense of nations and hence the central actors on the world stage; (3) Sartrean existentialism – which characterises his understanding of how these central actors should interact with one another. Together they form what we may call the ‘interwoven philosophical triangle’ upon which de Gaulle’s conception of the international system, or operational code was dependant and while each is significant in its own right in many ways it is the third element that I am most interested in exploring here, hence the title of the work. To provide some context to this line of argument, and while I spend the majority of the book discussing these, it is worth touching on each element here and how they factor into each chapter. On the first of these points (discussed in Chapter Two) we know already that de Gaulle was a keen student of French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941) as this has been highlighted numerous times in various studies and hence there is no real originality in this claim. But what de Gaulle took from Bergson, and what is vital to my argument, was the importance of history as the foundation of his thought. Indeed, in the final analysis de Gaulle was first and foremost a historian, but his sense of the historical, and one must bear this in mind at all times, was highly distinctive and largely Bergsonian in nature. Bergson’s thought, it should be noted, was largely a reaction to the rationalism and scientific materialism of Enlightenment thinkers (such as Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant) and was marked by his belief that the past lingers in our lives and provides the human mind with certain instinctive qualities. This was not merely our own personal histories per se but the wider weight of human historical development and thus his interest was far more than a mere intellectual or academic exploration of the past. Rather, this was a sense in which history co-exists with the present and it is this point of temporal co-existence that is vital to keep in mind at all times when thinking about de Gaulle’s foreign policy and his reading of the Cold War world stage.

14

Introduction

In the philosophical language of Bergson this is characterised as ‘duration’. More on this in Chapter Two but it is true to say that de Gaulle, and in his capacity as an avid student of Bergson, absorbed French history and felt, sensed, and spoke to the enduring influence of the past in every moment. On the second of these points (tackled in Chapter Three) and when we turn to de Gaulle’s ontological understanding of the basic ‘units’ or entities that comprise international society we find that these are ‘nations’ and are best characterised by the approach to nationalism which favours long-term historical influences; that of ethno-symbolism. To be sure, we know that the ‘nation’ was central to de Gaulle’s political thought and worldview but herein lies a problem; to talk of nations in indistinct terms lacks any serious intellectual clarity. All too often, and when we talk of ‘nations’ and ‘nationalists’, we are quick to skip over the ‘content’ of such labels safe in the knowledge that we are all agreed on the meaning of such terms. Perhaps this is why in twenty-first-century Europe such terms predominantly carry a negative meaning and are characterised by the French Front National, Pegida in Germany, Golden Dawn in Greece, or UKIP’s Nigel Farage and to my mind cloud meaningful discussion on the question of contemporary nationalism. As an FPA scholar I have little interest in such broad labels and largely wish to understand what the term ‘nation’ meant to France’s preeminent foreign policy decision-maker of recent times, arguing that de Gaulle’s perception of nations fits well with Anthony Smith’s approach of ethno-symbolism in that it sees these as being a product of history, myths, and memories, and of a peculiar national character that has meticulously developed over centuries and millennia. In understanding the essence of ethno-symbolism, and in understanding the way in which de Gaulle’s Bergsonism led him to view the historical development of France, I assert that within Smith’s work we are given a pertinent lens through which to understand the General’s view of the world and nations in a broader sense. The third point that I explore is that on existentialism where I go on to develop a Sartrean analysis of de Gaulle’s foreign policy in two aspects; ontological and behavioural. To my mind this is the most important, original, and appealing fragment of my argument but also the part that carries the more technical aspects and as such it spans Chapter Four and Chapter Five. In terms of the ontological aspect, and in accepting that de Gaulle’s historically imbued sense of nationhood was ethno-symbolic at its core, I go on to argue that such was the strength that he placed on the ethno-symbolic traits of each specific nation, that for him each nation existed as an individual. He was therefore able, at least in his mind, to mould actual individuals or (to borrow a Wendtian term) ‘state persons’ from these.26 This is why he often claimed that France was a person and spoke of nations as people. From this point, and as a thinker on nations and nationhood, de Gaulle may sit amongst older thinkers such as Hobbes, Kant, and Hegel whose ontological sense of nations was heavily anthropomorphic in that they saw the nation-state as being an ‘organism’ to which human traits could be given.27

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While this may well be the case, and rather than look at de Gaulle in the context of such thinkers, I feel an existential reading of his ontological sense of nationhood offers a more fitting analysis largely because his understanding of the national individual corresponds very well with Sartre’s sense of the development of human individuality as discussed in Existentialism is a Humanism (1946), but also because an existential element is evident in all de Gaulle’s expressions on international relations and the themes of the Cold War. On becoming, on an (national) individual’s existence preceding its essence, on an individual being the product of time, experience, and the past; all of these themes are to be found in de Gaulle’s works, his views on nations, and his sense of the Cold War international system. In relation to the behavioural aspect of the third section of my argument, or the question of national action on the world stage, I use Sartrean existential thought to rationalise the ways in which de Gaulle felt France should ‘act’ during the 1960s. To pursue this aspect of the book I return to Sartre’s Existentialism is a Humanism and employ the five core concepts that he discusses in relation to human behaviour. These are The Other, Abandonment, Anguish, Despair, and Bad Faith, and, as each of these rather technical terms requires a basic understanding of Sartre’s branch of existentialism, I assume no prior knowledge on the part of my reader and explain each as we encounter it. Of how de Gaulle’s nationalism necessitated the existence of other nations to have a sense of itself, of how no higher authority may exist and control the national individual, of how no nation may conquer the world or fundamentally identify with another, and how a nation may be in flight of its own responsibility and hence freedom, all such expressions are to be found in de Gaulle’s foreign policy and are usefully illuminated by an existential analysis of this. Yet let me be clear at this point. My argument is not so much that de Gaulle was a self-avowed existentialist per se or that he was adhering to Sartrean logic in a thoroughly explicit manner. Indeed, although de Gaulle had a clear admiration for public intellectuals such as Sartre, the General’s works and public announcements carry no overt existential musings (except for his use of Nietzsche’s Übermensch throughout his first major work, The Enemy’s House Divided (1924) and even this is ‘buried’ within the broad narrative of the book).28 Rather, and in wishing to explore Debray’s claim that ‘de Gaulle was an existentialist of the nation’, I utilise Sartre’s existentialism as an external lens to rationalise the actions and decisions of France under de Gaulle during the 1960s and, as the title of the book suggests, it is the existential element in his foreign policy that compelled France to act in a certain way and which, in part, led him to clash so vigorously with those in Washington as he came to see the Cold War international system as an ideological chimera that lacked any grounding in historical, political, or national reality. This is why, and in the absence of any substantial ideological content in his worldview (relative to the sensitivities of his American and Russian counterparts that is), Lacouture was able to describe de Gaulle as ‘the last man of the pre-Marxist age, and the first man of the post-Marxist age’.29

16

Introduction

In the final chapter of the work I offer an evaluation of my revised understanding of de Gaulle’s worldview. Here, I do not endeavour to build on the fundamental argument of the work per se but ask what we are to make of things once we consider de Gaulle in a broader sense and am mostly concerned with two central themes. First, and given the argument pursued in this volume, I am concerned with de Gaulle’s value to political science and here I explore how his views lend support to the ways in which we think about the state in IR, how his views stress the importance of history in contemporary IR discourse, how de Gaulle implicitly supports and questions various theories of IR, and finally, how de Gaulle, and with a nod in the direction of future works, makes a fascinating case study to which the ‘cognitive psychology’ branch of FPA may be applied. Second, and within de Gaulle’s words, I ask if we are able to detect a more traditional and literary message through which he may be understood (essentially that of utopian rationale) and why, for the most part, did we fail to take the General seriously during his own lifetime? Indeed, de Gaulle, although a supremely gifted statesmen and intellectual, with much to offer the international community, was often seen as being antiquated and anachronistic by many of his contemporaries, hence his views were habitually ‘filtered’ through this image and were largely considered to be little more than an expression of nineteenth-century romanticism. That said, and given his appearance, his writings, and his speeches this conclusion was hardly difficult to reach. ‘He constantly appeared’, as Lacouture was to write, ‘like some cosmonaut from another age’.30 But to my mind, and in intellectual terms, there is more at work here. Thus I argue that de Gaulle’s existential sense of the international system ultimately gives us a specific take on our imprisonment by history and within this a pessimistic strand (in philosophic terms at least) of thinking is evident. Joshua Foa Dienstag has argued that in the modern era we are conditioned to ignore and reject views that do not offer a sense of progress, hope, and the betterment of humanity. ‘In the twentieth century’, as Dienstag writes, the intellectual tradition of pessimism has largely been rendered invisible and hence ‘the idea of a pessimistic political theory has not been seriously entertained’.31 In other words, in the modern era we are ‘conditioned’ to prefer Hegel over Schopenhauer when we think about the ‘world spirit’ and the nature of historical development, but we also, for the reasons Dienstag outlines, lack an intellectual grounding through which to engage with individuals such as de Gaulle. Hence given that the General’s understanding of the international system was inherently pessimistic in nature, and given that he pursued a foreign policy that reflected this, I argue that he should be seen as a casualty of this conditioning. In turn, this provides a broader explanatory factor when we think about de Gaulle’s problematic relationship with the United States. Indeed, and as Alexis de Tocqueville (in Democracy in America, 1835) noted long ago, the American political mind, in that it is imbued with a powerful sense of optimism and moralism, is thoroughly liberal in nature and has a strong penchant for a belief in progress and political advancement. This logic is echoed throughout

Introduction

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more recent writings such as Robert Kagan’s Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (2003). De Gaulle never saw things in such a way and tended to believe that the world, and especially the international realm of politics, was far more rigid in that it was heavily grounded in historical realities. He believed, in other words, that the character of nations was unbending, that nations were resistant to externally imposed ideologies, and that the relationships between nations was a product of the past. Hence, they could not easily be changed and thus in the final analysis we may conclude that de Gaulle’s stormy relationship with Washington was consistently hindered by a clash between philosophic pessimism and the American penchant for progressivism.

Anglo-American academia and de Gaulle’s second life In this final section of the introductory chapter I wish to touch on my choice of sources and offer some discussion on this in order to pre-empt and defend any criticism of my preference for English-language versions of original French texts. As outlined above I predominantly use the writings and claims of Bergson, Smith, and Sartre to build a picture of de Gaulle’s sense of history, his sense of anthropomorphic nations as the central actors in the international system, and his sense of appropriate national conduct within this in order to rationalise French foreign policy under his leadership. In addition to this I use a range of ancillary material and items on de Gaulle, nationalism, existentialism, IR, FPA, and philosophy that are too numerous to discuss here. Of course, a significant number of the items I use are of French origin (in linguistic terms) and this is certainly the case for all de Gaulle’s works (of which I largely stick to the four monographs he produced prior to World War II, the three books that form his War Memoirs (The Appeal, 1940–1942 (1954); War Memoirs, Unity, 1942–1944 (1965); War Memoirs, Salvation, 1944–1946 (1959)), and the first volume of his political memoirs, Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour, 1970), as well as Sartre and Bergson’s own philosophical writings. However, I have taken the deliberate decision to use, wherever possible, translated English-versions of these and while this may upset the French-language ‘purists’ I have specific reasons for doing so. In large part this is the product of a cost–benefit analysis (although an ‘intellectual wager’ may be a more fitting term) in relation to my proposed readership and as I have carried out no scientific measurement or formal assessment of this my assertion is largely intuitive in nature. Nonetheless, the intention of my decision is to draw in the broadest readership-base possible and while I expect that the book may be attractive to ‘de Gaulle’ and French Studies scholars and students, I hope specialists in FPA, IR, and International/Diplomatic History will also find it useful. Of course, I fully expect de Gaulle and French Studies scholars to be bi-lingual (or close to being so) and hence possess the ability to move between French and English-language works with ease and it is from this ‘quarter’ that I expect most criticism to

18

Introduction

arise given that most will have a strong preference for the employment of original works when exploring de Gaulle. This I fully appreciate, but in preempting such criticism I would like to offer three retorts and, while these may not satisfy my critics per se, I hope that they nonetheless provide a sense of my rationale. First, and as I have sought to place the work in a broad academic context (largely as a product of my IR and FPA background) I have tried to make the work as accessible as possible and to my mind this necessitates working from the professionally translated works of de Gaulle, Bergson, and Sartre that all can engage with. Put another way, and if I am talking to a ‘broad church’ of scholars and not just those who study de Gaulle and French history, then I feel it to be pertinent that I use sources that all in this ‘congregation’ can engage with and critique. At heart this is a trade-off between intellectual purity and academic inclusivity but one that I feel is justified given my intensions and the broader context in which I write. Second, and related to this point, is the question of de Gaulle’s reputation and standing in the Anglo-American world. As noted above, and in the French popular imagination, de Gaulle remains immensely popular almost fifty years after his death and in the formative decades of the twenty-first century this shows no sign of abating. In part, and as is often said, this is because great politicians and statesmen have two lives; a contemporary ‘life’ that is a product of impassioned assessments during the time that they hold high office, and a second after they have moved on; a ‘life’ that is, in essence, history’s judgement and which tends to become more favourable with the passage of time. De Gaulle captured the essence of this phenomenon in relation to himself: ‘The French no longer want de Gaulle. But the myth, the myth you will see the growth of the myth…in thirty years.’32 This is precisely what Debray means when he tells us of the tragedy of history; that none of us understand history while we live through it.33 This is true of American presidents such as Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, and even George W. Bush and is certainly true of Charles de Gaulle in France. Yet in many ways the ‘second life image’ does not export so well. To the American mind de Gaulle remains the quintessentially ungrateful wartime leader, while to the British he remains as the man who said ‘non’ to the UK joining the European project; none of this however, as I argue throughout the work, was a product of an anti-British or anti-American stance. Indeed, in relation to the UK’s decision to leave the European Union in 2016 it may well be said that he understood the British better than they did themselves. Even so, and while de Gaulle’s popularity in France is a fundamental given, the largely negative image in the Anglo-American world has endured. Thus he remains an intrinsically unpopular figure in the British and American political consciousness. Exploring this cognitive process and the forces that drive this would be an interesting endeavour in itself, but I feel that producing a work that contains fully accessible sources to the scholarly groups as mentioned above, and which seeks to demonstrate that de Gaulle possessed no ill-will to the UK or US,

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19

but that his foreign policy was characterised by an existential element, may help to export de Gaulle’s ‘second life image’ and, in turn, provide a more appropriate intellectual platform from which to analyse his foreign policy. Third, and given my in-depth acquaintance with both the French and English versions of de Gaulle’s eight major works and the philosophical writings of Sartre, I am well-placed to notice any translation errors in terms of literal or metaphorical meaning. That said, I am broadly convinced that the translations provided are of an exceptional level and have, therefore, no concerns using the English versions as primary sources. Where I feel that the translation may need a little more clarity, or where I do not agree with it, I highlight this and offer an explanation. Perhaps one of the more glaring (and certainly irksome) examples of this is the title of Sartre’s 1946 work L’existentialisme est un humanisme which, and when originally published in English (translated by Philip Mairet, 1948) carried the title Existentialism and Humanism implying, at least to my mind, a mere exploration of the two terms throughout the book. However, this translation is unsatisfactory in two respects in that it fails to capture the unequivocal intent of Sartre’s argument, that existentialism should be considered as an expression of humanism, and it is not, therefore, a true representation of the literal translation of the book’s title. Carol Macomber’s 2007 English translation (Existentialism is a Humanism and which carries an excellent introductory essay by Annie Cohen-Sartre) is far better in that it implies an argument and claim, and is an accurate translation. However, in many ways translation is no perfect science and disagreements will always arise over the intent and essence of words. Either way, it is hoped that the employment of predominantly English versions of de Gaulle and Sartre’s works makes the book more accessible to scholars who do not read in French, that it helps to dispel some of the more negative images regarding de Gaulle in the Anglo-American world, and that it helps, in turn, to ‘export’ his ‘second life’ as it were.

Notes 1 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 13. 2 Schoenbrun, D. (1966). The Three Lives of Charles de Gaulle. London: Hamish Hamilton. 94–95. 3 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 97. 4 Quoted in Fenby, J. (2010). The General Charles de Gaulle and the France he Saved. London: Simon & Schuster. 557. 5 Werth, A. (1969). De Gaulle: A Political Biography. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 7. 6 Albert, M., Cederman, L., and Wendt, A. (2010). New Systems Theories of World Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 296. 7 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 76. 8 For the transcript of the lecture see Skinner, Q. (2009). ‘A Genealogy of the Modern State.’ Proceedings of the British Academy. 162.

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Introduction

9 Waltz, K. (1979). Theory of International Politics. Reading: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co. 96. 10 Mearsheimer, J. (2001). The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: Norton. 3. 11 Ibid. 31. 12 For a good discussion on these terms see Ariely, D. (2009). Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions. New York: Harper Collins; Bennet, B. (2015). The Ultimate Collection of Over 300 Logical Fallacies (Academic Edition). Sudbury: Archieboy Holdings; Dobelli, R. (2013). The Art of Thinking Clearly. New York: Harper Collins; Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. London: Penguin; McRaney, D. (2012). You Are Not So Smart. Why your memory is mostly fiction, why you have too many friends on Facebook, and 46 other ways you’re deluding yourself. Oxford. Oneworld Publications. 13 Yetiv, S. (2013). National Security Through a Cockeyed Lens: How Cognitive Bias Impacts U.S. Foreign Policy. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press. 22. 14 Hudson V. (1995). ‘Foreign Policy Analysis Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.’ Mershon International Studies Review. 39:2. 209–238. 15 Albert, M., Cederman, L. and Wendt, A. (2010). New Systems Theories of World Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 280. 16 Ibid. 296. 17 Ibid. 298. 18 Ibid. 296. 19 Ibid. 20 Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 160. 21 Thompson, W. (2013). Western Europe. Lanham: Stryker Post. 121. 22 See Lacouture, J. (1990). De Gaulle. Tome I. Le Rebelle, 1890–1944. Paris: Poche; (1990). De Gaulle. Tome II. Le Politique, 1944–1959; (1990). De Gaulle. Tome III. Le Souverain, 1959–1970. For English editions of Lacouture’s work see Lacouture, J. (1990). De Gaulle: The Rebel, 1890–1944. London: W.W. Norton & Company; (1992) De Gaulle: The Ruler, 1945–1970. London: W.W. Norton & Company. For Max Gallo’s work see Gallo, M. (1998). De Gaulle: L’Appel du Destin (1890– 1940). Paris: Robert Laffont; (1998). De Gaulle: La Solitude du Combattant (1940–1946). Paris: Robert Laffont; (1998). De Gaulle, Le Premier des Français (1946–1962). Paris: Robert Laffont; (1998). De Gaulle: La Statue du Commandeur (1963–1970). Paris: Robert Laffont. 23 (1969). ‘France Enters a New Era.’ Time. May 9. 24 Reyn, S. (2010). Atlantis Lost: The American Experience with De Gaulle, 1958–1969. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 356. 25 Guichard, O. in Paxton, R. and Wahl, N. (editors). (1994). De Gaulle and the United States: A Centennial Reappraisal. Oxford: Berg. 343. 26 Wendt, A. (2004). ‘The State as Person in International Theory.’ Review of International Studies. 30:2. 289–316. 27 Ibid. 305. 28 See Robert Eden’s introductory essay in, De Gaulle, C. (2002). The Enemy’s House Divided. London: Chapel Hill. Specifically, ‘A Postwar Postmortem on the Philosophy of the Future.’ xxxv–xlix. 29 Lacouture, J. (1970). De Gaulle. London: Hutchingson & Co. 5. 30 Ibid. 1. 31 Dienstag, J. F. (2006). Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit. Woodstock: Princeton University Press. 3–4. 32 Quoted in Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 143. 33 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 56.

2

Haunted by history, preoccupied with nations

In the sense that de Gaulle passed on nearly fifty years ago it is fair to conclude that he is no longer a contemporary figure. That said, and as with all Cold War ‘giants’, most scholars of Political Science will know something of his life, his achievements, his controversial nature, and his seemingly antagonistic actions on the world stage. Perhaps less well known are the broad details of his life, his intellectual influences, the writings he produced, and the central focus of his thought. With this being so, and as I am concerned with the General as a formal decision-maker (in the context of FPA) and the intellectual basis that informed this, I feel it pertinent to offer some discussion here on de Gaulle as a historical figure in order to provide biographical context to my broader argument. Indeed, in order to explore the claim that de Gaulle’s foreign policy was inherently existential in nature we require an appreciation of the General’s background and this chapter is intended to provide this foundational aspect. I begin by discussing the ideological label of ‘Gaullism’ that is often attributed to him but largely wish to explore why this is problematic and why the label is insufficient if one wishes to understand his worldview. I then move on to explore his life between 1890 and 1939 as a soldier, writer, and thinker and the ways in which his views and arguments were largely a product of his sensitivity to the past. To be sure, the General’s ‘relationship’ with time and the historical is perhaps underexplored, but a better understanding of this, and as I argue in Chapter Three, allows us to locate his thinking on nations and nationalism within the school of ethno-symbolism largely because this is the closest model we have to de Gaulle’s inherent Bergsonism. I then move on to explore the development of his political career, between 1940 and 1970, before finally exploring ‘the nation’ as the central political concept around which his worldview was formed. Thus, it is from this foundation that we are able to explore de Gaulle’s sense of nationalism in more concrete terms and work towards and an existential analysis of his foreign policy.

The problem with Gaullism In November 1970, and shortly before de Gaulle passed away, he and his former Minister of Cultural Affairs, André Malraux, sat freely conversing and

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Haunted by history

reflecting upon the past thirty years of the life, the ideas, and the writings of General de Gaulle. Ever graceful, this flowing exchange covers de Gaulle’s wartime emergence in 1940, through to his resignation from the post of French President in 1969. Originally published in French as, Les Chênes qu’on abat… (literally, ‘The Oaks that One Fells’), and subsequently published in English as Felled Oaks, Conversations with De Gaulle, Malraux’s short work is as poetic as it is revealing. Formed around various aspects of de Gaulle’s political actions and his fixation with history in a Bergsonian sense, what is primarily contained within Felled Oaks is reflection on the ways in which de Gaulle understood the world to be, the political energy that he was able to tap into, and the events that catapulted him onto the world stage during World War II. This was a ‘force’ and set of ideological values that are usually represented by the term ‘Gaullism’. For many, this political energy was created by de Gaulle’s seemingly innate ability to speak to the French national consciousness after the invasion and occupation of France in 1940, the subsequent collapse of the French state, and the reaction that emerged in response to this. In this sense ‘Gaullism’ represented a set a values that evoked an emotional, rather than a rational response, to Pétain’s decision to enact what we may call ‘national moral suicide’ when he chose collaboration over resistance. This was an act that resembled the experience of the German people in 1918 that de Gaulle discusses at the end of The Enemy’s House Divided. ‘The whole of Germany’, as he writes, ‘snapped at a single blow, like an overextended spring. Now everywhere people spoke openly of capitulation.’1 Later in de Gaulle’s political career, ‘Gaullism’ was used by his international critics (habitually in a negative sense) to describe his actions on the world stage and where his policies seemingly carried an inherent dislike of the Anglo-American world. In many ways, and to the foreign policy analyst in particular, one is intuitively drawn to the term of Gaullism when attempting to analyse the conduct of France under the General’s leadership. Such an act is eminently understandable. However, I wish to begin the discussion here by distancing, at least in part, the study from this descriptive label and essentially argue that the term is of little use from an FPA perspective. Indeed, in the sense that they are often able to provide the foreign policy analyst with an identifiable set of values and ideas through which to understand the actions and policies pursued by specific leaders, and from which certain predictions may be made, ideological labels such as Gaullism are frequently useful analytical tools. Perhaps the most celebrated example of this is George Kennan’s use of Marxism and Marxist doctrine in The Long Telegram of 1946; what was to form the basis of The Sources of Soviet Conduct (published by ‘X’ in Foreign Affairs, 1947). Kennan was, in essence, able to take what was implied by Marxism (or at least his understanding of the Russian leadership’s understanding of this) and transpose it onto the actions of Joseph Stalin in order to provide an accurate assessment of how and why the Soviet Union would act under his rule.

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As a self-avowed Communist, Stalin (at least to Kennan’s mind) would adhere to the philosophical principles that Marxism implied and these were, in turn, expressed through his foreign policy and hence certain predictive qualities regarding future Soviet conduct could be made. This is why Kennan was able to assert that Soviet foreign policy under Stalin was largely ‘impervious to the logic of reason’ but ‘was highly sensitive to the logic of force’. It was from this point, and given Kennan’s assertion that the Soviet economic system contained certain inbuilt structural weaknesses, that the American Cold War policy of ‘Containment’ was devised. Another example of taking an ideological label and the ideas that are encapsulated by this to explain foreign policy is the relationship between neoconservatism and George W. Bush’s reaction to 9/11. The qualities, that is, that drove the broad themes of Bush’s foreign policy, such as aggressive democratic promotion (something akin to ‘belligerent Wilsonianism’), the withdrawal from the constraints of international obligations and hence a penchant for unilateralism, and preemption against threats to national security, and which are encapsulated by the ‘Bush Doctrine’, align with the ideological influences of many neoconservatives in his administration, such as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Dick Cheney.2 It is in this sense that the ideological label of neoconservatism has significant explanatory power, hence such logic implies that we should be able to use Gaullism as a starting point through which to assess and understand the logic that drove French foreign policy during the General’s presidential tenure. After all, when a figure has their own ‘ism’ it is surely the case that this should be the starting point for any analysis of their respective foreign policy. However, when we turn to the General we very quickly find that this analytical technique is largely unavailable. The term, Gaullism, in other words, offers little help when formulating substantial scrutiny of French foreign policy under his leadership and hence I prefer not to deploy it here in any meaningful sense. But before progressing I would like to offer a few words on my reasons for backing away from the term and for concentrating on Bergsonism, ethno-symbolic nationalism, and Sartrean existentialism to illuminate that which Gaullism is unable to do. I also note that I wish to discuss this element in the chapter right away so as to provide a clear sense of my understanding of Gaullism (or lack thereof) in this study. My principle reason for not employing the term, in any meaningful sense at least, is largely a consequence of the term being so overworked and asked to explain so much that it has lost any coherent explanatory power that it may have once held. It is, in other words, and given that it has been so thoroughly overburdened, now somewhat hazy, indistinct, and academically exhausted.3 Yet, and in another sense, there is intellectual content in de Gaulle’s thought that the term has never quite captured and which, to my mind, requires additional layers of analysis if we are to better understand de Gaulle’s decision-making process. This is why, as Malraux once claimed, ‘I don’t believe a future historian will be able to interpret Gaullism in purely political or even

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purely national terms. Communism stands for the proletariat, but also for a will to justice that is not merely Marxist. Gaullism has been France but something more as well…There are things in Gaullism that are self-explanatory, and some that are not.’4 Malraux is correct, and while he had an understanding of Gaullism being an expression of French nationalism, he also understood that there were wider intellectual forces and principles present in de Gaulle’s worldview that transcended this and which are not encapsulated by the term. That said, I feel that the term is useful as a label through which to categorise or departmentalise the development of de Gaulle’s political career and hence we are able to talk of ‘ages’ or ‘periods’ of Gaullism without implying anything more than the ‘cutting up’ of history into certain ‘Gaullist periods’. As such I employ this sort of terminology later on in the chapter when discussing the development of de Gaulle’s political career. But to provide some context to my claim regarding the insufficient nature of Gaullism as a descriptive label let us briefly look at the problem in a little more depth. Serge Berstein once wrote, and even though this was eighteen years after the initial emergence of Gaullism, ‘when de Gaulle came to power in June 1958, nobody knew…what Gaullism really stood for’.5 In this assertion Berstein is correct, yet despite the historical nature of the statement it seems to me that the claim rings true today. Indeed, a brief overview of the ‘de Gaulle literature’ confirms this point. On one hand we have those such as Stanley Hoffmann who see Gaullism as an expression of French nationalism that was devoid of any tangible intellectual basis. ‘One cannot fail’, as Hoffman writes, ‘to be struck by the ideological emptiness of Gaullism. Gaullism is a stance, not a doctrine; an attitude, not a coherent set of dogmas; a style without much substance.’6 This is not to say that Hoffmann was critical towards de Gaulle per se as his writings on France, French history, and de Gaulle provide some of the most insightful commentary in the Anglo-American literature. Rather Hoffmann’s concern is that there is little of use in Gaullism as a descriptive label. Others have been more scathing in their assessments. H. de Kérillis, for example, once attacked Gaullism as nothing but ‘a legitimising veil that justified a Gaullist dictatorial regime’.7 Fernand Corcos, in a more restrained way, asks similar questions of Gaullism’s initial stages.8 Similarly orientated authors, such as James Ellison, see Gaullism as an expression of French petulance fuelled by hostility to the Anglo-American world that dangerously and irresponsibly disrupted the delicate Cold War international system, while H. Stuart Hughes argues that Gaullism was a form of French fascism.9 There are those, John Lester for example, who have insisted on the senselessness of Gaullism, arguing that it represents little more than de Gaulle going ‘out of his way to antagonise the United States on matters of foreign policy’.10 F. Roy Willis suggests the same thing in the first chapter of The French Paradox (1982), explaining that Gaullism represents the French ‘fury at American pretensions’, and that ‘Gaullist resentment of the United States has a long history’.11 On the other hand, there are those (habitually de Gaulle’s fellow countrymen) who see far more positives and greater ideological depth within Gaullism.

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For example, Jonathan Watson clearly sees Gaullism as first and foremost a political movement built upon strong ideological foundations, while Roland Hureaux has argued that Gaullism is a pure expression of ideology centred on the concept of nations.12 Maurice Duverger sees little malice or ill will contained within the international goals of Gaullism, just unfair criticisms that could just as easily apply to the US, Great Britain or any other powerful Cold War state.13 There are those, such as Alfred Grosser, who see Gaullism as a positive, forward-looking basis for French foreign policy.14 The more recent works of Peter Mangold and Maurice Vaïsse also fall into the category of works that are prepared to meet with and explore the genuine depths of de Gaulle’s musings on nations.15 Finally, there are Malraux and Debray who see serious thought and intellectual engagement where others only see ardent nationalism. Locating where Gaullism fits into the political spectrum is also a contested point. The majority of scholars would accept that Gaullism lies within the French Right Wing, a point stressed so eloquently by René Rémond’s seminal work, Les Droits en France (1954). Yet Gaullism contained significant influences from the Left, such as Malraux, and may be seen as a ‘catch-all’ ideology above and beyond the Left–Right political divide.16 De Gaulle felt this to be the case and is why he claimed, ‘France is everything at once, it is all the French people. The left is not France! The right is not France!’17 As an ideology or political movement, Gaullism has also been in a constant state of fluctuation which has led numerous scholars to claim that a varying number of ‘periods’ or ‘ages’ of Gaullism have existed. Berstein, for example has identified seven periods of Gaullism while Jean Charlot and Michaela Vaughan recognize just three.18 Jean Touchard contends that there were only ever one or two forms of Gaullism.19 It is possible, as Dorothy Pickles has done, to question the importance of de Gaulle to Gaullism and stresses that given France’s historical experiences and the nature of defeat in 1940 a ‘Gaullism’ of some sort would have been evident in the absence of the General.20 Clearly, and to the foreign policy analyst, Gaullism is a difficult and problematic entity to work with. Thus, other than offering competing claims concerning nationalism, fascism, populism, and anti-Americanism, it is really rather difficult to employ the term in order to provide a sense of how and why de Gaulle acted as he did. Perhaps one of the most significant causes of this misunderstanding and ambiguity is that we look to the Gaullists to explain Gaullism to us. This is a mistake. Given de Gaulle’s revulsion of the French political regimes of the Third and Fourth republics, given his distrust of political parties, and even those who followed him, the General was never much of a ‘Gaullist’. This implies that his political supporters of the day may offer little help in illuminating Gaullism and it is for this reason that Debray writes, A republican would not have been able to get a very precise idea of Napoleon I’s role by scrutinising the rabble of 2 December encamped in

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Haunted by history the Tuileries. When he was writing Napoléon le petit in Guernsey, Victor Hugo took good care not to look so low. Looking at Marx through Stalin, Robespierre through Marchais or de Gaulle through the Gaullists of the day, just because the latter lay claim to the former, shows an aptitude for good relations and low polemic.21

Indeed, modern politics is a shallow game. In 2007 and 2012 Nicholas Sarkozy claimed the ‘Gaullist mantle’ yet one must surely ask André Chêneboit’s most pertinent of questions ‘mais où est le gaullisme?’22 This problem is compounded by the fact that de Gaulle wrote and spoke in such a poetic way that it is all too easy to miss his meaning (this was, of course, very much intentional at times). Indeed, the General tended to express himself in such a way that one may well be reading Chateaubriand, Voltaire, or Proust. ‘His language’, as Duverger has written, ‘is ancient, more classic in style than modern’.23 Yet his writings are worth pursuing given their excellent literary quality. They are, as Alan Pedley has written, works of ‘unequal quality and varying interest’. They were ‘admired by such illustrious contemporaries as Valéry, Duhamel, Mauriac, and Malraux’ and are ‘worthy of being considered in their own right’ as substantial literature.24 In this sense we may well ask, as Adrien Le Bihan has done, if de Gaulle was first and foremost a writer rather than a statesman and soldier.25 The question is certainly worthy of consideration. Lacouture has also noted that de Gaulle’s curious and often contradictory actions have hardly helped matters. De Gaulle is not in the least the officers’ officer, and is the least conservative of conservatives. The most illustrious of Frenchmen? At least the oddest, one who only makes headway against the current. He launched the resistance movement from abroad when 90 per cent of Frenchmen were resigned to collaboration; began the most daring phase of decolonization when three-quarters of them believed in a French Algeria; and opened a guerrilla campaign against American hegemony when his fellow Frenchmen were dozing in the shade of the Atlantic treaty. He cannot be placed in any category, comes in no line of succession, adheres to no standards, always in opposition to those on his own level and having no colleagues except those who disagree with him.26 Hence given the above, and given de Gaulle’s somewhat unquantifiable nature, I feel it pertinent to move away from the ideological label of Gaullism and turn to the external lenses of Bergsonism, ethno-symbolism, and existentialism in order to offer an analysis of the intellectual foundations of his foreign policy decision-making. However, before turning to the centrality of de Gaulle’s thought, that of historically imbued nations, and with a nod in the direction of context, I feel it important to touch on the career of this enigmatic Frenchman.

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Soldier, writer, thinker (1890–1939) Although it was the calamitous events of 1940 (at least from a French perspective) that shot de Gaulle to global prominence, by the time the German Wehrmacht pushed through the French defences in the Ardennes he was already 49. Yet up to this point, and although the progression of his career was nothing out of the ordinary, he had become a reputable, if not controversial, figure in military circles. Born in Lille, in November 1890, de Gaulle was welcomed into a family of respectable social standing. With France still lingering in the shadow of the Franco-Prussian war, de Gaulle’s early years were dominated by the tumultuous and divisive events of the Dreyfus Affair (1894–1906) that, in exposing a strain of anti-Semitism that permeated throughout French society, would see politicians, the media, the military, and families divided over the question of Alfred Dreyfus’ guilt (a victim of a gross miscarriage of justice), and which led to the publication of Émile Zola’s influential open letter (in defence of Dreyfus) J’accuse…! in 1898. Of de Gaulle’s haute bourgeoisie background Williams explains, that ‘on the father’s side, the de Gaulle’s were of the minor aristocracy. An ancestor had fought at Agincourt, another had been speaker of the Paris Parliament in the early eighteenth century…another was caught up in the Revolution, but managed to escape the guillotine…As benefits the lessernobility, there was an undercurrent of mild and harmless eccentricity in the family.’27 ‘On the mother’s side’ Williams continues, The Maillots were more down to earth, concerned with the business side of Lille…They were hard-nosed, Catholic, puritan and monarchist. They were in favour of the fleur-de-lis – the symbol of the legitimacy of France which had been destroyed by the Revolution – and, more immediately, of the instant recovery of Alsace-Lorraine, which France had lost under the settlement at the end of the Franco-Prussian war in 1871.28 Despite the General’s occasional claims to the contrary, this was no humble background in which the young de Gaulle was socialised. Of his parental influences he writes, ‘my father was a thoughtful, cultivated, traditional man, imbued with the feeling of the dignity of France. He made me aware of her history. My mother had an uncompromising passion for her country, equal to her religious piety. To my three brothers, my sister and myself a certain anxious pride in our country came as second nature.’29 According to his son, de Gaulle’s formative years had been somewhat dull. They were, that is, split between his Catholicism and his classical education. ‘My father’, wrote Philip de Gaulle, ‘did not have an amusing childhood’.30 Yet the General’s own words suggest his Parisian upbringing to have been full of wonder, imbued with a sense of the historical greatness of the France of old, yet tinged with a melancholic sadness for the disunity that habitually plagued the Gallic nation. ‘As a young native of Lille living in Paris’, de Gaulle recounts,

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Haunted by history Nothing struck me more than the symbols of our glories: night falling over Notre Dame, the majesty of evening at Versailles, the Arc de Triomphe in the sun, conquered colours shuddering in the vault of The Invalides. Nothing affected me more than the evidence of our national successes: popular enthusiasm when the Tsar of Russia passed through a review at Longchamp. Nothing saddened me more profoundly than our weaknesses and our mistakes as revealed to my childhood gaze by the way people looked and by the things they said: the surrender of Fashoda, the Dreyfus case, social conflicts, religious strife.31

In that it continually stressed the historical nature of France, the importance of national unity, and the glory of her past, this background meant a career in the army was a natural choice for de Gaulle. ‘Through the army’, Julian Jackson writes, ‘one could serve France without becoming excessively implicated in the Republic: regimes passed, the army endured’.32 Yet this was not to suggest his devotion to religion was lessened; rather that his faith, and as was the case throughout his life, remained a strictly personal affair. Indeed, although de Gaulle talks very little of his Catholicism or God, Jean-Marie Mayeur stresses that this remained an ever present driving force throughout his life. He had a faith that, ‘was so inseparable from his patriotic feelings that there has been a tendency to look no further for his motivation’.33 After receiving his education at the private and religious institution, le Collège Stanislas de Paris, de Gaulle, at the age of 19, became a saint-cyrien; the name given to French Cadet Officers at the specialist military academy of Saint-Cyr. He was eventually to spend four years at the institution, graduating in September 1912 with the rank of Second Lieutenant, and although he was something of a particularly poor shot with a rifle, his real ability lay in that of leadership.34 Returning to his native region of northern France, de Gaulle joined the 33rd Infantry, based at Arras (Pas-de-Calais) under Philippe Pétain. As the man who would teach de Gaulle so much, as the officer who would seek to forward de Gaulle’s military career, and yet as the Nazi collaborator who would go on to clash so momentously with the General over the decision to capitulate in the face of German invasion, these two lives became intertwined. Soon afterwards, de Gaulle’s time at Saint-Cyr was put to the test as World War I thrust the young officer, now a Captain, into battle. Serving with distinction until early 1916, de Gaulle’s war was cut short due to his capture and subsequent imprisonment. The duration of de Gaulle’s thirty-month internment was split between four activities. The first of these, and perhaps the more practical of his ‘pastimes’, were his various attempts at escape. All slightly absurd, all unsuccessful, but all of which led to de Gaulle earning himself something of a reputation for being an ‘insubordinate captain’.35 The second activity that occupied de Gaulle was lecturing his fellow prisoners on history, strategic warfare, and the course of what would become known as the Great War. ‘His solitary reading’, as Jean Pouget writes,

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Went on for an hour or two; everyone in the hayloft respected his meditation. Then, his work complete, he raised his head. That was the signal. All the officers in the barrack-room gathered around him to hear the news of the day. It was not a discussion – de Gaulle never took part in discussions – it was an exposition. From the communiqués of the German High Command…he deduced the intentions of the opposed leaders, toted up the results obtained, gave a measured critique of the doctrines of war.36 De Gaulle’s third activity was the improvement of his German which he studied and practiced with prison guards.37 But perhaps the most important activity de Gaulle undertook during his imprisonment was the groundwork for his first publication, The Enemy’s House Divided, which sought to explain, and as noted above, the German defeat of 1918 through the Nietzschean logic of the drive for individuality, the Übermensch, a misinterpretation of ‘the will to power’, and the disastrous effect this had on the cohesion of the German High Command. When his duration as a prisoner of war came to a close in 1918 de Gaulle went on to serve in the French military mission in Poland from 1919 to 1921. Given the weakness of the post-war German, Austrian and Italian states, Poland, itself devastated by the Great War, was a vital element in preventing Bolshevik expansion into Central Europe. It was in this context that the Polish Army was in need of strengthening. Training troops and taking a part in the Battle of Warsaw in August 1920, that saw a smaller Polish force outmanoeuvre and defeat a larger Soviet army, de Gaulle proved to be equal to the task and was subsequently awarded the Virtuti Militari (Poland’s highest military decoration). Returning to France in 1921, de Gaulle went on to take a lectureship post at his former military academy of Saint-Cyr in 1922; a position he held only briefly, as from late 1922 until 1924 he was enrolled at the premier French institution used for training the finest commissioned officers (the Ecole Supérieure de Guerre), going on a year later to once again work on Pétain’s staff. During this time de Gaulle became something of a rebellious intellectual figure and dissenting voice in his attitude towards the Army’s defensive strategy (characterised by the great emphasis placed on the Maginot Line) which earned him a logistical post in the unpopular city of Mainz. ‘It was’, as Williams writes, ‘the French military equivalent of Siberia’.38 Frustrated by the French attitude to war, that was overwhelmingly defensive, theoretical and lacked room for manoeuvrability and hence an intuitive sense of action, his dissenting voice meant he was well out of the way in Western Germany. Given that France had numerous allies to protect in Central Europe, given that the need to prevent German rearmament by force may arise, and given certain advances in technology (primarily tanks; de Gaulle was initially sceptical of the military value of aircraft beyond that of reconnaissance), for de Gaulle it made little sense to plan a defensive and inflexible strategy based on walls, trenches, and massed ranks of infantry when the need

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to project military power into central Europe was a constant reality. This is why, and although it may strike one as an odd criticism in the absence of a broader intellectual context, de Gaulle often attacked his superiors for ‘not being Bergsonian enough’, even if a defensive strategy had prevailed during World War I.39 Indeed, it is often said that in war it is the losers of a conflict that learn most from the experience (such as the Germans after 1918 and the Egyptians after the Six Day War of 1967). As such, and while the leaders of the winning side repeat what was deemed to be successful, the losing side develop new strategies, battlefield tactics, and weaponry. Given the respective experiences of interwar France and Germany this certainly seemed to be the case and de Gaulle’s arguments should be seen as a warning (albeit unsuccessful) against this and against the intellectual and strategic inertia in the mind of France’s interwar high command. The period from 1924 to 1938 saw de Gaulle’s reputation as a writer, historian, and thinker on military strategy increase and although unpopular with many in the army due to his continuous insistence on the need for reform, his influence grew ever stronger. While it may well be unknown in the Englishspeaking world, and in reference to de Gaulle’s first work, The Enemy’s House Divided, Robert Eden has rightly claimed that ‘the reader who opens this slender book may be surprised to find so much high-caliber historical scholarship, political science, and practical good sense concentrated between its covers’.40 But for the interwar period it was his three subsequent works that, although largely ignored by the French High Command, would demonstrate his power of thought. The Edge of the Sword (Le Fil de l’épée, 1932), although maintaining a somewhat sombre current throughout, is a thoughtful consideration on military leadership and is also highly critical of the French attitude of overly theorising warfare and the ‘widespread idea’ that constantly studying battles ‘could provide a certain recipe for success’.41 An intuitive and hence Bergsonian sense of action was just as important. ‘It is Bergson’, writes de Gaulle, ‘who has shown that the only way in which the human mind can make direct contact with reality is by intuition, by combining instinct with intelligence. Our intelligence can furnish us with the theoretic, general, abstract knowledge of what is, but only instinct can give the practical, particular and concrete feel of it’.42 For de Gaulle, it was Napoleon’s ability to arrive on the battlefield, to grasp the nature of geography and the intentions of his enemy with ease, and to respond accordingly, that made him great. This necessitated the ability of the army to move quickly and work with Napoleon’s instinctive qualities and hence manoeuvrability was the essence of success. De Gaulle’s other pre-war works, particularly his third, Towards an Army of the Future (Vers une armée de métier, 1934), showed his ability to accurately perceive the future of warfare and essentially stressed the necessity for change in French military strategy. As Jackson rightly asserts, ‘this book launched a sort of crusade against the defensive doctrine of the French High Command and advocated a professional army which used tanks as an

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43

offensive striking force’. In short, and building on his earlier works, this was a French version of Blitzkrieg that would allow far greater manoeuvrability of both thought and action and in the context of de Gaulle’s call for intuition to play a far larger role in the execution of French foreign policy, this made perfect sense as the essence and foundation of intuition was the ability to out-manoeuvre one’s opponent. This understanding of warfare showed a certain amount of foresight and was not lost on those such as Duncan Grinnell-Milne. The obvious is what most men see too late and men of genius see too soon. De Gaulle belonged to the second category. He was not the first to perceive the immense changes in methods of warfare brought about by the internal combustion engine, any more than he was the first to appreciate the growing importance of the tank. But he was among the first…to grasp the idea of using a large force of tanks independently of the infantry.44 Maybe ‘genius’ is to overstate the case. Indeed, de Gaulle was no visionary, nor was he a prophet. Rather, and in seeing what was to come, his ever scholarly mind merely applied the lessons of the past to the present. ‘Military art finds itself placed in an equivocal position’, de Gaulle was to write, ‘the doctrines of war are following, in fact – as is natural – the same current which has taken possession of the age and impregnated it with mechanization. To renew the ancient process of manoeuvre, thanks to all that modern engines possess in the way of power, of precision and of speed, is the task of the tacticians of our day.’45 De Gaulle continues, ‘If Pyrrhus chose his elephant-keepers with such care and Darius the drivers of his scythe-wheeled chariots, if the whole social system of the Middle Ages conspired to make the horsemen the strongest and most skilful fighters, how much more important will it soon be for the land battleships to have crews specially recruited and trained to combined action?’46 Although little attention was paid to this in France, this principle was very much applied in Germany. As Grinnell-Milne concludes, ‘By 1935 the first Panzer Division was equipped and ready. It was, in every detail, a replica of de Gaulle’s Division Blindée – alas, still on paper. Hitler’s staff had marked well what Pétain’s had refused to read.’47 De Gaulle’s final pre-war publication, France and Her Army (La France et son armée, 1938) is, essentially, a history of France from the Roman-era through to the modern day seen through the historical expression of her armed forces and the ways in which the army has enriched the potency, greatness, and success of the nation. But the book, and in keeping with his earlier views, stresses that France’s military problems rapidly become national problems and, in turn, habitually stem from France’s conservative nature and the country’s failure to adapt to the modern. Understood in these terms the failures of Crecy and the Hundred Years War acted as a warning from history for France to modernise during the 1930s.

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What is important to note here in terms of de Gaulle’s interwar works, his later conduct as head of France, and the writing of his political memoirs, is his obsessive relationship with the past and the way in which, for him, this lingers in the present. Indeed, given de Gaulle’s sensitivity to the past Debray once claimed that de Gaulle had the ‘history disease’.48 This is not to simply say that de Gaulle was a student of history, although this he certainly was, rather Debray means that de Gaulle’s relationship with the historical was eminently tangible and organic. In other words, history for de Gaulle, co-existed with the present and hence at the same time and in the same moment. We see this throughout his works and in his remarks during his political lifetime and it explains why, in July 1943 de Gaulle ‘told Roosevelt’s representative: you have been in France for twelve years. I have lived here for two thousand already. Coming out of a cabinet meeting in the 1960s, he was heard to mutter, I have been saying it for a thousand years.’49 This was to say that de Gaulle, in his own eyes, was the product of two millennia of Gallic history and was therefore the manifestation of the French past in the present. This was precisely what he meant when, in 1940, he told Churchill that he was France.50 Such sentiment, that demonstrates de Gaulle’s understanding of France was clearly rooted in his sensitivity to history, can be found throughout his works, and is especially true of The Army of the Future and France and Her Army. Hence it was due to this perception of temporal co-existence that de Gaulle had no need to study history in a formal sense or ‘visit’ it as one would visit a museum. As Jackson concludes, ‘one civil servant who went to talk to him in 1958 about Algeria received an historical lecture which began with the Visigoths. De Gaulle liked to remark that Colombey stood near the site of the Battle of the Cataulaunian fields where Attila the Hun had been defeated in 450. For de Gaulle nothing seemed new.’51 Indeed, nothing was new for de Gaulle. This was as true of principles as it was of ideas and is why he saw the presence of Rome, Charlemagne, and Bonaparte in the twentieth century would-be federators of Europe, ‘the presence of the past’, that is, intertwined within the modern spirit of the E.U. This is also why de Gaulle told Malraux that the Emperor sat with him in 1940; that Bonaparte’s influence and legacy still resonated when the General spoke out 140 years later on.52 In understanding the General’s sensitivity to the past Malraux has claimed that Gallic history plagued de Gaulle’s mind: ‘the general was haunted by France as Lenin was by the proletariat, as Mao is by China, as perhaps Nehru was by India’.53 This was certainly the case and it is in this regard that we need to appreciate de Gaulle’s sensitivity to the past as a ubiquitous force that spoke to him throughout his life. Reflecting on this Malraux declared, ‘The General was much more preoccupied by history than by religion. I share his preoccupation, but not completely…perhaps the history that obsessed him was less destiny than the presence of the past’.54 Emphasis is added to Malraux’s final five words as I see no better way of summarising the most elementary principle that informed de Gaulle’s understanding of France, the

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international system, and the political world in a wider sense. As de Gaulle stressed to Malraux, the past does not pass on but lingers in the present: Yesterday, when I was out walking, the shadow of the clouds was passing at my feet; and it occurred to me that the clouds belong to humanity in the same way that the clouds belong to the sky. But do fantasies (ideologies) succeed one another like clouds, or like plants? At the sight of the large trees that stand to the right of the gate, I often think of the history of nations. It is the reverse of the clouds. All the same, to take France on oneself, in 1940, was no gardener’s problem! So I watch the fantasies pass by. I come indoors. I pick up these books again. They have survived and have perhaps shaped men, as successive gardeners have shaped my trees. After all, the word culture means something. What endures – what does not? You understand…I’m talking about a deeper opposition than between the ephemeral and the lasting, you understand; of what is mysterious in the fact of duration.55 It is this ‘presence of the past’ that Debray captures when he writes, ‘it is we who are the traditionalists, believing as we do that there is such a thing as anachronism, that the past does not inhabit the present. De Gaulle, a contemporary of the permanent, did not bother with these distinctions. He understood what we find so difficult to explain: the co-presence of different times, involving us mysteriously, willy-nilly, in things like religious wars or the invasion of the Palatinate.’56 In short, and for de Gaulle, history was not something that could be ‘turned-off’, as it were. There was ‘no end of history’. This sense of history is a reflection of the influence of Bergson on de Gaulle and in making sense of the General’s ‘history disease’ we would do well to see it as a form of entrenched intellectual Bergsonism that is of critical importance when trying to understand the decision-making process that was produced by his historically imbued sense of international relations. As Williams writes, ‘of all the intellectuals of the time who left their mark on the young de Gaulle, the most persuasive was Henri-Louis Bergson. Indeed, in his study at Colombey, de Gaulle has a much treasured set of Bergson’s works, which were read and re-read’.57 Aidan Crawley argues that ‘the thinkers he most admired were those, like Bergson’, while Hoffman writes that ‘above all, he read Bergson’.58 Philip Cerny has claimed that, ‘another side of his philosophical formation is the influence of the idea of intuition as the only source of knowledge, in the tradition of Descartes, but more immediately in the teaching of Bergson’, while Roland Hureaux simply states that ‘de Gaulle was a disciple of Bergson’.59 Jackson, Anthony Hartley, and Ellen Kennedy make similar remarks of this intellectual relationship.60 Finally, Lacouture writes ‘Bergson’s thought was to form the base of his method’, a method that saw that ‘the history of France is an entity, and that so too is the French nation’.61 Bergson’s principle works of Time and Free Will (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, 1889), Matter and Memory (Matière et Mémoire,

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1896), and Creative Evolution (L’Évolution créatrice, 1907) stress (as a gross generalisation of a deeply complex body of thought), as one of their collective and central themes, that the past remains in the present and therefore has agency through an intuitive sense of how to act. This is something that is accessible to all human minds and goes against an overly intellectualised sense of existence. In Creative Evolution Bergson writes of the past: In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fain leave it outside…these memories, messengers from the unconscious, remind us what we are dragging behind us unawares. But, even though we may have no distinct idea of it, we feel vaguely that our past remains present to us. What we are, in fact, what is our character, if not the condensation of the history that we have lived from our birth – nay, even before our birth, since we bring with us prenatal dispositions? Doubtless we think with only a small part of our past, but it is with our entire past, including the original bent of our soul, that we desire, will and act. Our past, then, as a whole, is made manifest to us in its impulse; it is felt in the form of tendency, although a small part of it only is known in the form of ideas.62 This temporal sense of the co-existence of the past with the present is, I believe, somewhat underemphasised in the de Gaulle literature. This is not to say that a Bergsonian sense of the past is seldom highlighted, quite the opposite in fact. But it is to say that the implications of this remain underexplored and from an FPA perspective it is a useful case study in terms of the relationship between ideas and decision-making. But as I go on to show in the next chapter, it is this sense of history that informed the way in which de Gaulle understood France to be, but also all nations in a wider sense, and this must be kept in mind at all times when discussing the General’s foreign policy and his subsequent placement within the ethno-symbolic approach to nationalism. As World War II approached de Gaulle continuously argued, albeit unsuccessfully, for France to adopt a military strategy based on massed mobile units that would allow for greater manoeuvrability, not a defensive doctrine as exemplified by the Maginot Line. When war finally came to France in May 1940, de Gaulle was promoted to the rank of Brigadier-General, then, as the French state crumbled under the German advance, he took his first government post (on June 5) as Under-Secretary of State for National Defence. It turned out to be somewhat short-lived as, with the government in flight and French troops in retreat, the country stood on the edge of defeat. Yet ‘at the top of the State’ de Gaulle writes, ‘the tragedy was being played through as though in a dream. At certain moments, one might even have thought that a sort of terrible humour was seasoning the fall of France as she rolled from the crest of History down to the deepest hollow of the abyss’.63 By June 16, and

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with Pétain installed as the head of the French government, de Gaulle was wary of what was to come. ‘One question dominated everything’, he writes, ‘would the Government have the sense, whatever happened, to place the State out of range, to preserve its independence and safeguard the future? Or was it going to surrender everything in the panic of the collapse?’64 Of course, we know that Pétain chose the latter and hence de Gaulle faced a painful choice – obey his old mentor and accept the legal surrender of France, or continue to fight. De Gaulle, ever the radical, chose the latter. Preparing to leave his native France and as he headed into the dark en route to London the General recalled, ‘I seemed to myself, alone as I was and deprived of everything, like a man on the shore of an ocean, proposing to swim across’.65 Two days later he was to deliver his famous appeal, what he calls, ‘the well-known text’, from the BBC studios in London, which called on France to carry on the struggle against Germany despite the Pétain-led government’s decision to collaborate with the Third Reich.66 This has passed into history as The Appeal of June 18 and in many ways marked his introduction into global politics.

Rebel, politician, statesman (1940–1970) With the delivery of The Appeal de Gaulle’s name began to gain recognition as a rebellious soldier who would not accept the defeat of France, who rejected association with Germany, and who felt France had allies and an empire to call upon in her defence. In this sense de Gaulle represented the defence of the defeated. Of course, de Gaulle was far from being the only French officer who refused to comply with Pétain; François Darlan, and Henri Giraud (who Roosevelt seemed to have a preference for) are among notable others. Yet with the weight of Winston Churchill firmly behind de Gaulle, his influence was certainly the greater. Taking, as Joan of Arc had done centuries earlier, the Cross of Lorraine as his symbol of what would eventually become ‘les Forces Françaises Libres’, large parts of the French Empire began to rally to his call to arms. For many this would mark the start of what has been labelled as ‘Gaullism’, and hence the term was originally understood as being little more than a doctrine of national defence that refused to see the French nation submerged under foreign occupation. Hartley felt this to be the case and suggests that this ‘resistance’ marks ‘the founding of Gaullism’.67 But, and as was always the case with de Gaulle, the ‘bigger picture’ was in the back of his mind. Saddened by the path Germany had taken after her national self-belief had collapsed in 1918, de Gaulle was all too aware that France had to play an active part in the war, and had to break with Vichy’s collaborationist ideals. If she did not then history had shown that defeated states are dangerous entities in which uncertain forces may have dire consequences (the present day populations of Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Libya know this well). Of Germany’s relationship with Hitler de Gaulle once wrote, ‘tired of fallen Emperors, of beaten generals, of absurd politicians, she gave herself to an unknown manin-the-street who represented adventure, promised domination, and whose

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hysterical voice stirred her secret desires’.68 For de Gaulle, to comply with Vichy was to risk the same fate for France. In many ways de Gaulle’s defence of France was the symbolic defence of the State and an attempt to stem the waning of national self-belief from spiralling down into national bereavement any further than it had done so in May and June of 1940 when, as he recalls, ‘a sort of moral inhibition made’ the French leadership ‘suddenly doubt everything’.69 To be sure, as a fighting entity France was a spent force; of France as a morally intact nation and historical reality the question still remained. In this respect de Gaulle differed from Giraud who saw the French wartime predicament as little more than a military problem, and one requiring an Anglo-American military solution, but also differed from that of Pétain, whose inability to perceive the forces at work within the spirit of a nation lagged far behind that of de Gaulle.70 According to de Gaulle there was little afterthought within Giraud or Pétain’s reflections for what would become of the French State that ‘had figured among the first for so many centuries’.71 It was imperative, that is, to have the symbolism of France still participating in the war, yet it was not merely the Free French that de Gaulle carried with him in June 1940, but also the expectations of future generations. Any future projection of France, that is, would have to co-exist with the actions of the present. Of course France was overwhelmingly supported by Great Britain and eventually the US, but de Gaulle insisted that she fight as an independent force that would let the French believe in France and in effect see the State. As de Gaulle often stressed, ‘there is no France without a sword’.72 Either way, and as noted above, I do not wish to spend too much time discussing ‘Gaullism’ in this chapter and merely use the term (and its derivatives such as Gaullist and Gaullien), as others have done before me, to describe the various periods of de Gaulle’s political career over the course of 1940–1970. The first use of the term ‘Gaullism’ appeared in the French press in March 1941 when de Gaulle’s actions had had the chance to work their way into the French national and political consciousness and when L’Œuvre printed a short article warning French youths of the dangers of rallying to de Gaulle’s call to arms. This was, in effect, a counter-appeal to that which de Gaulle had delivered from London less than a year earlier.73 That said, François Broche has shown that an intellectual anti-Gaullism existed in the 1930s in opposition to the General’s pre-War works, thus demonstrating that the principles upon which the General’s eventual foreign policy stood existed long before he came to power.74 But in terms of a formal expression of his sense of the political world that connected with the French national consciousness, the first Gaullist period (1940–1944) can be dated to the previous year when de Gaulle fled the French wartime capital of Bordeaux en route to Great Britain. While the immediate impact of de Gaulle’s appeal remains a contested point, his continued actions nonetheless encouraged other French officers to disobey Vichy and eventually brought him gradual recognition as the ‘proper’ (if not legal) representative of France, despite Washington maintaining a

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preference for Giraud. ‘There is no France’, it was de Gaulle’s self-appointed duty to demonstrate that France, although fallen and despite Roosevelt’s somewhat tactless remarks, still existed.75 Incidentally, Roosevelt had also managed to offend General de Gaulle in 1945 by requesting that de Gaulle meet him in Algeria (part of France at the time) to discuss matters of post-war organisation. In Salvation de Gaulle writes of this, ‘why should the American President invite the French President to visit him in France?’76 Given the norms of international relations and the diplomatic tradition the General’s question was a fair one (it would have been akin to de Gaulle inviting Roosevelt to meet him in Hawaii or Alaska), but by 1943 the American press were frequently speaking of ‘Gaullism’.77 Of course, to both Vichy and Washington de Gaulle’s actions were, paradoxically, unwelcome, and de Gaulle achieved the impressive task of drawing the ire of both sides, but throughout the War he played an increasingly important role in denouncing German occupation, the illegitimate nature of Pétain’s government, and in encouraging resistance he was refusing to let the French State ‘die’ or acknowledge that the French cause was lost.78 Details aside, and if ‘Gaullism’ had ended there it would have represented an absorbing episode in French history. Yet de Gaulle understood that although he had succeeded in showing that France existed, the nation was divided and its ‘sense of self’ was severely weakened by five years of German occupation. The question of ‘national moral suicide’ remained and France’s American liberators were soon to become a peace-time threat. As de Gaulle writes, ‘No sooner had the sound of gunfire faded than the world’s appearance changed. The strength and spirit of the peoples mobilized for the war suddenly lost their unifying object…yesterday was the time for battle; the hour for settling accounts had come.’79 The war also changed France’s global status in relation to the United States and the Soviet Union as the two great victors of the war were now set to dominate the international order through which France would be a ‘middle’ and restricted power. This coming relationship was one that Heinrich Himmler had tried to exploit in suggesting to de Gaulle that France and Germany move closer together in the post-War world. ‘You have won’, Himmler wrote in a letter of astonishing audacity to de Gaulle on the eve of Germany’s defeat (but one that was, perhaps, rather close to the mark on the nature of the Franco-German relationship that was to eventually transpire), and ‘considering where you started from, one bows low indeed to you…but now what will you do? Rely on the Americans and the British? They will treat you as a satellite, and you will lose all the honour you have won. Ally yourself with the Soviets? They will restore France to their own pattern and liquidate you…the only road that can lead your people to greatness and to independence is that of an entente with defeated Germany. Proclaim it at once!’80 This first Gaullist ‘age’ was characterised by another trait that was to flow through Gaullist history; rebellion and the rejection of American hegemony. As Annie Lacroix-Riz has illustrated, de Gaulle was only too aware that ‘liberation’ at the hands of the US did not imply that France would return to

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its pre-War state of existence with any immediacy.81 To be sure, it was Roosevelt’s and eventually Truman’s intention that the fate of post-War France would be similar to that of West Germany, Austria, Japan, and Italy in that it would fall under the remit of the Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories (AMGOT) and thusly be ruled by foreign administrators. From the French perspective, de Gaulle acted quickly to ensure that this did not come to pass (after the Allied invasion in 1944 he ensured that his representatives were sent, often well ahead of British and American troops, to take control of most of France’s towns and cities), but he also understood that France, although liberated, was in a crisis of crippling national morality and that the political weaknesses of the French state remained. Indeed, his revulsion of the warring political factions, that had characterised the Third Republic (1870–1940) and which would remain at the heart of the Fourth Republic (1946–1958), meant that his desire for strong, centralised authority, whereby the French President would become a form of elected monarchy (something akin to the Bonapartist tradition) now came to the fore, and it was this sort of model that he hoped would fill the political void that had been created in 1944. For de Gaulle, the character and nature of French democracy was the cancer that had kept her in a weakened condition and it was his intension to purge this from French public life. With the various internal resistance groups of socialists, communists, and Catholics vying for control, as well as the Allied Forces who planned to occupy and govern France, de Gaulle understood that he needed to move quickly to assert his authority in order to prevent further national fragmentation. Yet this was not quite the problem that de Gaulle had anticipated for his authority in France was obvious, ‘France was Gaullist, and had never been anything but Gaullist’ as Charles Sowerwine was to write.82 With huge domestic support behind him the Allies could only recognise the General, in October 1944, as the head of the Provisional Government of France that was comprised of a three-party coalition (tripartisme) of communists (Parti communiste français, PCF), socialists (Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière, SFIO), and Christian Democrats (Mouvement Républicain Populaire, MRP) that was designed to ensure national unity and avoid the squabbles that had hindered France during the latter years of the Third Republic. As is argued in chapters Four and Five, for de Gaulle this was the true and ‘authentic’ France; a France that reflected her specific, historically imbued characteristics, and a France that has an inherent preference for centralisation. Hence putting the state back on its feet, as Herrick Chapman writes, ‘became for him the “sine qua non” of the country’s recovery. ‘Everything de Gaulle hoped for from the Liberation – civic order, national unity, success in the military campaign against Germany, formal recognition (and respect) from the Allies, and ultimately the re-emergence of France as a great power – depended, in his view, on a strong state.’83 Despite the French rallying to de Gaulle in the immediate weeks that followed liberation, this sense of national unity was short-lived as the political

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infighting that de Gaulle so detested quickly resurfaced and hence he found himself in the midst of ‘a lacerated nation and surrounded by ill will’.84 This was the precise opposite of what he had observed amongst the British during the long war-years which he ‘envied and admired’.85 In seeking an explanation for this ebbing away of national unity Jean-Pierre Rioux argues that the failure of French society to maintain the patriotic, yet self-deluded, ‘myth of a massive resistance movement’ that never really existed was a key element.86 But perhaps we are seeing something more idiosyncratic here; something deeply and historically embedded within the character of the French nation; a tendency to succumb to internal division which can only be overcome by two factors; war and a strong national figurehead. France, in this sense, and as Debray has written, is ‘a monarchical country…with a penchant for civil war’ whereby one force is required to check the other.87 Whatever the reason, de Gaulle was correct when he wrote that ‘everything pointed to the reappearance of yesterday’s regime, less adapted than ever to the nation’s needs’.88 Not wishing to become embroiled in the factionalism of the immediate post-war era de Gaulle resigned as French President on January 20, 1946. Reflecting upon this in Salvation de Gaulle, not wishing to become tainted by domestic political squabbles, remarked, ‘To France and the French, I owed something further – to leave as a man morally intact.’89 What we may call the ‘second period of Gaullism’ (1946–1958) has been characterised in a number of differing ways. Often called de Gaulle’s traversée du desert, or de Gaulle’s ‘crossing of the desert’, the term seeks to capture the sense in which the General became an increasingly peripheral figure after his resignation in 1946 only to re-emerge in 1958 as France’s ‘saviour’ for a second time. However, and although useful as a metaphor and despite de Gaulle’s own views, the term is unsatisfactory as it implies a certain sense of inevitability surrounding his return to power. This was never the case and a more suitable term is offered by Berstein who defines the period as ‘a machine of war against the Fourth Republic’.90 This is so as although France’s post-war political elites initially welcomed the de Gaulle-led Liberation and his subsequent role as head of the Provisional Government, they nonetheless failed to demonstrate any real appetite for the establishment of a presidential regime based on the constitutional principles outlined in the Bayeux speech (June 16, 1946) and largely sought to replicate a system based on the Third Republic. Yet in 1947, a year after de Gaulle’s resignation, the General returned to the fold in the shape of the newly established ‘party’, le Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF) that was formed to wage a long war ‘against the régime of the parties’.91 Irony was certainly present here as the regime that de Gaulle so detested, now had a significant Gaullist party within it, albeit one that was intent on destroying the system. Nonetheless, with de Gaulle marginalised as a political figure, support began to ebb away and the RPF disbanded in 1953. In the period that de Gaulle was out of power he devoted his time to the writing of his War Memoirs and while these are insightful historical documents in themselves, and thus tell us much

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of the French wartime experience, they also served the explicit purpose of keeping ‘de Gaulle’ in the public eye and thus writing himself into French national history. Indeed, his War Memoirs, while highly readable, are written in such a way whereby ‘de Gaulle’, as an inevitable expression of France’s national will, becomes a figure of historical destiny. This is really why he often referred to himself in the third person and spoke of ‘de Gaulle’ as a separate entity. In short, and while the writing of his War Memoirs was an act of recording history, the publication of these three short books was, perhaps, more concerned with the public invention of ‘de Gaulle’ and the continuous projection of this figure into the public consciousness.92 This is equally true of his political memoirs too. Either way although the political elites had mostly ignored de Gaulle’s call for a revised system of government (which he maintained throughout his time in exile), by the late 1950s it seemed France was ready to place its faith in de Gaulle. As France suffered from inflation, food shortages, incessant strikes and threats of civil war at home, and while war in Indo-China along with insurrection in Madagascar and unrest in Corsica seemed to occur without direction or leadership from Paris, the French began to ask whether ‘de Gaulle’ was the force to unify the fragmented nation and the solution to the enduring Gallic problems. In Memoirs of Hope (1970) de Gaulle is certain of the inevitability of this; ‘for the next six years, from 1952 to 1958, I was to devote myself to writing my War Memoirs without intervening in public affairs, but never for a moment doubting that the infirmity of the system would sooner or later lead to a grave national crisis’.93 This is not to say that de Gaulle felt he was predestined to lead France per se. Rather he was convinced that true to her historic character, France would turn to an authoritative figure to unite her when political infighting resurfaced and threatened to unsettle the nation as had happened numerous times since the Revolution. In the 1950s ‘General de Gaulle’ was the obvious choice. For much of this period however, de Gaulle never spoke in a public capacity believing that this would improve his political standing, ‘in action, one must say nothing’ he once wrote, ‘the chief is he who does not speak’.94 This was the same ‘law of silence’ that he saw in Pétain during his post-war trial for collaboration which ‘by remaining silent, he gave a kind of last consideration to the military dignity in which his former great services had cloaked him’.95 The final push in France turning to de Gaulle proved to be the inability of the Forth Republic to bring an end to the conflict in Algeria. By 1958, and with the war dragging on into its fourth year, General Jacques Massu had demanded that if de Gaulle were not placed in charge of the French Republic, paratroopers would assault the capital and remove the ineffective government that was alleged to be failing France.96 As a consequence René Coty asked the National Assembly to install de Gaulle as French President who agreed to do so, but only on the condition that the French Constitution be recast in a strong, almost Bonapartist model.97 Notwithstanding some serious charges of de Gaulle’s return to power as being a step towards fascism, and as Jackson

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points out, ‘On 1 June de Gaulle’s government was voted into power by 329 votes to 224…despite the opposition of important figures like Mendès France and François Mitterrand.’98 Mitterrand would go on to (repeatedly) claim this to be ‘le Coup d’État permanent’. There is, it must be said, something in this claim, and in trying to capture the essence of these most unusual events Mitterrand’s term comes close to the mark. That said France of the 1950s was clearly not inflicted by the ‘democracy disease’. More democracy, in other words, was not always the solution. For de Gaulle this approval was an emerging national realisation that the Fourth Republic was ill-equipped to resolve the problems of France and it is certainly tempting to see this as an appeal to a messianic figure that had saved France once already, rather than an overwhelming belief in a set of political principles. But to do so would be to simplify the matter as, in Rioux’s words ‘the overwhelming support for de Gaulle stemmed not from a sense of helpless resignation, but rather from a cautious but positive desire to see France at last endowed with a strong new Republican democracy’.99 If the first Gaullist period had initially welcomed, then rejected de Gaulle as a political force, and the second had seen the expression of his ideas as a tangible political entity in the shape of the RPF, the third Gaullist ‘age’ (1958–1962) was marked by de Gaulle’s newly formed l’Union pour la nouvelle République (UNR) finally unleashed onto Cold War France. With the vast majority of France behind de Gaulle, an increase from 20 to 189 seats in the National Assembly, and overwhelming parliamentary power, de Gaulle’s vision of the appropriate political regime for France became a tangible reality in the shape of the Fifth Republic and with de Gaulle submitting the approval of the new Constitution to the French people by referendum, echoes of Louis Bonaparte’s populist and moral mandate over that of a legal or political one were certainly evident.100 Although riding on this wave of populism de Gaulle was able to implement significant domestic reforms, it was the issue of Algeria that had brought de Gaulle back to the forefront of the political stage and it was the issue that would prove to be the political ‘litmus test’ for his leadership. Broadly speaking the pursuit of a resolution to the Algerian problem progressed through four periods. The first of these periods, and while de Gaulle maintained an ambiguous stance on the question of Algerian independence, was the testing of public opinion in both Algeria and France. This disguised ambiguity was clearly evident in his famous line, ‘Je vous ai compris!’ (‘I have understood you’) that was given to a pro-French crowd in Algiers.101 The genius of this line underscores de Gaulle’s appreciation for political psychology whereby the crowd seemed to believe that the General had openly backed their position (a form of ‘confirmation bias’ where one sees what one wants to see) on the Algerian question but had really committed to little at all. The second stage of the Algerian solution revolved around de Gaulle’s assertion in September 1959 that all Algerians should have the right to self-determination, even if this meant eventual independence from France. Despite being wholly unpopular

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with some quarters of French society, most notably the Army, true to his populist tradition de Gaulle once again submitted this plan to a referendum which received support from 75% of the electorate.102 The third phase of the Algerian solution took place over the tumultuous summer of 1961 where, for a while, it seemed that de Gaulle’s solution staggered on with little success as the Organisation of the Secret Army (Organisation de l’armée secrete, OAS), that was fanatically opposed to Algerian independence, exacerbated the already delicate situation by carrying out a series of bombings and assassinations (including attempts on de Gaulle’s life). Yet by 1962 the fourth period was in progress as, through de Gaulle’s mediation, the agreements for a ceasefire to the war and the conditions for Algerian independence were outlined in the Évian Accords in March of that year. The settlement for independence was again put to the French and Algerian peoples, and with both giving almost universal endorsement for independence (around 91%), Algeria became a sovereign nation-state.103 In de Gaulle’s referral to both the French people, and later on that of the Algerians, over the question of French Algeria, we must recognise his legitimisation of the nation over that of Gallic political elites. ‘There is’, as de Gaulle would go on to say, ‘an Algeria, there is an Algerian entity, there is an Algerian personality’, hence we must recognise his belief in the individualism of each nation meant that Algeria was too different and too distinct to ever be assimilated.104 This third Gaullist ‘age’ also saw France move away from reliance on the United States in terms of a nuclear deterrent. Although the envisaged French nuclear strike force, the force de frappe, had been the brain-child of Pierre Mendès France, when de Gaulle returned to power in 1958 he accelerated the nuclear programme as he clearly felt that the US was overly dominant within NATO and questioned America’s pledge to commit herself to a nuclear conflict should the Soviet Union strike Western Europe. The basis of this rationale he explained to President Eisenhower: In the course of the two world wars America was France’s ally, and France…has not forgotten what she owes to American help. But neither has she forgotten that during the First World War, that help came only after three long years of struggle which nearly proved mortal for her, and that during the Second she had already been crushed before you intervened. In saying this, I intend not the slightest reproach. For I know, as you yourself know, what a nation is, with its geography, its interests, its political system, its public opinion, its passions, its fears, its errors. It can help another, but it cannot identify itself with another. This is why, although remaining faithful to our alliance, I cannot accept France’s integration into NATO.105 Although de Gaulle knew that in ‘an all-out nuclear conflict’ with the Soviet Union, France stood little chance of survival, his implied endorsement of deterrence theory meant that it was improbable France would be attacked by

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Moscow if she maintained an independent nuclear capacity. ‘In order for our deterrent to be effective’, he stressed to Eisenhower, ‘it is enough to be able to kill the enemy once, even if he possesses the means to kill us ten times over’.106 But to tie France to American protection was also to tie her to America’s Cold War policies towards the Soviet Union, China, and the wider communist world. It was, in other words, to tie France to a rigid international system that denied her the type of manoeuvrability that he had argued for in his earlier works on military strategy and political leadership. For de Gaulle, France required diplomatic manoeuvrability at all times and hence it was vital for her to constantly make her own treaties and alliances. Quoting the General and his ever historically imbued logic, Jackson captures this point well: But of course with de Gaulle there was also always the long game to think of: our kings made an alliance with the Turks against the Holy Roman Empire. They made an alliance with Poland against Germany. I made an alliance with Russia to protect us against Germany. One day I will make an alliance with China to reinforce us against Russia.107 We may see the fourth Gaullist age (1962–1969) as the period whereby France was able to assert herself on the world stage with the greatest vigour and symbolism. Released from the grip of the Algerian War, with de Gaulle enjoying the zenith of his popularity, and with a much welcomed national reconciliation descending on France, the prerequisite of domestic stability allowed for the expression and injection of de Gaulle’s values into the international arena. Although during these years important French domestic issues still demanded de Gaulle’s attention, the General’s concentration fell heavily on the arena of foreign affairs and in particular the limiting of foreign influence in France (and Europe in a wider sense) from what he perceived to be the two American ‘Trojan horses’ – Great Britain and West Germany. The rejection of Great Britain’s entry into the European Community in January 1963 was a successful element of this, while de Gaulle’s attempts to pull Adenauer away from ‘the West’ (what de Gaulle saw as an emotional attachment to the World War II-era) and into l’Europe européenne proved to be less so. France also went on to reject the proposals as outlined by the Hallstein Commission in 1965, for financing the Common Agricultural Policy which moved towards the creation of supranational powers that, as perceived by de Gaulle, threatened French sovereignty and which culminated in the Empty Chair Crisis (1965–1966). This is, of course, the persistent image of de Gaulle being anti-European, yet never was this the case. As Debray stresses of de Gaulle, he was a ‘pure European’, but one who merely had a different idea of Europe.108 De Gaulle, that is, wanted a ‘United Nations of Europe’ rather than what he saw as the hurried drive towards a stateless entity, yet he did not rule out the potential evolution of European confederacy.

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Haunted by history It was my belief that a united Europe could not today, any more than in previous times, be a fusion of its peoples, but it could and should result from a systematic rapprochement. Everything prompted them towards this in an age of proliferating trade, international enterprises, science and technology which knows no frontiers, rapid communications and widespread travel. My policy therefore aimed at the setting up of a concert of European States which in developing all sorts of ties between them would increase their interdependence and solidarity. From this starting-point, there was every reason to believe that the process of evolution might lead to their confederation, especially if they were one day to be threatened from the same source.109

For de Gaulle, nothing should move too fast within Europe. Hence in the wake of the UK’s ‘Brexit’ vote, and when so many of Europe’s politicians and thinkers on both the Left and Right cast doubt over the EU, de Gaulle’s shadow looms over Brussels once more. The defining aspect of this period was de Gaulle’s assault on the world order. Perhaps more symbolic than tangible, such is the importance and dynamism that has been attached to French foreign policy during these years that we may regard this as being Gaullism per se. However, as noted earlier the Gaullist foreign policy of the 1960s was only an expression of de Gaulle’s rationale, nothing more. It was not ‘Gaullism’ itself – the root and source of an idea must be seen as separate from the culmination and expression of this. Less ‘revolution’ and more an act of ‘rebellion’, the foreign policy of Gaullist France intended to disrupt the bi-polarity of the Cold War world by modifying the existing system as although it sought to give greater influence and grandeur to France it did not seek to replace or overthrow the international status quo in its entirety. In attempting to introduce autonomy and freedom of action for aligned and non-aligned states alike, France essentially sought a modification of the world order that was certainly an echo of a Bergsonian distrust of inflexible systems that allowed no room for intuition or movement. Indeed, communism was passing, world revolution was a nonsense, and thus de Gaulle’s worldview sought to let nation-states peer beyond the Cold War mist. To let nations and national authenticity, that is, re-emerge from the ideological chimeras of the time. Viewed as such, the international system that coerced nations into one of the two Cold War camps was repressive and thus the ‘grand design’ of de Gaulle’s foreign policy was to reintroduce the principle of self-determination into the wider international system of the 1960s. In this sense de Gaulle’s nationalism was liberal in nature and hence the polar-opposite of the expansionist nationalism of 1930s Germany. Nations, for de Gaulle, were sacrosanct entities and the international order had to reflect this. In the 1960s it did not.110 Each possessed its own identity and characteristics and it was only right, pragmatic, and sensible to deal with each nation as such. The ephemeral ideological clouds and shadows cast upon communist states would not

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last. Hence the Russians had to be seen as Russians, the Chinese had to be treated as Chinese, and the East Europeans seen as Poles and Hungarians, not merely communists. Cambodia, Mexico, Canada, Vietnam, Palestine, Algeria; wherever de Gaulle’s gaze fell all would be encouraged to rally to their own nation, to their own nationalism, and their own individuality. For de Gaulle, these nations would persist, the prevalent Cold War chimeras would not. Hence, a central aspect of de Gaulle’s foreign policy during the 1960s was, in Peirre Hassner’s words, to ‘encourage nationalism everywhere’.111 As I argue later on, an existential reading of his foreign policy allows us to appreciate the underlying logic of this in the guise of ‘the other’. It was this that greatly alarmed Washington and was why de Gaulle acknowledged China in 1964 when few else in the West would. It is why he launched a prolonged and scathing attack on Israel, an entity that de Gaulle considered to be a land-grabbing ‘warrior state’ that flaunted respect for nations and nationhood, and is why de Gaulle was so critical of American involvement in Vietnam. One can only imagine what he would have said of Western attempts to ‘nation build’ in Iraq and Afghanistan. For many commentators during these years, the French decision to gradually withdraw from the integrated military command of NATO caused bitter resentment, especially from the US and the UK.112 Although often dismissed as irrational anti-Americanism that served no strategic purpose and which undermined the Atlantic Alliance, this is to judge de Gaulle through an Anglo-American viewpoint and as Robin Harris stresses, is to ‘miss the point’.113 Despite the ‘rights or wrongs’ inherent within this, one must view such actions through the prism of ‘the nation’ whereby the French had to be able to exercise control over their own foreign relations; not to become embroiled in conflicts that were not of their making and while following the goal of having no ‘avowed enemies’.114 The fifth ‘age’ of Gaullism (1969 onwards) is that of the après de Gaulle period and does not really concern us in this volume. Nonetheless, it is helpful to offer a few words on this here. By the mid-1960s, and although de Gaulle was re-elected in 1965, the French domestic situation was decidedly different to that of a decade earlier. The Algerian crisis was at an end, the French economy was rapidly improving, politically the constitutional design of the Fifth Republic had stabilised France, and the memory of the War was fading. Yet all was not well for de Gaulle as his re-election hinted at. Granted de Gaulle was re-elected, and true he was given a mandate to serve for another seven years as French President, yet the election of 1965 perhaps marked the decline of de Gaulle’s tempestuous political life. Indeed, although the General was expected to win the election easily, his inability to gain over fifty per cent of the vote meant a second round ballot was required between himself and his old socialist opponent, François Mitterrand. By 1968 it appeared that de Gaulle’s political life was at an end when Pierre Viansson-Ponté famously declared that ‘la France s’ennuie’ (‘France is bored’).115 Boredom is an impossibly difficult variable to measure, but if volatility is an indication of

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this, and in the context of the May ’68 riots and protests, Viansson-Ponté certainly had a point. A year later, in April 1969, and in response to losing a referendum on trivial matters, yet a referendum upon which he had staked his political future, de Gaulle resigned. Puzzled by this Malraux asked de Gaulle to explain his reasons; ‘“why did you resign over so secondary a question as regional government? Because it was absurd?” He looked at me fixedly. “Because it was absurd.”’116 De Gaulle once said that old age is a ‘ship wreck’ and perhaps these last few years of his life justify such remarks.117

Nations in a Bergsonian mould: the centrality of de Gaulle’s thought The argument that I have pursued thus far in this volume implies that systemic theories of IR, while useful in explaining the broad themes of the international system, largely fail to capture the essence of foreign policy decision-making at its source. This is so as grand theory cannot account for idiosyncratic differences that individuals bring to bear on the world and the intellectual, philosophical, and cognitive differences that make individuals precisely that. As a case study into how ideas impact on foreign policy this volume offers an example of how this is so. Individuals are not, in other words, interchangeable entities and in relation to de Gaulle and Pétain we know this to be the case. With this point established and in the context of Wendt’s ontological claims in relation to IR, we are thusly compelled to look at de Gaulle and his worldview a little closer if we wish to understand French foreign policy during the 1960s. Yet, and as argued above, the descriptive label of ‘Gaullism’ has been overused to such an extent that it is of limited value to the scholar of FPA, meaning that we need to find alternative avenues of analysis to rationalise his actions. Given that this is the case, with a brief biographical narrative of de Gaulle’s life now complete, and with an appreciation for de Gaulle’s ‘history disease’ set out, let us briefly touch on the fundamentality of ‘the nation’ to de Gaulle’s rationale. This is a foundational and hence vital part of the vision that drove de Gaulle’s foreign policy and it is his focus on ‘the nation’ as the central aspect of both domestic and international affairs, and ever combined with his inherent Bergsonism, that compels us to explore the importance of this in some depth, before going on in the next chapter to explore the meaning of this to the General in greater intellectual depth. The importance that de Gaulle placed on the national aspect of political life implies that he was a French nationalist and this he certainly was. Hence constructing a valid argument to the contrary would be a difficult, if not impossible task. Either way, de Gaulle’s nationalism is often described as his ‘certaine idée de la France’ (‘certain idea of France’), which is to echo the opening words of his political memoirs. This is to say that de Gaulle was constantly concerned with the grandeur and historical greatness of France, and hence all public testaments to this. This is why, and in relation to Napoleon, he once said to Malraux, ‘he left France smaller than he had found her, granted; but that is not what defines a nation. For France, he had to exist. It

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is a little like Versailles: it had to be done. Don’t let’s sell grandeur short.’ De Gaulle’s nationalism also implied that he could never accept France’s subservient position in the Atlantic Alliance even if this came at considerable cost to the French. Like Versailles, it had to be done. Yet seeing de Gaulle’s nationalism only in relation to France is to take a very limited scope of his rationale as it suggests that he was only ever concerned with his own nation. Never was this the case. De Gaulle, as Guichard points out, was the sentinel of liberal nationalism, ‘he threw himself into it only to argue, from the first instant, in favour of the right of nations inside empires. The rights of nations against empires. The rights of the French nation, but also of any nation.’119 De Gaulle was ever, in other words, the ‘pan-nationalist’ and the concept of ‘the nation’ was central to all his political considerations. This is an idea of how nations come into being, how nations are individualistic entities, and how a nation’s fundamental characteristics endure due to ‘the presence of the past’. Indeed, the General had a perception of how nations existed as authentic individuals, of how a nation may be in flight of its own freedom, and how a nation and national character would persist and survive any temporary ideology, or ‘fantasies’, as de Gaulle often called them. De Gaulle very often spoke of ‘the nation’ and referred to the ‘will of the nation’ or ‘the enemy of the nation’ when discussing France and foreign relations.120 When addressing his fellow countrymen and countrywomen and by simply glancing through many of de Gaulle’s speeches and writings the centrality of the nation to his thinking becomes evidently clear. The General frequently spoke of the need for ‘national unity’, of the necessity for ‘national renovation’ and of the ‘national task’ of France.121 He highlighted the ‘national peril’ to France, he praised the ‘nation’s efforts’ and was well aware of the ‘full powers granted by the nation’ to him.122 De Gaulle claimed that during the War the ‘soul of the nation’ was against Pétain.123 He saw France’s aims as the ‘national ambition’. He saw France’s progress as ‘national progress’ and spoke of the spiralling problems in Algeria as leading to ‘national disaster’. In reference to the Army he stated that the force was an ‘integral part of the nation’, while of his own position as French president he saw himself as ‘head of the nation’ who held the ‘explicit confidence of the nation’.124 In a 1946 speech, he declared that war-time salvation had sprung ‘up from the depths of the nation’ while in a 1958 address to the National Assembly he spoke of the government of the French Republic as ‘representatives of the nation’.125 Everything was to be measured by its benefit or detriment to the nation, but also the principle of nationhood per se. As de Gaulle dictated, to overlook this was to sell the soul of France and was to sour two thousand years of Gallic history and French national progress. This would be to betray the nation. As de Gaulle stresses in Memoirs of Hope, ‘France had been betraying her own past by straying among insidious supranational clouds, abandoning her defence, her foreign policy, her destiny to the Atlantic Alliance, leaving to others the fields of influence, co-operation and friendship with which she had

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once been familiar in the Third World’.126 To betray the nation however, was to forsake not only those who lived and died as de Gaulle’s contemporaries but given de Gaulle’s Bergsonism this was to betray those such as Vercingétorix, Clovis and Hugh Capet. Given that all French history for de Gaulle was one entity he felt just as close to Bertrand du Guesclin and Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet as he did to Malraux and Michel Debré, as the enduring Gallic nation was inextricably connected throughout time and history. To acquiesce to the demands of international treaties that were unfavourable to France was to diminish the French nation, both past and present. Failing to keep the nation’s interests at the forefront of political thinking was, for de Gaulle, to lessen the works of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Baudelaire and was to undermine the great minds of Blaise Pascal, Émile Zola, and Marie Curie. To put the nation behind any other concern was to cast a shadow over those who had spent their lives defending France. In short, as de Gaulle saw things, a nation was a sacred entity and no leader had authority to compromise the integrity and soul of this. Yet despite his explicit fixation on historically imbued nations, and other than seeing the General’s sense of nationhood as Bergsonian in nature, finding an appropriate and fitting description of this is a problematic task. Indeed, ‘nation’, ‘nationalist’, and ‘nationalism’ are complex terms that do not lend themselves to easy definition. Countless attempts have been made to quantify these but all remain (and will remain) essentially contested concepts. Although in the next chapter I seek to understand the term ‘nation’ in an ethno-symbolic sense, I do not seek to define it in any universal sense. This is not to say that ill-defined concepts have no agency; it just means that we perhaps lack the ability to offer a formal explanation. As Debray writes, There is something that existed before the ‘democracy’ condition, before the ‘revolution’ condition, and will survive them. Something older, more active, more durable, that for some time has been known by the vague name of ‘nation’. It is relatively easy to distinguish a democracy from the purpose. Defining a collective personality, distinguishing a nation from a tribe or some other type of collectivity, is not so straightforward. But it is not because the idea of nation is badly defined that the reality it designates is not a determining one. Only idealists match reality on an idea of reality, and cut things down to match their representations.127 However we choose to understand the term nation, it remains prevalent in all de Gaulle’s political considerations. This is why Alfred Grosser writes of de Gaulle, ‘the nation and its foreign power should be the central focus of all political thought’.128 Berstein goes on to capture both the importance of the nation to de Gaulle and the historically imbued essence of this, but also the necessity for all nation-states to enjoy individual freedom. ‘At the heart of the Gaullist vision’, declares Berstein, ‘lay the primacy of the nation-state. For de Gaulle, only fantasies and fairy tales existed outside the central reality, a

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reality that descended from history, was fashioned by achievements and hardships, and was cemented by national consciousness.’ Hence the nationstate, as Berstein concludes, [is] incapable of rational definition and had interests that were determined by geopolitics and imposed by the need to survive. The primacy of the nation-state is fundamental. It explains de Gaulle’s distrust of all constructions that sought to replace it, be they based on a supranationalism that he rejected or on an alliance system in which the freedom of manoeuvre of individual nations was restricted by a dominant partner.129 In L’actualité de gaullisme (2007) Hureaux goes on to express similar sentiment, For him the nation is a given fundamental, at least in the permanent human view of history. Yet the only concurrent reality is, or has been, the empire…between the two he has carefully chosen and for him there can be no shadow of a doubt: the empire that wants to federate several nations under the direction of one alone is intrinsically oppressive whereas the nation-state is the natural frame where the peoples’ freedom is expressed. Empires are, for this reason, vulnerable and transient whereas the nation is permanent.130 Simon Serfaty and Roy C. Macridis also echo such sentiment.131 Léo Hamon, in De Gaulle dans la République (1958) has even gone so far as to argue that de Gaulle was merely a reactionary figure in his concept of the nation. He argues that de Gaulle was responding to something inherent, yet inexplicable, within the nation, hence it was the unnamed desire for national unity that was driving de Gaulle, rather than the General projecting these visions and aspirations onto the French people.132 Although the point may have been somewhat laboured here, all this implies that we should never look at de Gaulle without taking into consideration the fundamentality of the nation and the historical basis of this. Anything that sought to work against the nation, such as communism, hyper-democracy, the EU, or more amorphous concepts such as ‘the West’, was another of those troublesome and temporary fantasies that so irked de Gaulle if it conflicted with the historical essence of France. As Michael Vlahos has argued, many elements of the post-1945 international order, such as ‘the West’ and ‘the Atlantic community’, that arose from the embers of World War II were a product of American ‘cultural delusion’ that were alien to Western Europe and other ‘western’ states such as Japan. This notion of cultural areas undermines the most cherished American myth of the old, Cold War world: the concept of “The West” as a distinct unit. Americans like to talk about “The West” as though it were not only an enduring extended family to which Americans, West Europeans, and a

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Haunted by history few others are indissolubly attached…Until 1945 Americans never considered themselves fraternally tied to Europe, nor did they talk about “The West” as a political and cultural entity. If anything, the smart talk was of American membership in the “Anglo-Saxon race”.133

Much of de Gaulle’s rationale echoed such sentiment. What were these new international constructions that were doing so much to suppress the nation? What legitimacy did these hold over nations? Why should the French nation, that was far more concerned with the ‘German problem’ and the question of German rearmament fully buy into the concept of ‘the West’ and place the American desire for Soviet containment ahead of its own concerns and unease? In passing judgement or assessing de Gaulle we must, in short, see past de Gaulle or ‘the personal equation’ and bring the ideological concept of the nation to the forefront. Failure to do so, and what cognitive psychology terms the ad hominem fallacy, usually produces a judgement of ‘de Gaulle’ rather than his rationale. Granted, de Gaulle’s well documented thorny character and prickly temperament probably made him a difficult man to deal with, and occasionally his overzealous nature in his criticism of foreign nations got the better of him. Indeed, in The Edge of the Sword de Gaulle argues that leaders are usually ‘rough, disagreeable and aggressive’ and it is probable that de Gaulle was all of these things at all times.134 Nonetheless, one must judge the ideas and the rationale of the General, not the man himself.

Conclusion Regardless of how, in the Anglo-American world, we see de Gaulle it is an incontestable point that he remains a man of considerable talent and a figure of genuine intrigue. Indeed, his life as a soldier, writer, thinker, politician, and statesman make him a fascinating character to explore irrespective of personal opinion. As a figure, that is, who fought in both world wars, twice led France and acted as a national saviour, recast the nature of French republicanism in a more monarchical sense, and acted as the most commanding figure on the world stage during the 1960s, he stands as a Cold War giant that all scholars of IR should know something of. His writings are worthy of study in their own right and capture, with great literary skill, the essence of France’s interwar concerns, the nature of French participation during World War II, and de Gaulle’s sense of the problems of the rigid and inflexible international system that bi-polarity implied. All this implies that to the scholar of FPA de Gaulle is a hugely important figure to engage with and forms an excellent case study in terms of individual leadership, decision-making, and the influence of ideas upon this. This is so as there was a certain ‘edge’ to the conduct of Gaullist France during the 1960s that is difficult to quantify but is worthy of greater exploration. Gaullist France, that is, and although a ‘Western state’

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and American ally, seemed uncomfortable with the international status quo and struggled to see the world as Washington did. Developing nuclear weapons, withdrawing from NATO’s integrated command, opposing greater European integration, criticising US foreign policy in Vietnam, whilst forging better relations with East Germany, the Soviet Union, and China meant that de Gaulle was a puzzling figure to many. Explaining the conduct of France under de Gaulle as being little more than anti-Americanism or irrational nationalism is tempting but remains lazy scholarship. Such arguments, that is, represent a cognitive shortcut to dismissing him as a serious figure and statesmen. To my mind and as this study hopefully demonstrates, there is far greater depth to his thought and exploring this is key to understanding the conduct of France under his leadership. As explained at the outset of the chapter, the act of taking ‘Gaullism’ as a descriptive label through which to rationalise his thought process and the foreign policy that this produced remains closed to the scholar of FPA and hence other avenues need to be pursued. This implies, to my mind, that we look at the centrality of his thought in terms of his Bergsonian ‘history disease’ and the importance of the ‘nation’ to him and engage with his foreign policy through this. It is the interaction of these two elements, I argue, that enables us to place his views on nationalism firmly within Smith’s approach to the study of the nation, an act that takes us some way to understanding the conduct of France in the international system during his presidential tenure and hence de Gaulle as a decision-maker. This also forms the wider basis for an existential analysis in later chapters.

Notes 1 De Gaulle, C. (2002). The Enemy’s House Divided. London: Chapel Hill. 138–140. 2 Heilbrunn, J. (2008). They Knew They Were Right. The Rise of the Neocons. New York: Doubleday. 3 For discussion on this see Lavau, G. (1981). ‘The Effects of Twenty Years of Gaullism on the Parties of the Left’, in Andrews, W. G. and Hoffman, S. (editors). The Impact of the Fifth Republic on France. Albany: State University Press of New York. 91–92; Soustelle, J. (1968). Vingt-huit ans de gaullisme. Paris: La Table Ronde. 9; Treacher, A. (2003). French Interventionalism: Europe’s Last Global Player? Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. 147; Vaughan, M. (1976). ‘Gaullism’, in Kolinsky, M. and Paterson W. W. Social and Political Movements in Western Europe. London: Croom Helm. 108–141. 4 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 85–86. 5 Berstein, S. (1994). ‘De Gaulle and Gaullism in the Fifth Republic’, in Gough, H. and Horne, J. (editors). De Gaulle and Twentieth Century France. London: Edward Arnold. 109. 6 Hoffman, S. (1974). Decline or Renewal? France Since the 1930s. New York: The Viking Press. 217. 7 Kérillis, H. (1945). De Gaulle dictateur, une grande mystification de l’histoire. Montreal: Beauchemin. 8 Corcos, F. (1944). Gaullisme contre démocratie? New York: Editions Républicains.

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9 Ellison, J. (2007). The United States, Britain and the Transatlantic Crisis. Rising to the Gaullist Challenge. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan; Hughes, H. S. (1951). ‘Gaullism: Retrospect and Prospect’, in Modern France: Problems of the Third and Fourth Republics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 10 Lester, J. (1971). De Gaulle: King Without a Crown. Folkestone: Bailey Brothers & Swinfen. 163. 11 Willis, F. R. (1982). The French Paradox, Understanding Contemporary France. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. 1. 12 Watson, J. (1997). ‘The Internal Dynamics of Gaullism, 1958–1969’, in, Atkin, N. and Tallet, F. The Right in France. London: I. B. Tauris. 245–259; Hureaux, R. (2007). L’actualité du gaullisme: cinq études sur les idées et l’action du général de Gaulle. Paris: François-Xavier de Guibert. 13 Duverger, M. (1996). ‘A Man of the Nineteenth or the Twenty-First Century?’, in Macridis, R. C.De Gaulle: Implacable Ally. New York: Harper and Row. xiv–xxxv. 14 Grosser, A. (1963). ‘General de Gaulle and the Foreign Policy of the Fifth Republic.’ International Affairs. 39:2. 298–313. 15 Mangold, P. (2006). The Almost Impossible Ally, Harold MacMillan and Charles de Gaulle. London: I. B. Tauris; Vaïsse, M. (2006). De Gaulle et la Russie. Paris: CNRS Éditions. 16 Mallet, S. (1995). Le Gaullisme et la Gauche. Paris: Éditions du seuil. For rejection of the ‘Right’ label see Cheles, L., Ferguson, R. and Vaughan, M. (1995). The Far Right in Western and Eastern Europe. London: Longman. 17 De Gaulle, C. (1970). Discours et Messages. Paris: Plon. 434. 18 Berstein, S. (2002). Histoire du gaullisme. Paris: Perrin; Charlot, J. (1970). Le Phénomène Gaulliste. Paris: Fayard; Vaughan, M. (1976). ‘Gaullism’, in Kolinsky, M. and Paterson, W. W. Social and Political Movements in Western Europe. London: Croom Helm. 108–133. 19 Touchard, J. (1978). Le gaullisme. Paris: Seuil. 20 Pickles, D. (1966). The Uneasy Entente: French Foreign Policy and Franco-British Misunderstandings. London: Oxford University Press. 5–12. 21 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 10. 22 Chêneboit, A. (1958). ‘Mais où est le gaullisme?’, Le Monde, December 2. This essentially translates as ‘But where is the Gaullism?’ 23 Duverger, M. (1996). ‘A Man of the Nineteenth or the Twenty-First Century?’, in Macridis, R. C. (1966).De Gaulle: Implacable Ally. New York: Harper and Row. xv. 24 Pedley, A. (1996). As Mighty as the Sword: A Study of the Writings of Charles de Gaulle. Exeter: Elm Bank Publications. 3. 25 Le Bihan, A. (2010). De Gaulle écrivain. Paris: Plurial. 26 Lacouture, J. (1970). De Gaulle. London. Hutchingson & Co. 5.2. 27 Williams, C. (1993). The Last Great Frenchman, a Life of General de Gaulle. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons. 13–14. 28 Ibid. 14. 29 De Gaulle, C. (1955). War Memoirs: The Call to Honour, 1940–1942. London: Collins. 9. 30 (1990). ‘Mon père n’a pas eu une enfance drôle.’ Le Figaro. April 12. 31 De Gaulle, C. (1955). War Memoirs: The Call to Honour, 1940–1942. London: Collins. 9–10. 32 Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 4–5. That said Peter Mangold claims that de Gaulle gave ‘some consideration to the Church’, when pondering his perspective career. See Mangold, P. (2006). The Almost Impossible Ally, Harold MacMillan and Charles de Gaulle. London: I. B. Tauris. 10.

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33 Mayeur, J. (1994). ‘De Gaulle as Politician and Christian’, in Gough H. and Horne, J. (editors). De Gaulle and Twentieth Century France. London: Edward Arnold. 96. 34 Williams, C. (1993). The Last Great Frenchman, a Life of General de Gaulle. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons. 38. 35 Ibid. 47–48. 36 Citation from Jean Pouget, taken from Robert Eden’s introductory essay in De Gaulle, C. (2002). The Enemy’s House Divided. London: Chapel Hill. xx. 37 Cogan, C. (1996). Charles de Gaulle: A Brief Biography with Documents. New York: Bedford Books. 20. 38 Williams, C. (1993). The Last Great Frenchman, a Life of General de Gaulle. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons. 64. 39 Lacouture, J. (1970). De Gaulle. London: Hutchinson. 11. 40 De Gaulle, C. (2002). The Enemy’s House Divided. London: Chapel Hill. xv. 41 De Gaulle, C. (1960). The Edge of the Sword. London: Faber & Faber. 77. 42 Ibid. 20. 43 Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 7–8. 44 Grinnell-Milne, D. (1961). The Triumph of Integrity: A Portrait of Charles de Gaulle. London: Bodley Head. 61. 45 De Gaulle, C. (1940). The Army of the Future. London: Hutchinson. 50. 46 Ibid. 58–59. 47 Grinnell-Milne, D. (1961). The Triumph of Integrity: A Portrait of Charles de Gaulle. London: Bodley Head. 65. 48 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 42. 49 Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 68. 50 De Gaulle, C. (1959). War Memoirs: Unity, 1942–1944. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 38. 51 Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 68–69. 52 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 67. 53 Ibid. 18. 54 Ibid. 60. 55 Ibid. 104. 56 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 43. 57 Williams, C. (1993). The Last Great Frenchman, a Life of General de Gaulle. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons. 337–338. 58 Crawley, A. (1969). De Gaulle: A Biography. London: Collins. 21; Hoffman, S. (1974). Decline or Renewal? France Since the 1930s. New York: The Viking Press. 215. 59 Cerny, P. (1980). The Politics of Grandeur. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 17; Hureaux, R. (2007). L’actualité du gaullisme: cinq études sur les idées et l’action du général de Gaulle. Paris: François-Xavier de Guibert. 75. 60 Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 4; Hartley, A. (1972). Gaullism, the Rise and Fall of a Political Movement. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 5–33; Kennedy, E. (1980). ‘Bergson’s Philosophy and French Political Doctrines: Sorel, Maurras, Péguy and de Gaulle.’ Government and Opposition. 15:1. 61 Lacouture, J. (1970). De Gaulle. London: Hutchinson. 12. 62 Bergson, H. (1944). Creative Evolution. New York: The Modern Library. 7–8. 63 De Gaulle, C. (1955). War Memoirs: The Call to Honour, 1940–1942. London: Collins. 66. 64 Ibid. 55.

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65 Ibid. 86. 66 Ibid. 89. 67 Hartley, A. (1972). Gaullism, the Rise and Fall of a Political Movement. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 51–95. 68 De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 172. 69 De Gaulle, C. (1955). War Memoirs: The Call to Honour, 1940–1942. London: Collins. 49. 70 De Gaulle, C. (1959). War Memoirs: Unity, 1942–1944. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 85–86. 71 De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 47. 72 De Gaulle, C. (1955). War Memoirs: The Call to Honour, 1940–1942. London: Collins. 92. 73 (1941). ‘Une solennelle mise en garde contre les agissements du Gaullisme, jeunes de France M. l’ambassadeur de Brinon vous adresse un ultime appel.’ L’Œuvre. March 2. 74 Broche, F. (2007). Une histoire des antigallisme: des origines à nos jours. Paris: Bartillat. 21–25. 75 (1943). ‘There is no France.’ Time. Monday, July 19. 76 De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 90. 77 (1943). ‘France: The People Win.’ Time. Monday, June 14; (1943). ‘Expediency Again.’ Time. Monday, July 5; (1943). ‘Gaullism and Realism.’ Time. Monday, July 26; (1944). ‘National Neurosis.’ Time. Monday, January 3. 78 For de Gaulle’s views on this see De Gaulle, C. (1955). War Memoirs: The Call to Honour, 1940–1942. London: Collins. 105–106. 79 De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 178. 80 Ibid. 174. 81 Lacroix-Riz, A. (2003). ‘Quand les Américains voulaient gouverner la France.’ Le Monde Diplomatique. May 19. 82 Sowerwine, C. (2001). France Since 1870: Culture, Politics and Society. New York: Palgrave. 226. 83 Mouré, K. and Alexander, M. (2002). Crisis and Renewal in France 1918–1962. New York: Berghahn Books. 176. 84 De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 232. 85 De Gaulle, C. (1955). War Memoirs: The Call to Honour, 1940–1942. London: Collins. 167. 86 Rioux, J. (1989). The Fourth Republic 1944–1958. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 50. 87 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 69. 88 De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 267. 89 Ibid. 90 Berstein, S. (2002). Histoire du gaullisme. Paris: Editions Perrin. 113–174. 91 Ouston, P. (1972). France in the Twentieth Century. London: MacMillan. 225. 92 Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 51–60. 93 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 16. 94 De Gaulle, C. (1980). Lettres, notes, et carnets, Tome 1, 1905–1941. Paris: Plon. 337.

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95 De Gaulle, C. (1960). The Edge of the Sword. London: Faber & Faber. 56; De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 245. 96 Werth, A. (1969). De Gaulle: A Political Biography. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 234–254; Lacouture, J. (1993). De Gaulle: The Ruler, 1945–1970. London: W.W. Norton & Company. 193–250; Berstein, S. (2002). Histoire du gaullisme. Paris: Editions Perrin. 176–221. 97 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 25–32. 98 Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 76. 99 Rioux, J. (1989). The Fourth Republic 1944–1958. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 313. 100 The 1958 election saw an overwhelming landslide victory for the Gaullists as they won 79% of the vote, the centrists 8%, and the communists 13%. See Hanley, D., Kerr, A. and Waites, N. (1984). Contemporary France, Politics and Society Since 1945. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 19. 101 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 47. 102 Hanley, D., Kerr, A. and Waites, N. (1984). Contemporary France, Politics and Society Since 1945. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 16. 103 Ibid. 17. 104 (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York: French Embassy Press. 88. 105 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 214. 106 Ibid. 215. 107 Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 103. 108 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 7. 109 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 171. 110 Guichard, O. in Paxton, R. and Wahl, N. (editors). (1994). De Gaulle and the United States: A Centennial Reappraisal. Oxford. Berg. 343–344. 111 Hassner, P. (1968). ‘From Napoleon III to de Gaulle.’ Interplay. 1:7. 17. 112 See Chapter Four: ‘The Atlantic Alliance and the American “Protectorate”’, in Kulski, W. (1966). De Gaulle and the World: The Foreign Policy of the Fifth French Republic. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. 152–188; Vaïsse, M. (1997). La France et l’OTAN 1949–1996. Paris: Éditions Complexe; Bozo, F. (2001). Two Strategies for Europe: de Gaulle, the United States, and the Atlantic Alliance. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. 113 Harris, R. (2008). ‘De Gaulle Understood that only Nations are Real.’ The Spectator. Wednesday, May 28. 114 Scheinman, L. (1969). ‘The Politics of Nationalism in Contemporary France.’ International Organisation. 23:4. 844. 115 Viansson-Ponté, P. (1968). ‘La France s’ennuie.’ Le Monde. March 15. This translates as ‘France is bored.’ 116 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 22. 117 De Gaulle, C. (1955). War Memoirs: The Call to Honour, 1940–1942. London: Collins. 79. 118 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 60. 119 Guichard, O. in Paxton, R. and Wahl, N. (editors). (1994). De Gaulle and the United States: A Centennial Reappraisal. Oxford: Berg. 344.

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120 Thompson, D. in Willis, F. (editor). (1967). De Gaulle, Anachronism, Realist, or Prophet? New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 23–25. 121 (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York: French Embassy Press. ‘National unity’, 22; ‘national renovation’, 23; ‘national task’, 30. 122 Ibid. ‘National peril’, 35; ‘national efforts’, 38; ‘full powers granted by the nation’, 49. 123 Schoenbrun, D. (1966). The Three Lives of Charles de Gaulle. London: Hamish Hamilton. 151. 124 (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York: French Embassy Press. ‘National ambition’, 116; ‘national progress’, 116; ‘national disaster’, 127; ‘integral part of the nation’, 181; ‘head of the nation’, 90; ‘explicit confidence of the nation’, 92. 125 For ‘up from the depths of the nation’ see De Gaulle, C. (1970). Discours et messages, Tome 2, Dans l’attente, Février, 1946–Avril 1958. Paris: Plon. 309. For ‘representatives of the nation’, see Cogan, C. (1996). Charles de Gaulle: A Brief Biography with Documents. New York: Bedford Books. 190. 126 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 300. 127 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 61–62. 128 Grosser, A. (1961). La IVème République et sa Politique Extérieure. Paris: Éditions du seuil. 34. 129 Berstein, S. (1993). The Republic of De Gaulle, 1958–1969. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 154. 130 Hureaux, R. (2007). L’Actualité du gaullisme: cinq études sur les idées et l’action du général de Gaulle. Paris: François-Xavier de Guibert. 18. 131 Serfaty, S. (1968). France, de Gaulle and Europe. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. 114; Macridis, R. C. (1966).De Gaulle: Implacable Ally. New York: Harper and Row. 1–9. 132 Hamon, L. (1958). De Gaulle dans la République. Paris: Librairie Plon. 46–68. 133 Vlahos, M. (1991). ‘Cultural and Foreign Policy.’ Foreign Policy. 82: Spring. 59– 60. Schoenbrun also makes similar remarks in explaining that de Gaulle saw the French and British as ‘different members of the same great family of Europeans, whereas America was always alien to de Gaulle’. See Schoenbrun, D. (1966). The Three Lives of Charles de Gaulle. London: Hamish Hamilton. 98. 134 De Gaulle, C. (1960). The Edge of the Sword. London: Faber & Faber. 32.

3

Ethno-symbolism and the ‘content’ of the international system

While it is correct to claim that de Gaulle was both a liberal nationalist and a keen student of Bergson, such claims, it must be noted are hardly novel. Yet this being so, and as it was the interaction between these cornerstones of the General’s thought that formed the intellectual basis of his decision-making process, such points are important to note and explore in some depth. Merely stating this however, and stopping short of defining de Gaulle’s nationalism as some form of ‘Bergsonian nationalism’ (whatever that may be), takes us only so far in our analysis of his foreign policy, his disagreements with the AngloAmerican world and, ultimately, the ideas that were instrumental in driving this. It lacks, in other words, a solid basis from which to work. Hence as a scholar of FPA, and in search of a more ‘concrete’ platform from which to work, I feel it pertinent to pursue this to a deeper level and offer a formal categorisation of de Gaulle’s sense of nationhood and the nationalism that this produced. It is this task that I seek to address in the chapter and I do so by placing de Gaulle, as a thinker on nations, within the academic debates and literature on nationalism. Indeed, although de Gaulle was influential as a figure on the Cold War world stage, and although his thoughts on nations are somewhat difficult to quantify, (not least because of his peculiar prose), my intention here is to explore where he ‘fits in’, as it were, to the large body of literature on nationalism.1 I begin by outlining the three principal schools of thought that characterise Anglo-American debates on nationalism. Formed around Umut Özkirimli’s Theories of Nationalism (2000), the schools of primordialism, modernism, and ethno-symbolism are considered here. I then subject de Gaulle’s understanding of nations to these three approaches, arguing that his understanding does not fit within Hans Kohn and Edward Shils’ ideas on primordialism, nor does it belong with modernist thinkers such as Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson.2 Rather de Gaulle’s concept of nationhood, I argue, best sits within Anthony Smith’s ethno-symbolic approach to nationalism.3 In the third section I offer a few words on the use of this categorisation in terms of its analytical power to both ‘de Gaulle’ specialists and scholars of FPA, before going on to show that de Gaulle, as an ‘ethno-symbolic nationalist’, would always see the historically imbued traits of a nation before any political ideology. De Gaulle, in other

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words, would see the ethno-symbolic (largely the ‘historical’) where others would see the ideological (principally Communism and Marxist doctrine) and led him to view the ‘content’ of the Cold War international system differently than those in Washington. In turn, and by the end of the chapter, we are left with a ‘blue print’ of de Gaulle’s sense of the international system and a category that provides a useful lens through which to understand key elements of his foreign policy. That said, and as I outline in the conclusion, this is still insufficient. True, it provides a better understanding of de Gaulle’s worldview, yet the force and strength of national individuality still remains absent. In other words, although ethno-symbolism is able to characterise the ‘building blocks’ and ‘content’ of his view of the international system, the individuality and anthropomorphic nature of de Gaulle’s understanding of nations is still a little hollow in the absence of an existential platform. Finally, I wish to note that I have chosen to limit myself to the AngloAmerican literature on nationalism here. This is largely the product of the need to bring, as it were, some form of order to the scholarly material employed in this chapter and throughout the study in a wider sense. Indeed, and although numerous French works look at de Gaulle in the context of Gallic nationalism, bringing in additional material would be a useful act but it would also broaden the scope offered here to such an extent that the central narrative of my argument would be lost.4 Put another way, and given that the book is concerned with de Gaulle in the context of FPA, I am keen to explore how his sense of nations and nationalism conditioned his foreign policy rather than focusing on de Gaulle’s nationalism per se. That said, I am broadly convinced that de Gaulle’s sense of nations and nationalism, and given the discussion offered in the previous chapter on his ‘history disease’ and inherent Bergsonism, is best described and placed within the ethno-symbolic school. As such, and as ethno-symbolism has never been used in relation to de Gaulle, I feel that such an approach offers a significant degree of originality, insight, and analysis.

Nationalism: three schools of thought In 1882 Ernest Renan delivered a seminal lecture at the Sorbonne in Paris which sought to explore what he understood by the term ‘nation’. At heart Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? (What is a Nation?) sought to differentiate racial, linguistic, and national groups from one another, arguing that to see them as being interchangeable was a flawed approach and failed to capture the fundamental essence of the term ‘nation’.5 What held these groups together, he argued, was hardly the same thing. For Renan, and in relation to the term ‘nation’ the answer was ‘a daily plebiscite’, what we may call a ‘perpetual referendum’ whereby the body politic, through their actions and tacit acceptance of their state of being, reaffirm the wider historical collective consciousness of a social reality or broad collectivity. Yet despite Renan’s own views there remains no simple answer to the question today and we are no less divided and confused

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by this ‘nation’ than he and his contemporaries were. We may ask, that is, what binds a people together? Is there such thing as a collective consciousness? Are such forces ancient or modern? Do nations produce nationalism or do things work the other way around? Of course, and not least because I am most unqualified to do so, I have no intention of tackling Renan’s question here and hence offer no response to this. However, given the discussion in the previous chapter on de Gaulle’s sense of nationhood and his relationship with the temporal, I feel it is a relatively straightforward task to answer the question of what a nation is for the General and where his views fit into the literature on the topic. From the discussion in the previous chapter we know that ‘the nation’ was central to all de Gaulle’s political considerations and that his descriptions of ‘the nation’ were predominantly poetic, symbolic and metaphorical. They were, in Debray’s words, ‘closer to biology than to geometry’ and ‘closer to instinct than intelligence’.6 This is to say, in other words, that a Bergsonian sense of the past shaped de Gaulle’s vision of France and the world in a wider sense and this is expressed in his most insightful claims regarding what may be termed the ‘ontological status of France’. In the opening words of Memoirs of Hope de Gaulle writes, France has emerged from the depths of the past. She is a living entity. She responds to the call of the centuries. Yet she remains herself through time. Her boundaries may alter, but not the contours of her climate, the rivers and seas that are her eternal imprint. Her land is inhabited by people who, in the course of history, have undergone the most diverse experiences, but whom destiny and circumstance…have unceasingly moulded into a single nation. This nation has embraced countless generations. At this moment it contains several. It will give birth to many more. But by reason of its geography, of the genius of the races which compose it, and of its position in relation to its neighbours, it has taken on an enduring character which makes each generation of Frenchmen dependant on their forefathers and pledged to their descendants…this human amalgam, on this territory, at the heart of this world, comprise a past, a present and a future that are indissoluble. Thus the state, which is answerable for France, is in charge, at one and the same time of yesterday’s heritage, today’s interests, and tomorrow’s hopes.7 Of both the people and the land and throughout most of de Gaulle’s works one can find similar descriptions of France. For example, in Salvation de Gaulle refers to his fellow countrymen gathering to greet him in 1944, ‘in Mainz, where the crowd that received Charles de Gaulle was a large one. It was as if after centuries of terrible ordeals the souls of their Gallic and Frankish ancestors lived again in those present.’8 He also spoke of French soil in a similar manner, ‘this section of Champagne is imbued with calm – wide, of mournful horizons; melancholy woods and meadows; the frieze of resigned

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old mountains; tranquil, unpretentious villages where nothing has changed its spirit or its place for thousands of years’.9 France, in this sense, existed as a historical reality for de Gaulle, possessed a historically rooted national character, and was a national expression of Bergsonian ‘duration’. Such snippets of de Gaulle’s ‘idea of France’ clearly imply that his sense of nationhood was rooted in his ‘history disease’ that was discussed in the previous chapter and which conditioned his wider worldview. In this sense the nation for de Gaulle was a reverberation of history and a reflection of the past; France becomes the embodiment of this. The French nation was not, that is, in any sense a modern construct but was a living entity that stretched back through time and beyond the mists of history. The Gaulish peoples such as Vercingétorix, through to Clovis and the Frankish tribes were regarded to be Frenchmen just as much as Georges Clemenceau, André Malraux, and Lionel Jospin were. These were part of the ‘countless generations’ of Frenchmen in de Gaulle’s concept of France. On the notion of France as a historical reality one cannot stress this enough. France, for de Gaulle, represented something akin to a primordial and elementary notion, a sort of unrelenting existence of history expressing itself in the present. On this point there can be little debate as to talk of France and the ‘depths of the past’ and her ‘eternal footprint’ illustrates this well. There is, however, a debate or at least a discourse on how we are able to contextualise this and to see where it ‘fits in’ to the current debates on nationhood; to the FPA analyst extrapolating this label is of significant use given the explanatory power this provides. With this in mind let us turn to the three main schools of thought on nationalism as set out by Özkirimli. Primordialism, as the name suggests, stresses that nations are ancient, natural and elemental constructs that pre-date history. They are, that is, part of the fabric of human existence and hence a given fundamental. This assertion stems from numerous writers such as Kohn who, in 1944, advocated the view that nations are natural entities, what Kohn calls ‘organic nationalism’. Smith sums up, ‘“Organic nationalism” holds that the world consists of natural nations, and has always done so; that nations are the bedrock of history and the chief actors in the historical drama; that nations and their characters are organisms that can be easily ascertained by their cultural differentiae’.10 Shils’ 1957 article, ‘Primordial, Personal, Sacred and Civil Ties’, built on Kohn’s work and went on to influence significant thinkers such as Clifford Geertz.11 ‘Primordialism’, as Sandra Fullerton Joireman sums up, ‘the very word evokes images of ancient beginnings, evolution and a natural state of being. These are the images that most closely represent the primordialist view of ethnic identities. If the study of nationalism and ethnic conflict can be divided into new and old approaches then primordialism would be in the “old” camp both literally and theoretically.’12 That said, Wendt’s assertion that nation-states may be regarded as a form of superorganism, such as beehives or ant colonies, goes some way to capturing the essence of this older way of thinking about the ontological nature of the state. But regardless of the merits of Wendt’s thesis, he is certainly correct when he writes that in the discourse of modern

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international relations ‘the philosophical argument against organicism is usually just assumed rather than argued’.13 Nonetheless and in short, the fundamental concern that lies at the heart of primordialism is the natural, ancient and organic nature of the nation. While the primordial approach to nationalism held the academic high-ground during the 1940s and 1950s it was challenged in the 1960s by a series of modernist thinkers. With Anderson (perhaps) being the most influential of this scholarly group, the modernists contend that nations do not, and cannot, predate the French Revolution. For Anderson, a nation is an illusory and imagined society, ‘it is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’.14 Modernists tend to see nations as a by-product of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century phenomena such as free enterprise, the idea of progress, the overthrowing of monarchs, the industrial revolution, urbanisation, and the growth of secularism and the subsequent forces this created. Hence nations, for modernists, flow from the very process of modernity itself. Gellner’s 1964 work, Thought and Change, and his 1983 seminal study, Nations and Nationalism stress this point well. The modernist position on nationalism soon became the dominant approach in the field and although challenged in the 1980s by the ethnosymbolists it has held this position well into the early years of the twenty-first century. ‘We may thus’, as Eric Hobsbawm sums up, ‘without entering further into the matter accept that in its modern and basically political sense the concept of the nation is historically very young’.15 It is in this sense that modernists contend that nationalism creates nations not the other way around. In short, as Özkirimli puts it, ‘there was no room for nations or nationalism in the pre-modern era’.16 Finally, the ethno-symbolists, of which John Armstrong and Smith are perhaps the most influential, arose in reaction to the school of modernist thought and sit, in an intellectual sense, between the notions espoused by primordialism and modernism. Coming into being during the 1980s ethnosymbolists contend that nations are neither primordial and hence are not natural entities, but nor are they products of modernity in any meaningful sense. Rather Smith and Armstrong argue that nations are the evolutionary manifestation of collective ethnic groups that shared common symbols and myths in former times. That is to say that nations in the modern-era and nations in earlier periods may not resemble one another per se and hence to look for our contemporary perception of modern nations throughout history is a flawed approach. In short, the modern concept of ‘the nation’ may stem from an earlier social group, and hence a relationship exists, but the two will not look the same. Thus ethno-symbolism claims that modern nations are a product of earlier groups that shared some form of ‘collective consciousness’ and which appear in their modern form as an echo of the past and a product of history. Hence, and in Smith’s words, ethno-symbolism is an attempt to correct the modernists’ ‘systematic failure to accord any weight to the

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pre-existing cultures and ethnic ties of the nations that emerged in the modern epoch’.17 As Özkirimli sumps up, ‘the difference between modern nations and the collective cultural units of earlier eras are of degree rather than kind’.18 ‘Modernist arguments have been challenged in recent years’, he stresses, By a number of scholars who focused on the role of pre-existing ethnic ties and sentiments in the formation of modern nations. In their determination to reveal the ‘invented’ or ‘constructed’ nature of nationalism, these scholars argued, modernists systematically overlooked the persistence of earlier myths, symbols, values and memories in many parts of the world and their continuing significance for large numbers of people… according to them, the formation of nations should be examined in la longue durée, that is a ‘time dimension of many centuries’, for the emergence of today’s nations cannot be understood properly without taking their ethnic forebears into account.19 There are, of course, smaller schools of thought within these wider approaches to nationalism, but such is the nature of things that to explore all would be an ill-advised digression. Hence Özkirimli’s distinctions of primordialism, modernism, and ethno-symbolism are preferred here. Smith generally uses the same approach in his 1998 work Nationalism and Modernism. It is with the three approaches now outlined that I turn to the question of where de Gaulle’s understanding of nationalism fits in. By doing so we may better understand the essence of his nationalism, his comprehension of nationhood per se, the ‘content’ of the international system as dictated through his rationale, and hence a key element of the ideas that informed the decision-making process at the heart of his foreign policy.

From Bergsonism to ethno-symbolism If, in relation to the broad themes and claims of primordialism, modernism, and ethno-symbolism, we understand the nature and essence of these, then it offers an appropriate platform through which to assess and locate de Gaulle’s sense of nationalism. This is important as although de Gaulle was a nationalist it strikes me, and in the absence of any substantial grounding, as being somewhat anecdotal and ‘sketchy’ to simply refer to him as such and move on. Indeed, to my mind the political expression of nationalism is largely the end-product or ‘outcome’ of a wider cognitive intellectual process and reflection on demography, history, philosophy, and the interaction of these within a broad set of political values. It is in this sense, and in order to grasp the foundational aspect of de Gaulle’s foreign policy, that working towards a formal categorisation of this is certainly useful. But given the discussion in the last chapter concerning de Gaulle’s ‘history disease’, given the discussion thus far in this chapter on his historically imbued sense of France and the various

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interpretations of ‘the nation’, I argue that de Gaulle’s thought was thoroughly ethno-symbolic. Let us explore this claim in greater depth. Recalling the General’s words, and given that de Gaulle understood that France, ‘responds to the call of the centuries’, must surely discount the placement of de Gaulle within the modernist school of thought.20 Indeed, in the sense that modernism, in both a literal and intellectual sense, sees nations as being the product of modernity and all that this process implies, means that the very essence of this conflicts with the General’s rationale. The idea, that is, of the French state and hence France existing prior to the French nation cannot be reconciled with de Gaulle’s perception of nationhood. As, Hobsbawm writes, ‘the basic characteristics of the modern nation and everything connected with it is its modernity. This is now well understood’.21 Quoting Colonel Pilsudski Hobsbawm concludes, ‘“it is the state which makes the nation not the nation the state”. But after 1880 it increasingly did matter how ordinary common men and women felt about nationality. It is therefore important to consider the feelings and attitudes among pre-industrial people of this kind, on which the “novel appeal of political nationalism could be built”.’22 But for de Gaulle, and as we have already heard, ‘France has emerged from the depths of the past. She is a living entity. She responds to the call of the centuries. Yet she remains herself through time. Her boundaries may alter, but not the contours of her climate, the rivers and seas that are her eternal imprint.’ The two understandings of nationhood are irreconcilable and hence we must etch de Gaulle’s name from the modernist school of thought. He may not, in other words, sit with Anderson, Gellner and Hobsbawm. In terms of primordialism it is tempting to place de Gaulle’s concept of nationhood within this school of thought as, on first glance, it would appear that it fits into this body of thought with little trouble. The General that is, and his historically rooted rhetoric, seemingly speaks the language of primordialism and the historical forces that sit at the heart of this. To be sure, given that primordialists see nations flowing back through history and are thusly a natural product of antiquity should seemingly lead us to place de Gaulle amongst Kohn and Shils’ rationale. In Salvation, de Gaulle even refers to the French perception of him as being ‘primordial’ and one could perhaps expect the General’s ideas on nationhood to reflect this.23 However, the elementary problem of treating de Gaulle’s concept of nationhood as primordial is that of how a nation is brought into being, of how the nation exists, and ultimately why the nation exists. Primordialists, as noted above, regard the nation as being natural and organic. They are akin to family bonds or perhaps language, or in Smith’s words, ‘like natural organisms, subject to the laws of nature’.24 Yet for all of de Gaulle’s descriptions of France he does not ascribe ‘naturalness’ to the nation. He does not mention or allude to this in his above description of the nation nor in any of his works or speeches. The nation for de Gaulle is not biological nor is it organic; that is to say, natural. As Roland Hureaux’s points out, ‘the nation for him is not a given fundamental’, yet for us to see de Gaulle as a

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primordialist he must see nations as the product of nature.25 He does not and Debray captures this point well. I abhor ‘nationals’, but I do not include de Gaulle. Because I regard inventive – albeit not impeccable – a conception of the nation which brings law into the forests. By challenging both romantic organicism (the nation as a fusional organism devouring the rights of the individual) and judicial artificiality (the nation as a social contract and civil agreement between individuals). The latter, to keep things short, dates from the French eighteenth century; the former from the German nineteenth. With a bow in the direction of the dialectic, it might be said that de Gaulle embodied a third movement, beyond the Teutonic Vaterland and the American political convention: the nation as symbolic heritage, beyond the primitive tribe but on this side of the ‘body of associated persons living under a common law’ (Sieyès). His nation is an act not of nature but of culture, located at the confluence of a history and a purpose.26 In this sense de Gaulle becomes irreconcilable with primordialism, and as Debray captures with his usual elegant prose, de Gaulle’s nation is a cultural echo of the historical, not a natural phenomenon per se. Perennialism, which is a more developed form of primordialism, has been advocated in recent years, and crucially contends that nations have existed throughout history and have emerged from the past but are not innate creations. Undeniably, my understanding of de Gaulle’s sense of nationhood shares some strands of thought with perennialism, but it is within Smith’s approach of ethno-symbolism that de Gaulle’s concept of the nation and French nationhood best corresponds.27 To emphasise this point, we must look at ethno-symbolism a little closer and in tandem with de Gaulle’s understanding of the nation. In short, the two must be reconciled. In order to do this I take Smith’s eight-point analysis of ethnosymbolism, as outlined in his 1999 work, Myths and Memories of the Nation, which explains the ethno-symbolic approach to nationhood and nationalism, and demonstrate that de Gaulle’s understanding of these, based on that contained in his own works, correspond with ethno-symbolism. Stated briefly Smith’s sense of nationhood is based on the following assumptions: (1) la longue durée; (2) the national past, present, and future; (3) the ethnic basis of nations; (4) the cultural components of ethnies; (5) ethnic myths and symbols; (6) ethno-history; (7) roots to nationhood, and finally; (8) the longevity of nationalism.28 Of course, we could probably take specific elements of both primordialism and modernism and match these up with de Gaulle’s understanding of nationhood and proceed to make the argument that de Gaulle could sit within both schools of thought. But to do so would be superficial given that, in the final analysis, de Gaulle’s understanding of nations is historical, cultural, and symbolic, not natural or primordial. They are also ancient and span the centuries and hence are not modern but are the products of history that pre-date the modernist period and certainly the post-1789 era. Nonetheless, this is not

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to say that Smith and de Gaulle’s views are one and the same. Rather I argue that the most relevant avenue to rationalise de Gaulle is through an understanding of the themes and values of the ethno-symbolic approach to the study of nations. In working towards a framework for us to understand ethno-symbolism in more complex terms, Smith first highlights his reasons for rejecting the modernist school of thought. ‘It is insufficient’, he writes, ‘due to its systematic failure to accord any weight to the pre-existing cultures and ethnic ties of the nations that emerged in the modern epoch’. We are subsequently presented with an overview of ethno-symbolism’s understanding of nationhood and the nationalism that flows from this. That is the nationalism that flows from ‘the myths, memories, traditions, and symbols of ethnic heritage’, which ultimately constitute a ‘living past’.29 Right away, and given Smith’s notion of a ‘living past’ and de Gaulle’s description of France as a ‘living entity’ we are confronted with a similar concept of the nation as an animate being. This is a sort of incarnate echo and existing personification of history. Yet a solitary point based on existence and a living past is no basis for a meaningful connection through which to reconcile de Gaulle’s rationale with the logic of ethnosymbolism. As such Smith provides us with an eight-pronged structure of ethno-symbolism, of which the majority correspond well with the General’s understanding of nationhood. In the first of his eight points, which Smith terms la longue durée or ‘time dimension of many centuries’, it is explained that ‘if we want to grasp the power and understand the shape of modern nations and nationalism, we must trace the origins and formation of nations, as well as their possible future course, over long periods of time, and not tie their existence and formation to a particular period of history or to the process of modernization’.30 For us, and especially given de Gaulle’s long view of history, of France existing for two thousand years and of the endurance of the past, the point is a pertinent one. As Jackson points out of the General, ‘He was imbued with a particular vision of France’s history that allowed him to place the events of the present and the future in a long historical pattern’. This is why, and to recall de Gaulle’s words from the previous chapter, he once claimed to an American official, ‘you have been in France for twelve years, I have been here for two thousand already’.31 Speaking in 1960 de Gaulle again implies that France has existed for two thousand years, ‘The world is thus full of opposing forces. Of course, human wisdom has often succeeded in preventing these rivalries from degenerating into murderous conflicts. But the competition of efforts is the condition of life. Our country finds itself confronted today with this law of the species, as it has been for 2,000 years.’32 Hence, and in light of de Gaulle’s notion of France emerging ‘from the depths of the past’ we are again faced with a similar rationale to that of Smith.33 But here it is not merely the case that de Gaulle is refuting the modernity of his nation, he also makes no allusion to any specific year in which the French nation began. In short de Gaulle agrees with Smith that nations, or at least France in this instance, while modern in

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one sense are only a product of an earlier echo of a past that has developed into its modern form over the centuries; a creation of history or la longue durée. ‘Look, see your sons’, as de Gaulle writes in the opening of France and Her Army, ‘who have fought so hard onto the stage of history with the sword of Brennus’; if we understand la longue durée to mean the ‘long term’ or ‘extended duration’ then, ‘France’s sons’, which de Gaulle sees as emerging around the time of Brennus and hence being two thousand years old, give existence and essence to their twenty-first-century Gallic kin.34 This is certainly la longue durée. Smith’s second point is termed ‘National Past, Present, and Future’ and is broken down into subsections. Here Smith essentially argues that, from the rationale of ethno-symbolism, nations have ‘common myths and historical memories’.35 They require continuity through ‘names, symbols, languages, customs, territories and…national identity’ that will be passed down through generations, and finally that nations require ‘a reaching back into the ethnic past to obtain the authentic materials, and ethos for a distinct modern nation’.36 Earlier periods, the current age, and the forthcoming epoch are intrinsically connected. Again, de Gaulle’s conceptual basis of France is best understood through this lens. Of France, and as noted above, he states, ‘it has taken on an enduring character which makes each generation of Frenchmen dependant on their forefathers and pledged to their descendants…this human amalgam, on this territory, at the heart of this world, comprise a past, a present and a future that are indissoluble’.37 This is precisely what Malraux meant when he claimed that it was not so much historical destiny that the General felt, but the lingering and enduring ‘presence of the past’. It was a continuous, unrelenting, and haunting Bergsonian sense of the past that walked with de Gaulle throughout his life. In articulating this notion to Malraux, de Gaulle spoke of Napoleon; ‘believe me, France had not forgotten him, whatever she may think. In 1940, he was behind me when I told the French they were not what they seemed to be’.38 It was this co-presence of different times that Lacouture points to in explaining why de Gaulle’s relationship with the UK was often ambivalent and complex; ‘the bitterness that often darkened de Gaulle’s relations with the British was the result of excessive attachment to a past in which Hastings, Agincourt, Waterloo and Fashoda loomed large’.39 It is in this sense that de Gaulle’s past, present and future becomes a reflection of Smith’s ethno-symbolic understanding of nations. It is le passé qui ne passe pas; that is, the past that does not pass. Smith’s third element is termed the ‘ethnic basis of nations’. Here Smith contends that for a nation to come into being it requires common socio-cultural heritage, symbols, and emblems that, in a previous age, bound peoples together into an ethnie or ethnic group, from which modern nations are formed (Smith uses the French term ethnie which simply translates as ‘ethnic group’, and which is done to draw the distinction between an ‘ethnic group’ that shares common heritage and a ‘race’ that shares more innate and biological elements). Without these symbolic building-blocks an ethnie is unlikely to come into

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existence. Smith lists six criteria for ethnie creation, all of which, de Gaulle regards as key. Smith’s own summing up of these six points is as follows; This allows us to define an ethnie as (1) a named human population with (2) myths of common ancestry, (3) shared historical memories and (4) one or more common elements of culture, including an association with (5) a homeland, and some (6) degree of solidarity, at least among the élites.40 In terms of seeing de Gaulle’s acquiescence with all of this we have little trouble. The General’s (1) ‘named human population’ is unquestionably ‘the French’ and (2) ‘the myths of common ancestry’ is the line that flows back to the Franks and Gauls and runs through the Napoleonic, Valois and Capetian eras. Indeed, in Memoirs of Hope, and when discussing France’s role in Africa after 1945, de Gaulle remarked that the continents’ leaders ‘looked with favour on the reappearance of the “Franks”’.41 De Gaulle’s notion of (3) ‘shared historical memories’ is key to ethnie formation and the great deeds of Charlemagne, Odo the Great, Hugh Capet, Saint Louis, as well as the events of the Hundred Years War, the French Revolution, the tumultuous events of the Paris Commune and Vichy France clearly shaped his ‘certain idea of France’. The (4) common elements of culture can be held to be that of the French language and Catholicism as well as the (5) French homeland. The final requirement of Smith’s ‘ethnic basis of nations’ is termed (6) ‘a measure of solidarity, at least amongst the élites’.42 However, here we are faced with a problem as de Gaulle was constantly concerned for the lack of Gallic solidarity between France’s political élites and the impact of this upon French unity in a wider sense. This is why, and as de Gaulle laments in The Army of the Future, ‘among us, solidarity and discipline have a quality of hesitancy, reserve and instability which make common action uneven and awkward’.43 This is something he also stressed to Malraux, ‘I can accept that a civilization may be without faith, as you say, but I should like to know what it uses instead, consciously or unconsciously. To be sure, nothing is final. What would happen if France became France again? I learned that gathering the French together always remains to be done over again.’44 In one sense, this perhaps lessens de Gaulle’s fit with ethno-symbolism, yet it would be surprising if one or two ‘grey areas’ did not surface within any framework. That said, de Gaulle sees this tendency to fragment as an enduring Gallic trait and as something left over from an earlier period.45 It is something that France’s forbearers were imbued with. This, therefore, could be seen to strengthen the link of continuity between the pre-modern ethnie and modern Frenchmen. To be sure, and as de Gaulle stresses in Salvation, the French inability to act as one has been responsible for so many of France’s ills throughout her history.46 In terms of how such ethnies come to be nations Smith states: Most nations…in the West have been formed around ethnic cores – dominant populations united by presumed ties of shared ancestry and

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Of note here is the fact that Smith highlights the French case of ethnie formation as an example. Despite de Gaulle’s usual rhythmical tone we are able to conclude that his understanding of ethnie formation is similar to that of ethno-symbolism in stating, ‘her land is inhabited by people who, in the course of history, have undergone the most diverse experiences, but whom destiny and circumstance, exploited by politicians, have unceasingly moulded into a single nation’.48 To be sure, and as de Gaulle explains in France and Her Army, France is a, ‘fusion of several powerful races’. She is A country of mild climate, where every region possesses its own particular characteristics, complementing those of its neighbours where the basins drained by divergent rivers of different character communicate with each other by easy passes, a land of harmonious horizons, of plentiful products and varied in contour…France has imprinted on the men who live there her own stamp, making a balanced whole out of their differences…history herself lent her aid. The Roman conquest, by giving the peoples of Gaul the same language, the same laws and Christianity and by making them accept a single morality increased the common bond which withstood so many efforts to break it up.49 This certainly reflects Smith’s idea of ethnie formation. The fourth facet of ethno-symbolism, as outlined in Myths and Memories of the Nation, is referred to as ‘the cultural components of ethnies’. This ‘claim of ethno-symbolism’, as Smith explains, ‘is that the pre-existing components and long-term continuities of ethnic communities and nations are cultural and symbolic rather than demographic’.50 In other words, it is the historically based cultural and civilising mechanisms that are present in the modern day, and which are inherent within each ethnie that bind the specific collective unit together; not a natural, primordial, or biological human trait. For de Gaulle, and the subsequent ideas of nationhood that are represented within his rationale, this again corresponds well with Smith’s understanding of ethnies. This is what Hureaux meant when he wrote, ‘above all he thought that the essence of a nation is not biological but spiritual’.51 Hureaux’s point is especially pertinent as it was this spirituality that gave a soul to de Gaulle’s France. Within this, we are able to include shared history and religion, but also more modern elements such as a national language, the tricoleur, and the la Marseillaise. But for de Gaulle, the most important cultural and symbolic element of France, the one true symbol that bound the nation together that is, was the symbol of national sovereignty; of France’s independence.

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It was this symbol, this fundamental ‘treasure of French sovereignty’ as de Gaulle calls it, that held France together perhaps in the same way that, as Richard Hofstadter famously argued, it is the ideological commitment to a set of ideas that holds American society and culture together.52 It was this that grandeur was fundamentally concerned with. Never was this an ardent expression of destructive nationalism and as with all acts of foreign policy one must always see the domestic element of this. Grandeur was sovereignty and sovereignty wedded the French to France. It was an act of perpetual self-affirmation that highlighted to a domestic audience the existence of the nation and the state and is why de Gaulle, although so very different from Bonaparte, admired him greatly. As Malraux sums up, ‘in his view, the Emperor had proved to Frenchmen that France existed’.53 Through de Gaulle’s reading of history, Gallic autonomy and French self-rule had not been surrendered since the Roman withdrawal from Gaul, and Clovis’ subsequent stepping into the power vacuum which succeeded in uniting the disparate Frankish tribes. This is what de Gaulle really meant when he spoke of the crimes of Vichy in 1940 which gave up Gallic independence in the face of Hitler and who yielded ‘French sovereignty which for fourteen centuries had never been surrendered’.54 In commenting on his own actions to denounce Vichy, de Gaulle claimed he was rescuing the nation’s ‘soul’ as ‘France had been betraying her own past…by abandoning her own defence’.55 When de Gaulle claimed he was France he really meant that he represented this sovereignty.56 One of the key symbols, perhaps the fundamental symbol of the nation’s sovereignty, past and present, was the French Army and if they fell then so did France’s prestige, standing, morality and independence. ‘This is not only’, as de Gaulle stresses, ‘because force is more necessary than ever for nations that want to survive, but also because the military body is the most complete expression of the spirit of a social system. It is by the history of the legions that Rome is best understood. The royal troops were the mirror of our old monarchy. Who can think of the Revolution without conjuring up the Volunteers?’57 The death of French sovereignty, in short, meant the birth of Gallic moral suicide. France, without question, had suffered setbacks during the Hundred Year’s War, the Napoleonicera and the Franco-Prussian conflict, but these were reverses, not capitulations; one may influence the other yet they are not the same thing. Smith’s fifth element of ethno-symbolism is termed, ‘ethnic myths and symbols’, and is a two-fold notion. Smith firstly asserts that modern nations must be underpinned by a ‘myth of ethnic descent’.58 As emphasised above, de Gaulle’s concept of French nationhood stretches back to at least the Gauls and thusly corresponds with this. The second point Smith raises in this section is that most modern nations have some notion of a modern ‘duty’ that has developed as an echo of ‘ethnic election’ from previous times. Smith explains, ‘equally important for the survival of ethnies has been the development of myths of ethnic election. These may be missionary or covenantal in character. Missionary election myths exalt their ethnies by assigning them god-given tasks or missions or warfare or conversion or over lordship’. One of Smith’s

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examples of this is de Gaulle’s Gallic forbearers who are cited as being convinced of ‘their role as latter-day king Davids defending the new Israel (France)’.59 De Gaulle certainly felt there to be something unique about the French nation which led him to assert that other European nations had a ‘traditional fear of our supremacy’.60 Of course, although such sentiment is highly subjective it nevertheless tallies with the notion of ‘ethnic election’ and of which the famous line of France being in the ‘front rank of nations’ is an expression.61 In terms of ‘missionary election’, again de Gaulle’s concept of the nation fits with this as throughout his writings and speeches on France he makes a large number of references to France’s ‘mission’ which he sees as bringing nations together and forging a détente in a dangerous world. For example, talking of France’s role within the international system he stresses, ‘yes, international life, like life in general is a battle. The battle which our country is waging tends to unite and not to divide, to honor and not to debase, to liberate and not to dominate. Thus it is faithful to its mission, which always was and which remains human and universal.’62 In The Army of the Future, de Gaulle also talks of France’s civilising mission, which by wielding ‘Roman authority, the gospel of classic laws and revolutionary principals’, and by remaining true to her values she was the ‘Penelope of international work’.63 In reflecting on this in Memoirs of Hope de Gaulle sees this develop into France’s role as international arbitrator during the Cold War. Was this not, in the General’s words, what ‘the whole world expected of us?’64 Such expressions from de Gaulle certainly echo Smith’s ethno-symbolic model of the nation. The sixth premise of ethno-symbolism is held to be that of ‘ethno-history’ which is perfectly suited to de Gaulle’s understanding of nationhood. Smith tells us that by the term of ‘ethno-history’ it is implied that there must be varying interpretations and memories of the past given that ethnies are not formed from a singularity of peoples. The point is a logical one and as seen above de Gaulle agrees with this. Therefore, as Smith writes, ‘given the multiplicity of interests, needs and outlooks of members of any community, the likelihood of a single, unified version of the communal past emerging in any relatively free society must be minimal…the past is as much a zone of conflict as the present’.65 France, beyond doubt, is a manifestation and expression of this, something that Smith highlights in using the Dreyfus Affair as a prime example to support his claim whereby, ‘a medievalizing monarchist and Catholic vision of French ethno-history was challenged by a secular, revolutionary and classicizing interpretation of the French past’.66 De Gaulle echoes this in much of his work. In The Edge of the Sword he claims that ‘history is distorted so that the battles of the past shall be forgotten’.67 In The Army of the Future, and writing on Germany’s perception of France’s historically rooted contradictory character he laments, This Frenchman, who has so much order in his mind and so little in his acts, this logician who doubts everything, this lackadaisical hard worker, this stay-at-home colonizer, this enthusiast about alexandrines, sings

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comic songs, goes about in sloppy clothes and strews the grass with litter, this Colbert colleague of Louvois, this Jacobin shouting “Long live the Emperor!” this politician who forms the “Union Sacrée”, this man defeated at Charleroi who attacks on the Marne. ‘In short’ de Gaulle asks, who can understand ‘this fickle, uncertain, contradictory nation?’68 De Gaulle’s much quoted, yet jovial remark, ‘How can you be expected to govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese?’ captures the essence of this well. The explanation of these conflicting characteristics is that ‘people want history to resemble themselves or, at least, to resemble their dreams’. These ‘dreams’ were a source of the historical conflict played out in the modern day yet, ‘happily’, as the General concludes, ‘they sometimes have great dreams’.69 The penultimate strand of Smith’s ethno-symbolism is termed ‘roots to nationhood’. Essentially this seventh component stresses that although premodern ethnic ties help to tell us which collective units formed as nations, it does not tell us why. Using the foundations of Armstrong’s 1982 work, Nations Before Nationalism, Smith argues that some given, and interdependent factors have to be present for ethnies to have a foundation that will serve as a stimulus for the beginnings of national formation. Of these, cultures (either nomadic or sedentary) must correspond between groups, there is usually a ‘great’ religion present, imperial administration may serve as a mythomoteur, and at the ‘most dependant level’ language has to play a role.70 Again this fits with de Gaulle’s own thoughts and rationale. But Smith’s key point of this septennial notion is that of how such factors spread in the first place. For de Gaulle, he sees the six-hundred-year Roman occupation of Gaul as providing the building blocks for a unified people.71 The imperial administration of Gaul, that is, acted as a primary myth-engine in the establishment of the foundational basis of France. Yet this only served to give the Gaulish tribes, from Gaule belgique in the north, to Gaule narbonnaise in the south, a great deal of ‘common ground’, not a sense of nationhood per se. For Smith the transformation of ethnies into nations follows one of two patterns; either lateral or vertical. The lateral pattern, of transforming an ethnie into a nation is given to be a process of ‘bureaucratic incorporation’ whereby the culture of the dominant élite group was able to integrate the middle classes into their cultural sphere, or, as Özkirimli sums up, the state ‘was able to diffuse the dominant culture down the social scale’.72 In this sense it is a ‘top-down’ approach to national formation flowing from the monarchy, down to the aristocracy, then to the gentry, and so on and so forth.73 France fits this pattern in terms of the culture of the (mainly Parisian) elites eventually coming to replace that of the more common, and popular culture of France at some point beginning in the seventeenth century. Again, although not laid out in such explicit sociological or anthropological terms, de Gaulle’s concept of national formation tallies well with that of Smith’s lateral pattern. Roman ideals, laws, values and, of course, a Latin-based language eventually became the dominant culture of the French monarchy

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and aristocracy. This, for de Gaulle, filtered down the social scale hence the culture of the Parisian elites was to become the dominant culture of France. ‘Somewhere around the middle of the seventeenth century’, he writes, ‘the royal power, having overcome the fragmentation of the feudal system, started the French peoples along the road to unity’.74 That is to say, the dominant culture of the Île-de-France was transfused down the social scale and acted as a force to unify the French peoples. The final part of Smith’s eight-piece model, is termed ‘the longevity of nationalism’. This ‘final theme of ethno-symbolism’, we are told, ‘concerns the power and durability of nations and nationalism’. Smith continues: Nationalism is a modern ideological movement, but also the expression of aspirations by various social groups to create, defend or maintain nations – their autonomy, unity and identity – by drawing on the cultural resources of pre-existing ethnic communities and categories. Nationalism, defined as an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining identity, unity and autonomy of a social group some of whose members deem it to constitute an actual or potential nation, has proved a powerful instrument for forging a world of nations based on pre-existing ethnic ties and sentiments; and it is one that has by no means run its course. These aspirations for nationhood can be found in pre-modern epochs, but are particularly widespread and powerful in the modern era. This suggests that nationalisms, as well as nations, are likely to be recurrent phenomena in future, as they were in past epochs.75 Although somewhat extensive, this quote from Smith is necessary for relating the core considerations of ethno-symbolism to the elemental deliberations of the General’s intellect. Essentially, and given the previous seven points on ethnosymbolism, what Smith is expressing in this concluding notion, is that of the fundamental nature of nations. He tells us that both nationalism, and more importantly ‘the nation’, are not novel concepts. They existed in the past, they exist at present and they will exist in the future. They are, for the reasons discussed here, a fundamental part of human existence and are the expressions and desires of varying peoples to live in their preferred collective units and to exercise self-determination and autonomy. The relevance of this, I argue, is that it represents a formal academic articulation of de Gaulle’s understanding of nationhood. Indeed, through his worldview and in mirroring Smith, de Gaulle principally saw nations in both a historical and contemporary sense as being the most fundamental force that bound people together. De Gaulle only saw France past, present and future and no ideology or opposing force could defeat this. It is from this point, and from an FPA perspective, that we are able to grasp one of the central ideas of de Gaulle’s sense of the international system which guided his foreign policy during the 1960s; the enduring presence of nations in the Cold War world, even (especially!) those who were characterised as being communist. This is

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an aspect that I develop in the remainder of the chapter but we see the essence of this rationale in his attitude towards the Soviet Union (which he always called ‘Russia’ as a consequence of his ethno-symbolism). ‘Russia’ as he once said, ‘will absorb communism as a blotter absorbs ink’, which was to say that nothing – not ideology, nor political regime – could indefinitely subdue a national group precisely because history could not be wiped out, even if appearance, for a time, suggested otherwise.76 Indeed, de Gaulle saw that Moscow was driven more by the national interests of Russia, not the Communist ideology, ‘and that Russia’s true interest was peace’.77 One final note here that emphasises de Gaulle’s fit with ethno-symbolism is the question of European unity and identity, as both draw the same conclusion; Europe although it can, and may enjoy closer ties between its member nations, it cannot be the product of a shared, pan-European cultural identity. ‘These attempts’, writes Smith, ‘raise serious doubts about the possibility of transcending nations and superseding nationalism, since the very idea of “Europe”, insofar as it can be pinned down and given systematic coherences, appears as a pale reflection of the much more rooted, vivid, and tangible national identities’.78 In short, in the context of the ‘content’ of the international system the only realities, for de Gaulle, were nations.

The value of ethno-symbolism At this point it would be useful to reassert the central claim of this chapter. I do not believe that de Gaulle’s understanding of nationhood has been properly addressed through the contemporary Anglo-American literature on nationalism. Yet if de Gaulle is best understood through the lens of ethno-symbolism then what is the relevance of this in relation to our understanding of his foreign policy and his political rationale in a wider sense? The first point to note here is that (to my knowledge) this is the first time the French entity of Gaullist nationalism has been assessed through the English concept of ethno-symbolism. That we are able to take a recent and still developing approach to nationalism and apply it to a French concept that stretches back to the 1940s and beyond is of great significance, but it should also improve our comprehension of de Gaulle’s expression of French nationalism within the international system. This is so for the following reasons. First, it helps us to better understand an intense period of instability infused with nationalistic movements that perhaps supplants the ‘evils’ of any other period. Second, it shows us that Smith’s model of national formation and national expression can, with a little trouble, be transplanted onto real and tangible examples and thus it avoids the endemic problem of Isaiah Berlin’s ‘Cinderella complex’. Third, and most importantly for our purposes here, it demonstrates that de Gaulle can and does fit within a theoretical framework of nationhood and nationalism that provides an excellent basis through which to develop a more nuanced understanding of his foreign policy. Of course, the fit between ethno-symbolism and de Gaulle’s understanding of nations is not ‘perfect’ and I do not contend that it is. Nor can

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ethno-symbolism explain de Gaulle and his foreign policy in their respective entireties as other variables such as geography, resources, military capability, domestic politics, and other factors must be taken into consideration. Yet the parallels between the themes and patterns that Smith tells us to look for, and the beliefs and motifs that de Gaulle expresses in his writings and commentary on France cannot be ignored. This is not to contend that other thinkers and commentators on nationhood and nationalism have not previously come close to expressing similar ideas. To be sure, Berlin’s 1972 essay, ‘The Bent Twig: A Note on Nationalism’, and Johann Gottfried Herder’s eighteenth-century considerations on the wider cultural and historical roots of nationalism spring to mind.79 Yet these were philosophically imbued essays, not solidly constructed models. The relevance, therefore, of ethno-symbolism is that it provides a close-fitting and significant ‘skeleton’ around which we are able to ‘graft’ de Gaulle as a thinker on nations and nationalism and which, in turn, allows us to access an additional analytical lens in relation to the study of how ideas condition foreign policy. It is from this point that we find ourselves in a position to explore how this alters our perception of de Gaulle as a decision-maker and the foreign policy that flowed from this. Indeed, in viewing de Gaulle’s understanding of nationhood through ethno-symbolism we are able to conclude that his sense of the international system was drawn ‘to the presence of the past’ within this and was constantly searching for, at least for him, deeply held historical ‘truths’. This was as true of France as it was of all nations. De Gaulle, that is, was attracted to the foundational myths of France that took inspiration from imperial administration, he saw the interconnectedness of time and hence ‘the presence of the past’ in the present, and celebrated shared language and testaments to France’s existence. In seeing this, and in understanding that many of de Gaulle’s domestic actions were intended to invite the French to see France, explains the General’s remarks to Malraux; ‘when I have gone, perhaps the age will have played out its role. It’s possible. But you understand, I had a contract with France.’ Yet as de Gaulle laments, ‘when they stop believing in France…the French do not love France…the contract has been broken’.80 In other words, through de Gaulle’s perception, the ethno-symbolic past is forever present and constant and is why he once wrote, ‘and here I was, committed as heretofore by the contract which the France of the past, present and the future had thrust upon me eighteen years before in order to avoid disaster’.81 The elemental question is whether one acknowledges this, whether one believes, whether one has faith in France’s past and whether one uses this as a source of council in political matters. It is ultimately a question of whether one keeps the ‘contract’ with France and whether one acts upon this politically. Either way, in taking de Gaulle’s ‘history disease’ and in seeing this as a form of entrenched intellectual Bergsonism, and by taking this and filtering it through the various approaches to nationalism, allows us, in turn, to locate de Gaulle within the ethno-symbolic work of Smith. While this is useful in its own right and is a worthy academic endeavour in that it allows a formal

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categorisation of the General’s sense of nationhood, for our purposes here it tells us something profound regarding his perception of the elementary actors on the world stage. It tells us, in other words, of how de Gaulle saw the ontological basis of France, all nations, and ultimately the ‘content’ of the international system. To the foreign policy analyst this is an exceptionally useful analytical tool.

Nations, ideologies, and the ‘content’ of the international system In understanding the ethno-symbolic basis of de Gaulle’s ontological engagement with the international system there is one point that automatically flows from this and which was crucial in sowing the seeds of trans-Atlantic discord during the 1960s. The General, and when engaging in diplomacy, international relations, and foreign policy in a wider sense would always see the nation (and the ethno-symbolic traits of this) before any political ideology. This is an important point to note and explore here as in the post-War period the nature and ‘content’ of the international system took on an odd form that stood in stark contrast to de Gaulle’s ethno-symbolic understanding of things and it is this claim that I wish to explore and develop in this section of the chapter. Indeed, Andrew Williams has written that the closure of great conflicts creates certain power vacuums, empty political spaces, and intellectual voids that must be filled. This we saw at the end of the Thirty Years’ War with the adoption of Westphalian Sovereignty, the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, the League of Nations that followed the Great War, and the Cold War system of bi-polarity that followed the end of hostilities in 1945. The international effort to ‘fill’ such space is, as Williams writes, expressed as an attempt to build a New World Order (NWO) and this was indeed the language used by the George H.W. Bush Administration when the Soviet Union began to disintegrate in the late 1980s. While this is an interesting area of study in its own right, and when this happened following World War II, it created, I argue, a problem for de Gaulle and his ethno-symbolic sense of the international system. The idea of a New World Order, writes Williams, must begin with the waning or death of history. Perhaps the most striking element of all NWOs is that they seem to provide a coda to a period of conflict or war. The relationship of past to present is thrown, temporarily at least, into sharp focus by a settling of accounts…a redrawing of the map and a building of a new tabula rasa upon which new hopes and aspirations can be erected. That this process has now contributed, or even possibly led, to what Eric Hobsbawm says is a death of the ‘historical memory’ might be construed as a serious problem.82 This ‘serious problem’, as Williams concludes, was to condition the mind-set of many in the world (certainly the primary decision-makers in Washington and Moscow) at the most fundamental level, ‘what could be argued is that the history of large sections of the world’s population was effectively downgraded

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by the process of, particularly, the Cold War and the traditions of writing about international relations that it spawned, particularly in American universities. History was killed off deliberately in the interest of stability in the Cold War struggle.’83 In short, and in the wake of World War II, the ‘content’ and ‘feel’ of the international system took on a form that was an anathema to de Gaulle but, and as I outline here, while much of the world saw the ideological content of the NWO, the General continued to see the national as a product of the enduring historical. The latter, that is, represented ‘the real’ while the former was transitory and illusory. However, in claiming this a caveat needs to be made. As a scholar of FPA, and as this work is largely a product of this background, I do not seek to make any moral judgements regarding de Gaulle’s own position on these central questions. My aim, is to simply understand, categorise, and explain how a certain set of assumptions, values, and ideas led to the formulation of Gaullist foreign policy. To be sure, I do not intend to argue that de Gaulle’s perception of nations as being representative of an historical ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ is any less ideological at its core than the views of many of his contemporaries. I do not, therefore, argue that de Gaulle’s ‘reality’ represents an a priori truth at any particular level as belief in the centrality of the nation-state is a product of an ideological stance in itself. Yet it is also true, it must be noted, that de Gaulle did not particularly recognise this fact, or at least does not acknowledge this in his writings, and as Slavoj Žižek writes, ‘the well-known phrase from Marx’s Capital’ captures the essence of this well, “Sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es’ – ‘they do not know it, but they are doing it.”84 Hence my claim is not to say that de Gaulle’s preference for a Bergsonian sense of history and an ethno-symbolic understanding of the ‘content’ of the international system is any less ideological than the ‘fantasies’ he loathed, as this may well constitute a ‘false consciousness’ in itself. Yet while I agree with Žižek on this point, and hence agree that de Gaulle’s claim of having located ‘reality’ amongst ideological distortions still makes him an ideologue of sorts, I am not treating ideologies here in a derogatory sense. Rather I see de Gaulle’s nationalism as a neutral ideology and a set of ideas of how one understands the world in the same sense as Michael Freeden does in his 1989 article, ‘Is Nationalism a Distinct Ideology?’85 As I have used Smith’s understanding of nationalism to define de Gaulle’s rationale, it stands to reason that I should look to Smith’s own analysis of nationalistic expression to observe how this should manifest itself in political terms. In Theories of Nationalism (1971), Smith provides us with a seven-point breakdown of ‘the core nationalist doctrine’. These are listed as, 1) humanity is naturally divided into nations; 2) each nation has its peculiar character; 3) the source of all political power is the nation; 4) for freedom and self-realisation, men must identify with a nation; 5) nations can only be fulfilled in their own states; 6) loyalty to the nation-state overrides other loyalties; 7) the primary condition of global freedom and harmony is the strengthening of the nationstate.86 It is in this sense that de Gaulle, as an ethno-symbolist, must see nations,

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national history, and historically rooted national character before any other force when looking to the world stage, hence we may assert that this list helps us to further rationalise the General’s sense of international ‘reality’. Importantly, Smith states that this descriptive list does not necessarily encompass all nationalisms, which is certainly true, as while this ‘blue-print’ is apt for de Gaulle, it would certainly not satisfactorily explain the two foremost nationalisms of the Gaullist era; that of the United States and Russia. Indeed, Smith argues that this list should not be taken at ‘face-value’ as to do so would be to impose a solid structure and rigidity that is alien to the very concept of nationalism. The point is a fair one. Smith stresses that his list, when applied to any example must nevertheless be seen in its own light; these points, in Smith’s words, must ‘be adapted to the situation of their proponents’.87 Nevertheless, the culmination and conclusion of Smith’s understanding of nationalism is that of, ‘a vision of the future which restores to man his “essence”, his basic pattern of living and being, which was once his undisputed birth right…it is an attack on tradition and modernity alike, insofar as they obscure and distort the genuine relationship of man with nature and with his fellow-man. The true bond is a fraternal one.’88 ‘Fundamentally’, as Smith continues, ‘nationalism fuses three ideals: collective self-determination of the people, the expression of national character and individuality, and finally the vertical division of the world into unique nations each contributing its special genius to the common fund of humanity’.89 In this respect, Smith’s nationalism is a view and picture of how the world should be. It is a normative vision of how humanity is grouped together and of how global society should evolve. Presented in this form, it is far from the harmful and caustic nationalisms of the early twentieth century where one version sought expansion and domination, the other sought self-determination and national individuality. Here, the nation is elemental as, like de Gaulle, ethno-symbolists see nations as historically developed entities where others would see ideologies. Hence the point to take from this is that de Gaulle’s understanding of nationalism is formed around the ethno-symbolic traits that Smith outlines and encourages us to look for and it was these national characteristics that de Gaulle was in constant dialogue with. It was the General’s ability to perceive such characteristics within a nation that surpassed most of his contemporaries, yet haunted and inflicted him throughout his life. Lacouture stresses this well: In grasping the nature of a national community, Charles de Gaulle was a master. He who is France speaks better with nations than with men. Between de Gaulle, France and the French, there is a troublesome ambivalence: he is both principal and projection, speech and spokesmen. But between de Gaulle and Germany, de Gaulle and Spain, de Gaulle and Poland, there is a sort of majestic familiarity.90 When discussing foreign nations his understanding of the specific nation’s history often shaped his perception as is exemplified in his references to

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Britain, Canada, Germany and China. This is why, and when moving to discuss a nation, de Gaulle would habitually pay tribute and ‘tip his hat’ to the nation in question, China, a great people, the most numerous on the earth, a race in which the capacity for patience, labour and industry of its individuals has, for thousands of years, arduously compensated for its collective lack of method and cohesion, and has built a very special and very profound civilization…a state older than history, steadily resolved upon independence, tirelessly striving for centralization, instinctively inward-looking and scornful of foreigners, but conscious and proud of an immutable duration – such is Eternal China.91 Lacouture has even gone so far as to contend that the lack of historical and ethno-symbolic reference available to de Gaulle was instrumental in his inability to engage with the US; there is certainly something in this.92 Indeed, if, for de Gaulle, a nation’s character is a product of its history, how does one engage with an essentially characterless individual? This is not, of course, to say that America does not possess a history in an objective sense, rather de Gaulle seemed to struggle to detect this as 1789 probably seemed like ‘yesterday’ to him. It was in this sense that wherever de Gaulle saw historically rooted ethnosymbolic traits binding people together he saw nations and national groups first and foremost. This was the lesson that Debray went on to learn and which he saw in de Gaulle. ‘It struck me’, Debray writes, ‘that a Chinese Marxist has more in common with a Chinese Confucianist than an English Marxist. They are both Chinese, after all. The national is ineradicable. History as tradition, language, even the clothes you wear, will always take precedence over ideas, and any politics that fails to take on board the particularities of a culture is hollow.’93 The national, at all times, trumped the ideological. ‘The Communists (in France) no longer have a sufficient belief in Communism…it is too late. By force of their lying demands for democracy, they have become democrats’; de Gaulle’s perception was not that of a world directed by transnational ideologies, and hence he did not view communism with the same concern or perception as Washington; this was always secondary to nationhood and to ethno-symbolic character, and hence ‘the presence of the past’ in a Bergsonian sense. That de Gaulle had to contend with French communists at home certainly softened his attitude towards them and, given the delicate nature of the moment, he also understood the need to work with the PCF in the immediate aftermath of World War II. But above all, French communists were, to de Gaulle, simply Frenchmen and Frenchwomen; their ideological allegiance was always secondary to this (and by some measure!). This was an approach that was incomparable from the hysteria that legitimised McCarthyism in the US. Indeed, after Sartre had been arrested for editing and distributing the Maoist paper Le Cause du Peuple, the General had France’s foremost public intellectual released. ‘One does not imprison Voltaire’ as de Gaulle famously

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declared. But more importantly de Gaulle did not really accept that ideologies in the world played any role other than to mask national interests; ‘the banner of ideology in reality covers only ambitions. And I believe it has been thus since the world was born.’95 As Jackson sums up, ‘ideologies’, for de Gaulle, ‘were only a cloak for national ambitions. This was as true of Roosevelt’s liberalism as of Stalin’s Communism.’96 To explore this point let us briefly return to de Gaulle’s works. Throughout these, we frequently see the nation put before the ideology, and it was with Paris primarily seeing nations and Washington seeing ideologies that the fundamental source of post-war Franco-American tensions are to be found. It was not some irresponsible post-war ‘hang over’ stemming from Roosevelt’s disdain for de Gaulle, no matter how entrenched this may have been. It is a question that runs far deeper than many of de Gaulle’s Anglo-American critics contend. In discussing communism, de Gaulle states with certain foresight and accuracy that ‘Communism, whether it rises from within or irrupts from without, has little chance of taking root without the help of some national calamity. The Kremlin knows this well.’97 This is undoubtedly an astute remark as no stable and functioning state has ever openly embraced the Communist ideology. Nor is it ever likely to do so, it must, history teaches us, result from internal collapse, civil war, or imposition from a foreign force. In short, it has never flowed from an ethno-symbolic source and this was largely de Gaulle’s point; nations could not be communist. As nations, for him, were ethno-symbolic a ‘communist nation’ was a contradictory term. The foreign policy that he pursued had to reflect this. On this point and in de Gaulle’s works (especially Memoirs of Hope), he rarely uses the term ‘Soviet Union’, instead the General predominantly refers to it as ‘Russia’. In an address at the University of Moscow in 1960, and although a slip of the tongue, he even went so far as to speak of ‘the new alliance between Russia and France’.98 This use of language was never meant to deny the existence of communism or the ills of the Soviet superpower, as to do so would have been folly of the highest order. But whereas Washington, acting in the political and historical void that Williams speaks of, and as exemplified by Kennan’s Long Telegram, NSC-68, and the eventual US policies of Containment and Roll Back, saw communism as a new ‘evil’ that had consumed Russia, Eastern Europe, and China, de Gaulle did not. In other words, and through the Soviet motto of ‘Workers of the World, Unite!’, through the blazon red flag carrying the symbolic crest of the Hammer and Sickle, and through the communist rhetoric of Stalin and Khrushchev, de Gaulle still saw Russia and was engaging with Russia as a national entity. Russia’s existence, and to de Gaulle’s ethno-symbolic mind, was an enduring reality and in many ways figures such as Lenin were first and foremost Russian. This is why de Gaulle once asked Malraux, ‘did Lenin know he had come to re-establish Russia?’99 Lenin, that is, was to give belief back to Russia, he was to restore Russia’s faith in herself, this was Lenin’s grandeur.

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In conversation with Eisenhower, regarding the nature and ‘content’ of the international system, de Gaulle expressed the belief that Russia had not departed; she had not been swallowed by communism. She lived, as did the East European nations, it was merely the case that she was muted by the shroud of communism. I explained to Eisenhower that in my view relations between East and West should not be treated solely from the angles of rivalry between ideologies and political systems. True, Communism loomed large in the present international tension. But beneath its dictatorship, the nations of Russia, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Albania, Prussia and Saxony still existed.100 Continuing his dialogue with Eisenhower, de Gaulle explained to the American President that Communism made little difference to Russian foreign policy. ‘After what has happened to Russia during the two world wars’, he urged Eisenhower to acknowledge, ‘do you believe that a Peter the Great would have settled the matter of frontiers and territories any differently from Stalin?’101 Through the prism of a Bergsonian sense of history and the ethnosymbolic expression of this in his foreign policy, de Gaulle was seeing Russians as opposed to communists and was merely acting upon his convictions and perceptions of nationhood which clearly differed to that of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. Yet it was not solely the case of Russia and the Soviet Union where de Gaulle saw the nation before ideology. In America’s worst foreign experience of the post-War era, that of the Vietnam War, de Gaulle’s national-centric view of the world both warned and attacked America’s approach to Indo-China. Applying the lessons learned by the French experience that culminated in the Dien Bien Phu fiasco in 1954, and in rebuking the notion of the ‘Domino Theory’, de Gaulle forcefully conveyed to President Kennedy his understanding of events in Vietnam; that in Saigon, in the Mekong Delta and in the Marble Mountains, the United States was not fighting communism but was pursuing a conflict against the same ethno-symbolic expressions and yearning for independent nationhood that de Gaulle advocated for France. If grandeur was a force that gave self-belief to a nation, then war was Vietnam’s grandeur. To de Gaulle’s mind, and in this respect, America defeated herself. In warning President Kennedy of becoming embroiled in Vietnam de Gaulle claimed that ‘you will find…that intervention in this area will be an endless entanglement. Once a nation has been aroused, no foreign power, however strong, can impose its will upon it.’ De Gaulle continues: You will discover this for yourselves. For even if you find local leaders who in their own interests are prepared to obey you, the people will not agree to it, and indeed do not want you. The ideology which you invoke will make no difference. Indeed, in the eyes of the masses it will become

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identified with your will to power. That is why the more you become involved out there against Communism, the more the Communists will appear as the champions of national independence.102 Hence de Gaulle understood Ho Chi Minh’s message to his own troops to ‘emphasize nationalism rather than communism’.103 Claiming that the American actions in Vietnam would only serve to show communism to be the ‘champion of independence’ de Gaulle is once again exemplifying the ethnosymbolic principle of seeing the nation before the ideology in relation to foreign policy and his broader sense of the international system. Here we are told that the expression of national survival was merely masquerading as a nation convinced by the virtues of communist ideology. This was not a nation submitting itself to the will of Moscow. Such remarks certainly reflect the General’s 1966 speech in Cambodia. In summing up his prediction of acting against a nation, de Gaulle articulated to Kennedy the grim prospect for the United States; ‘I predict that you will sink step by step into a bottomless military and political quagmire, however much you spend in men and money’.104 A prophetic warning to say the least. The problematic issue of communist China was also understood through this lens. Whereas the Anglo-American view of the Cold War in Asia was one of Communism spreading an insidious ideology that bound peoples together in an anti-Western bloc, de Gaulle’s perception was that the stronger, more powerful and enduring force of national identity would push China and the Soviet Union apart. ‘It is true’ de Gaulle explains, that Soviet Russia lent China considerable aid…but the illusion has been dispelled. Doubtless there remains, between the regimes in power in Moscow and Peking, a certain doctrinal solidarity that may be manifested in the world rivalry of ideologies. Yet under a cloak that is torn a little more every day, appears the inevitable differences in national policies.105 As de Gaulle summed up, a nation ‘can help another, but it cannot identify itself with another’, and despite such logic contributing to the trans-Atlantic split of the 1960s, by the 1970s, and through the Kissinger-inspired ‘Nixon Doctrine’, the US (however implicitly) agreed with de Gaulle’s vision in attempting to take advantage of the Sino-Soviet split in the context of détente.106 Not only were China and Russia driven apart by irreconcilable differences but the ‘internal Cold War’ within the Communist Bloc also spilled over into a ‘hot war’ between Vietnam and Cambodia in 1974. Held in this light, the logic of de Gaulle’s ethno-symbolic sense of the international system seemed to suggest that the world Washington was striving to contend with simply did not exist; at least not really. Granted, communism was ‘real’, as were the communist governments, but to contend that the metaphysical Marxist-notion that was unleashed into the world by the Russian events of 1917 existed, and acted as a blazon-red blanket that first smothered and then bound nations together, was

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illusory. The dominoes, that is, refused to fall as American rationale predicted they would. Ethno-symbolism, acting as a modern day Atlas, held them up. From Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, and Trotskyism, to Hoxhaism, and Titoism; each state from Albania to North Korea would follow and develop its own form of communism based around its unique volksgeist and culture, and would therefore develop and evolve according to separate and disparate histories, experiences, and visions of the future that were a product of subjective pasts. Hence, national-will, history’s shadow, and ethno-symbolic national character would drive the nation’s will, not Marxist ideology, and by ‘chasing’ Communism around the globe as the US wished to do so made little sense. For de Gaulle this was an act of chimera hunting. In the larger picture of global anxiety, the growing tensions of national differences in the East meant much greater opportunity for détente in the West, as while the Cold War chess pieces in Europe remained static, it was those in Asia that were beginning to move. If we are to take this same rationale that de Gaulle applied to the East and apply this to the West, we are again able to understand how an ethno-symbolic sense of the international system drove his foreign policy. The General’s concerns for Europe occupied much of his time but in relation to his broader conception of ‘the West’ his views offered a sharp departure from those of Washington. It was Kagan who, in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, wrote ‘it is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world’, and it seems that we may certainly say the same of Franco-American relations during the 1960s.107 If the East did not exist as a unified blanket of nations linked by the Communist ideology then it followed that the West should reflect this and in short, had no reason to exist per se. Indeed, if there was no ‘Evil Empire’ (again, at least not really), as Reagan was later to call it, what need was there for a corresponding ‘virtuous dominion’ to oppose it? As de Gaulle viewed the world it was China and the other Asian states that were most at risk from Russian aggression; not the cities of Paris, Bonn or London, and thus the threat to Western Europe diminished with each passing year.108 The global reality for de Gaulle was that the East European nations that had been subdued by the fanciful illusions of the Cold War were now emerging from the transitory ideologies that had initially cloaked and silenced them in the post-War period. For the General the West needed to reflect this. If this ‘reality’ went unnoticed and was disregarded by the leading powers in the West, then realistically de Gaulle knew there was little he could do other than voice his opposition to this. France, after all, was in no position to directly challenge Moscow or Washington in any tangible sense. But at the same time it was inconceivable that de Gaulle’s foreign policy would follow that of the United States and essentially commit to this ideologically imbued daydream. The essence of this, and how de Gaulle’s ethno-symbolism and ‘history disease’ conditioned his foreign policy was captured by French newspaper Combat in March 1966,

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if Nato wishes to persist with its increasingly improbable hypothesis of a Soviet attack, so be it. But what General de Gaulle has said no to is France being dragged into all the adventures that the US becomes involved in. For, going down a familiar path and intoxicated by its military might, the US wants its ideology to prevail everywhere…in the name of what obligation France would be bound to commit herself to such an adventure.109 With the world, as viewed from Washington, ignoring de Gaulle’s perception of a national-centric global ‘reality’, and with the White House placing the clash of ideology ahead of that of nations, there could be little scope for compromise in Franco-American diplomatic relations. Thus the United States policy towards Europe, that was formed during the Truman Administration by those such as Dean Acheson, and which remained relatively unchanged throughout de Gaulle’s lifetime was diametrically opposed to de Gaulle’s rationale. Indeed, as John Lamberton Harper stresses of the United States’ approach to Europe, ‘the relationship of the New World to the Old did not necessarily have to be an unequal one. The important thing was that the two essential components of One World not be separate or antagonistic’.110 However, given the baneful and apocalyptic picture Acheson depicted this could not be a temporary or transient policy; ‘the purpose of the coalition must be to strengthen the coalition and bind it more closely together…this rule must be an ever present guide’.111 The overriding reason for this binding together of ‘worlds’ and nations was the ideological impact that Communism had had upon Russia and the Russian attitude; Acheson’s hard view of the Soviet Union involved both its communist system and its behaviour…it sowed suspicion and misinformation…used international communist parties as instruments of direct and indirect aggression…He later wrote that the threat to Europe was ‘singularly like that which Islam had posed centuries before, with its combination of ideological zeal and fighting power…Communist ideology had transformed the Soviet regime into an inexorable force, like a river’.112 The problem with such rationale, no matter how much it was imbued with honourable intentions, was that it represented the very antithesis of de Gaulle’s insistence on seeing the enduring nation before any temporary ideologies. When de Gaulle spoke of Moscow he clearly meant Russia. When Acheson referred to the same city he obviously meant the Soviet Union. Whereas de Gaulle saw an enduring national character and hence the Russian bear, Washington saw Marx and the Hammer and Sickle. Two disparate perceptions would clearly lead to contrasting conclusions, approaches, and foreign policies; the threat was Russian, not communist; the threat was the nation, not the ideology. It is in this sense that critiques of each other’s foreign policy were hollow given France and the United States could not even agree on the meta-physical ‘content’ of the international system.

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The very idea, the very concept, indeed, the very notion of the West coming together as envisaged by Washington was the supreme contradiction of the General’s rationale; twentieth-century nations could not be bound together in some pan-Atlantic federation, and certainly not in opposition to an Eastern Bloc that only existed in a cloaked and temporary form. ‘Great Britain is an island, France the cape of a continent, America is another world’; de Gaulle’s ‘West’ was a vision of Europe and the United States as separate entities, not as a unified bloc under American hegemony.113 Yet despite this, and as stressed in 1960, military alliance with the United States was acceptable and indeed desirable; ‘No one is more convinced than I that it is necessary for the free peoples to be allied in case of conflict…what I question, therefore, is not the Atlantic Alliance, but the present organisation of the Atlantic Alliance’.114 Clearly this was the precursor for France’s withdrawal from NATO’s integrated command in 1966. Given the Gaullist expression of ethno-symbolic logic, a fusion and a binding together of North America with Europe, as advocated by those such as Acheson was unlikely to come into being. In short, there was no ‘West’ as imagined by the United States, and given de Gaulle’s rationale towards the invented ‘East’, what need was there for a ‘West’ to exist anyway? If unity was to occur within the Western hemisphere, and as de Gaulle stressed in 1962, it had to be between the nations of Europe without the influence of a ‘federator’, American or otherwise. In Memoirs of Hope de Gaulle articulates the futility of any such attempt. It was the pursuance of this destiny that the Roman emperors reigned over it, that Charlemagne, Charles V, and Napoléon attempted to unite it, that Hitler sought to impose upon it his crushing domination. But it is a fact of some significance that not one of these federators succeeded in inducing the subject countries to surrender their individuality. On the contrary, arbitrary centralization always provoked an upsurge of violent nationalism by way of reaction.115 That Washington thought it could succeed where others had failed was perceived to be naïve. Yet this is not to say that de Gaulle’s state-centric approach was against unity in its entirety as some contemporary authorities lamented.116 De Gaulle’s approach to greater European cooperation was that it must emanate from the desires, wishes, and collective consciousnesses of Europeans, not from totalitarian imposition or fear and concern in opposition to the prospect of this. It had to stem from the national, not the ideological. Europe had to be a celebration and recognition of national characteristics, of specific ethno-symbolic expressions, of both a wider European family of nations and of individual volksgeists. It could not be a Europe of ‘stateless integration’. I would like incidentally, since the opportunity has arisen, to point out to you, gentlemen of the press…that I have never personally, in any of my

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statements, spoken of a ‘Europe of nations’, although it is always being claimed that I have done so. It is not of course, that I am repudiating my own; quite the contrary, I am more attached to France than ever, and I do not believe that Europe can have any living reality if it does not include France and her Frenchmen, Germany and its Germans, Italy and its Italians, and so forth. Dante, Goethe, Chateaubriand belong to all Europe to the very extent that they were respectively and eminently Italian, German, and French. They would not have served Europe very well if they had been stateless, or if they have thought and written in some kind of integrated Esperanto or Volapük. Of Great Britain, de Gaulle also asserted, ‘everyone knows that Great Britain, in its capacity as a great State and a nation loyal to itself, would never agree to lose its identity in some utopian structure’.117 Little so it seems, and especially in the wake of the UK’s decision to leave the EU in June 2016, has since changed. These claims, from de Gaulle’s press conference in May 1962, certainly go some way to emphasise that de Gaulle was not against the concept of ‘Europe’ per se. Rather it was merely the case that his vision of Europe differed to that of Washington’s or other Frenchmen such as Jean Monnet. Yet from this point of departure, it is an easy and solitary step to portraying and misrepresenting this as being anti-European. His was a ‘European Europe’, a ‘concert of European States’ as he terms it, whereby differing national characteristics were to be celebrated as part of a European family. It is also important to note that de Gaulle never asserted that his opinion was worth more than that of Monnet or Delores, nor was he against uniting Europe. Rather his view was a reflection of ethno-symbolic history rather than the dreams and visions that influenced other contemporary statesmen regardless of their good intentions. Again this was a product of an ethno-symbolic understanding and the insistence of placing nationhood before any transient ideology. If we consider de Gaulle’s approach to Algeria, which, he claimed time and again, must be ‘Algerian’, this too may be understood as a product of ethnosymbolic rationale. This is why he once declared, ‘as for Algeria, we want 1961 to be the year in which peace is re-established, so that the people can freely decide their own destiny and so that an Algerian Algeria can therefore be born’.118 On the issue of Israel and Palestine, where de Gaulle was happy to see an established homeland for the Jewish people, he nonetheless warned David Ben Gurion against any suppression of the Palestinian peoples as this would only lead Israel down a destructive path and loose the Jewish state all ‘international sympathy’.119 This grim, yet accurate warning that displayed certain foresight must also be judged through a similar understanding. Of Third World nations, such as Senegal, Sudan, Guinea, Mauretania, the Ivory Coast, the Upper Volga, Niger and the Congo, de Gaulle asserted that these nations should be given self-determination, independence and statehood, yet should still be protected from being unscrupulously thrust into the waiting

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embrace of Moscow.120 Although just brief examples, these, coupled with the previously discussed issues of the East, of the West, of Europe, of hegemony, of the failure to see the nation before the ideology, the enduring characteristics of nationhood, the folly of acting against a nation, and the futility of seeing communism as forming a concert of nations, all must be seen through de Gaulle’s ethno-symbolic reading of history as a product of his inherent Bergsonism, nationhood, and the subsequent impact for present day realities.

Conclusion In the previous chapter I sought to argue that de Gaulle was inflicted with a propensity to ‘see’ and ‘feel’ history everywhere. While Debray explains this as being his ‘history disease’ I feel it best described, or at least categorised, as a form of inherent Bergsonism that conditioned the General’s sense of the world and the times in which he lived. With this being so, and with de Gaulle’s agreement that the past and present co-exist in the same moment, it stands to reason that this method or way of thinking about the world is key to understanding his sense of nationalism and, in turn, the ‘fabric’ and ‘content’ of the international system. Once, that is, we are able to place de Gaulle in the ethno-symbolic approach to nationalism, we have at our disposal a useful lens through which to view the way he understood nations to be and we are thusly able to answer the question of what he understood by the term nation. From this point we are able to categorise his sense of France, his broader understanding of nations, and ultimately the ontological essence and ‘content’ of the international system. To the foreign policy analyst this is an important platform to develop, as it tells us of the world as he understood it to be and hence the intellectual environment in which his foreign policy was constructed and we are thusly able to make claims regarding the relationship between ideas and outcomes. In short, we are better placed to understand the process of decision-making in relation to a Cold War giant. Simply seeing de Gaulle as an ill-defined nationalist tells us little of use. To be sure, although the Anglo-American world is quick to be somewhat dismissive of de Gaulle, often preferring to see his military uniform as a reflection and extension of the will to fascist dictatorship, the foreign policy that France pursued under his leadership is better understood, at least in part, by his ‘history disease’ and the political expression of this as ethno-symbolic nationalism. It is in this sense that de Gaulle’s actions were not only that of the defence of the nations of the free world but also a defence of those imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain. By keeping the names alive of those who sat under Soviet hegemony he was constantly refusing to see these nations disappear under Moscow’s domination. There was no inherent anti-Americanism. There was no intrinsic and innate animosity towards Washington within this rationale. Rather it was merely a conflict of how the world was, is, and, would be; a conflict of the permanence of nationhood against transitory forms of ideology. This is why de Gaulle insisted that Russia would absorb

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communism, it is what lay behind his assertion that the East was not unified in any sense by ideology, it underpinned his warning of acting against Vietnamese nationalism in Indochina, and it led him to see Europe and America as friendly but separate entities. Yet, and although it is true, that ethno-symbolism provides a useful lens through which to view de Gaulle and the way he understood the world to be, we are able to pursue this to a deeper and more philosophical level. It is possible, that is, to see the existentialism within de Gaulle’s ethno-symbolism and the existentialism within his nationalism. We may see, that is, how the existence of de Gaulle’s nations precedes their essence. Hence in the next chapter we are able to explore the ontological depths of de Gaulle’s sense of nations and the ‘content’ of the international system to a deeper level. This, in turn, provides the basis that enables us to explore the question of how states should formally act and hence make a number of broader claims regarding de Gaulle’s foreign policy in Chapter Five.

Notes 1 For works that argue that no single theory of nationalism is discernible, see Zubaida, S. ‘Theories of Nationalism’, in Littlejohn, G., Smart, B., Wakeford, J. and Yuval-Davis, N. (1978). Power and the State. London: Croom Helm. 52–71; Özkirimli, U. (2000). Theories of Nationalism. London: MacMillan Press. 226– 232; Calhoun, C. (1997). Nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 123. 2 Shils, E. (1957). ‘Primordial, Personal, Sacred and Civil Ties.’ British Journal of Sociology. 8:2. 130–145; Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell; Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso; Hobsbawm, E. (1990). Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 3 Smith, A. (1995). Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era. Cambridge: Polity Press; Armstrong, J. (1982). Nations Before Nationalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 4 A recent and highly readable example of this is Winock, M. (2014). Nationalisme, antisémitisme et fascisme en France. Paris. Éditions du Seuil. 5 Eccleshall, R., Finlayson, A., Geoghegan, V., Michael, K. and Moya, L. (2003). Political Ideologies: An Introduction. London: Routledge. 102. 6 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 82. 7 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 3. Emphasis added. 8 De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 216. 9 Ibid. 282. 10 Quoted in Smith, A. (1998). Nationalism and Modernism. London: Routledge. 146 11 Geertz, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. London: Fontana. 12 Joireman, S. (2003). Nationalism and Political Identity. London: Continuum. 19. 13 Wendt, A. (2004). ‘The State as Person in International Theory.’ Review of International Studies. 30:2. 306. 14 Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. 6.

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15 Hobsbawm, E. (1990). Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 17–18. 16 Özkirimli, U. (2000). Theories of Nationalism. London: MacMillan Press. 85–86. 17 Smith, A. (1999). Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 9. 18 Özkirimli, U. (2000). Theories of Nationalism. London: MacMillan Press. 169. 19 Ibid. 167–168. 20 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 3. 21 Hobsbawm, E. (1990). Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 14. 22 Ibid. 44–45. 23 De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 281. 24 Smith, A. (1999). Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 4. 25 Hureaux, R. (2007). L’actualité du gaullisme: cinq études sur les idées et l’action du général de Gaulle. Paris: François-Xavier de Guibert. 124. 26 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 76–77. Emphasis added. 27 Smith A. (2009). Ethno-Symbolism and Nationalism, a Cultural Approach. London: Routledge. 28 Smith, A. (1999). Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10–19. 29 Ibid. 9. 30 Ibid. 10. 31 Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 68–69. 32 (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York: French Embassy Press. 75. 33 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 3. 34 De Gaulle, C. (2010). France and Her Army. Memphis: General Books. 1. 35 Smith, A. (1999). Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 11. 36 Ibid. 12. 37 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 3. 38 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 67. 39 Lacouture, J. (1993). De Gaulle: The Ruler, 1945–1970. London: W.W. Norton & Company. 333. 40 Smith, A. (1999). Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 13. Numbers added for clarity. 41 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 261. 42 Ibid. 13. 43 De Gaulle, C. (1940). The Army of the Future. London: Hutchinson. 80. 44 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 124 45 Ibid. 29–30. 46 De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. In particular see ‘Disunion’, 229–266 and ‘Departure’, 267–284. 47 Smith, A. (1999). Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 13.

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48 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 3. 49 De Gaulle, C. (1940). The Army of the Future. London: Hutchinson. 27. 50 Smith, A. (1999). Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 14. 51 Hureaux, R. (2007). L’actualité du gaullisme: cinq études sur les idées et l’action du général de Gaulle. Paris: François-Xavier de Guibert. 124. 52 De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 244. 53 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 61. 54 De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 244. 55 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 300. 56 Johnson, D. (1965). ‘The Political Principals of General de Gaulle.’ International Affairs. 41:4. 657. 57 De Gaulle, C. (1940). The Army of the Future. London: Hutchinson. 158. 58 Smith, A. (1999). Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 15. 59 Ibid. 60 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 199. 61 De Gaulle, C. (1955). War Memoirs: The Call to Honour, 1940–1942. London: Collins. 1. 62 (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York: French Embassy Press. 78. 63 De Gaulle, C. (1940). The Army of the Future. London: Hutchinson. 25. 64 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 269. 65 Smith, A. (1999). Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 16. 66 Ibid. 17. 67 De Gaulle, C. (1960). The Edge of the Sword. London: Faber & Faber. 12. 68 De Gaulle, C. (1940). The Army of the Future. London: Hutchinson. 20. 69 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 25. 70 Smith, A. (1999). Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 18. The use of the term ‘mythomoteur’, is a particularly useful one. In English we do not have an exact equivalent for this yet it roughly translates as ‘myth-engine’, by which it is inferred that the myth with which the chosen ethnie identifies, is constant, consecutive, and self-perpetuating and serves as a unifying emblem or symbol. 71 De Gaulle, C. (1940). The Army of the Future. London: Hutchinson. 27. 72 Özkirimli, U. (2000). Theories of Nationalism. London: MacMillan Press. 179. 73 Smith’s description of this dispersing downwards of culture, or ‘bureaucratic incorporation’, is explained in clearer terms in his earlier work. See Smith, A. (1991). National Identity. London: Penguin. 167. 74 De Gaulle, C. (1960). The Edge of the Sword. London: Faber & Faber. 34. 75 Smith, A. (1999). Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 18–19. 76 Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 95. 77 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 209. That said, de Gaulle once claimed that, ‘History

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Ethno-symbolism contains no example of a conqueror who did not, in good faith, loudly declare that he wanted peace.’ See De Gaulle, C. (1960). The Edge of the Sword. London: Faber & Faber. 101. Smith, A. (1999). Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 19. Berlin, I. (1972). ‘The Bent Twig: A Note on Nationalism.’ Foreign Affairs. 51:1. 11–30; White, R. (2005). ‘Herder: On the Ethics of Nationalism.’ Humanitas. 18:1. 166–181. Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 16–17. De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 30. Williams, A. (1998). Failed Imagination? New World Orders of the Twentieth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 13. Ibid. 15. Emphasis added. Žižek, S. (1989). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso. 29. Freeden, M. (1998). ‘Is Nationalism a Distinct Ideology?’ Political Studies. 46:4. 748–765. Smith, A. (1971). Theories of Nationalism. London: Duckworth. 21. Ibid. Ibid. 22. Ibid. Lacouture, J. (1993). De Gaulle: The Ruler, 1945–1970. London: W.W. Norton & Company. 333. (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York: French Embassy Press. 256. For similar remarks about Great Britain, see De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 234–236. Germany, for her part and for her recent aggressive history is referred to as an ‘evil genius’. Ibid. 172. Lacouture, J. (1993). De Gaulle: The Ruler, 1945–1970. London: W.W. Norton & Company. 333. Feehily, G. (2007). ‘Régis Debray: The Writer and Philosopher on Religion and Revolution.’ The Independent, April 13. Priest, S. (editor). 2001. Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings. New York: Routledge. 10. (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York: French Embassy Press. 237. Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 94. De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 201. Williams, A. (1998). Failed Imagination? New World Orders of the Twentieth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 449–450. Throughout Memoirs of Hope de Gaulle constantly refers to the Soviet Union as Russia. In particular, see his discussions with Nakita Khrushchev in Paris, March 1960. 224–234. Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 100. De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 211–212. Ibid. 212. Ibid. Quoted in, Stetler, R. (editor) (1970). The Military Art of People’s War: Selected Writings of Vo Nguyen Giap. New York: Monthly Review Press. 179–180. De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 256.

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105 (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York: French Embassy Press. 256–257. 106 Ibid. 214. 107 Kagan, R. (2003). Paradise and Power, America and Europe in the New World Order. London: Atlantic Books. 3 108 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 200–201. 109 Quoted in, Vidal, D. (2008). ‘De Gaulle, NATO and France.’ Le Monde Diplomatique, April 10. 110 Harper, J. (1996). American Visions of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 278. 111 Ibid. 281. 112 Beisner, R. (2006). Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 153. 113 De Gaulle, C. (1955). War Memoirs: The Call to Honour, 1940–1942. London: Collins. 109. 114 (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York. French Embassy Press. 123. 115 De Gaulle, C. (1955). War Memoirs: The Call to Honour, 1940–1942. London: Collins. 171. 116 Pinder, J. (1963). Europe Against de Gaulle. London: Pall Mall. Especially 1–45. 117 (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York. French Embassy Press. 175. 118 Ibid. 109. 119 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 265–266. 120 Ibid. 38–40.

4

Existence preceding essence The individuality of nationhood

Individual decision-makers do not act or exist in cultural or historical vacuums. All, that is, live in the present moment as products of their respective pasts and carry this with them as they are propelled into the future as temporally bound beings. Such historical baggage conditions the way individuals see the world, the international system, and the conduct of their foreign policy within this, but it also conditions the way individuals see other states, problems, and trends. In this sense the ‘ideational baggage’ that individuals carry with them filters all events and should be understood as the ‘software of the brain’ that provides highly subjective and idiosyncratic interpretations of the world in which they exist. Indeed, given de Gaulle’s focus on ‘the historical’ in relation to foreign policy, and successive American presidents’ fixation on ‘the ideological’, it may well be the case that while occupying the same time and space they nonetheless existed in separate worlds. It is in this sense that the study of ideas in the context of foreign policy, and the subjective narratives that condition these should form a key component of analysis. Given that this is the case, and when we turn to study de Gaulle as a decision-maker and the chief architect of post-War French foreign policy, we must search for his ideas and ‘software of the brain’ and in doing so we are invited to explore his obsession with the past and his fixation on nations. Of course, individuals are not ‘scientific units’ nor are they inanimate objects that can be so easily placed in specific categories and hence one cannot always explain the nature of their thought in every detail. Instead we tend to utilise external lenses or paradigms that capture the essence of their thought and their respective sense of the world that is produced by this. In relation to de Gaulle’s ideas and sense of the international system, Bergsonian duration and ethno-symbolism have been used here and in a sense this analytical exercise has been one of ‘decryption’. It has been, in other words, an act of deciphering the ‘code’ that produced de Gaulle’s ontological understanding of the world, the ‘content’ of the 1960s international system, and the essence of the forces within this. Nonetheless, while this has been a useful exercise thus far and tells us much regarding certain important assumptions, in the absence of de Gaulle’s implicit existentialism, whereby he understood nations to be individuals and the importance of ‘example’ in action, all this remains somewhat ‘hollow’.

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This is not to imply that I backtrack on any of the argument advocated in the previous chapters, rather I would like to stress that in exploring the relationship between ideas and the foreign policy that is produced by this, there is a deeper and distinctly anthropomorphic element present in de Gaulle’s thought that is not illuminated by Bergsonism nor ethno-symbolism but this was an element that had profound consequences for French foreign policy under de Gaulle. Granted, and in a simplistic sense, ethno-symbolism helps us to interpret the way in which the General understood nations and nationalism to be. It helps, that is, to contextualise de Gaulle’s perception of the building blocks of nations, the ‘content’ of the world, and helps us to better understand the source of de Gaulle’s clashes with Washington, London and Brussels. But there is more to de Gaulle’s understanding of the international system than this. Something else remains entrenched at a deeper and secondary level that is distinctly existential in nature. To understand this it is necessary to explore the ways in which de Gaulle emphasised the ethno-symbolic traits of each nation to such an extent that he was able to ‘craft’ actual individuals from these and this, in turn, conditioned his foreign policy. As I argue here, the most pertinent lens through which to explore this additional ontological layer is Sartrean existentialism. To achieve this task the chapter is broken down into five principal sections. I begin by exploring the term ‘existentialism’ and sketch out a brief understanding of this before going on to relate the discussion to de Gaulle’s sense of nationhood through Smith’s concept of ethno-symbolism. In doing so I principally explore three strands of Sartrean existentialism, all of which are relevant to de Gaulle’s understanding of France and nations in a wider sense. These are: (1) that existence precedes essence (2), the notion of how one becomes an individual through the process of becoming and (3), how one maintains this individuality and hence authenticity in a world that often demands conformity. Once this is established the second section of the chapter explains how de Gaulle saw nations to be formal individuals, an act which is intended to offer an ontological grounding through which to relate de Gaulle’s thought to that of Sartre’s. The third, fourth, and fifth sections then seek to reconcile de Gaulle’s understanding of the individualism of France with Sartre’s three strands of existential thought. While the principles of existence preceding essence and becoming are important to discuss and work through given that they capture the ‘spirit’ of de Gaulle’s sense of France and nations in a wider sense (and also go some way to illuminating Debray’s claim that ‘de Gaulle was an existentialist of the nation’), it is the third principle of individualistic authenticity that is of most interest to the FPA scholar given that it dictated to de Gaulle a sense of how France should act within the international system and it is this that takes us into the next chapter on France’s conduct in the Cold War world. Nonetheless, while this ‘behavioural aspect’ of Gaullist foreign policy is fully explored in Chapter Five this only ‘makes sense’ in relation to the ontological and existential themes that are explored here.

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Existentialism: the philosophy of individualism In the sense that de Gaulle was ‘haunted’ by the past, his explicit Bergsonism, when turned to the study of nationalism, implies that we frame him as an ethno-symbolist. Yet when we look closer at his writings and the relationship between ideas and foreign policy, we are able to observe a deeper anthropomorphic element to his worldview that is not so easy to quantify but as I argue here existentialism is the most appropriate platform through which to make sense of this. That said, and before we explore this claim, I feel it pertinent to begin by sketching out a brief understanding of the branch of thought that is existentialism. This is so as although ‘existentialism’ is a popular term, it nonetheless remains a problematic notion to contend with and one, as David Cooper illustrates, that is littered with unhelpful misunderstandings. ‘Existentialism is something everyone has heard of ’, writes Cooper. It belongs among those ‘-isms’, like cubism and surrealism…The popular image is, however, full of misconceptions which need to be scotched. These misconceptions are prevalent among those who have picked up their existentialism from dictionaries, encyclopaedias and popular histories of ideas. Typical is the description of existentialism as ‘the metaphysical expression of the spiritual dishevelment of a post-war age’. So, too, is one historian’s description of it as ‘the assertion that life is more than logic… that the subjective and personal must be more highly valued and the objective and intellectualized must be depreciated’. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary entry is particularly wayward: ‘An anti-intellectual philosophy of life, holding that man is free and responsible, based on the assumption that reality as existence can only be lived, but can never become the object of thought.’1 These are, one must concur, rather indistinct definitions that offer little in terms of meaning. Indeed, if one has no familiarity with existentialism then such ‘explanations’ are of little use and as with so many areas of philosophy, reading from the original text is usually an easier and more enlightening exercise. Yet despite such persistent and unrelenting misconceptions, these certainly remain understandable fallacies as explaining existentialism is a notoriously complicated undertaking. Sartre himself, and even though he was the most celebrated existential writer of the twentieth century, declared at one point that, ‘I don’t even know what existentialism is.’2 A feature that makes this even more striking is that Sartre’s pronouncement came two years after the completion of his seminal work, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Ontological Phenomenology (L’Être et le néant : Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, 1943). Sartre felt that existentialism’s misunderstandings came not from the term per se, but rather the over application and use of the word. ‘Most people who use this word’, Sartre was to claim, ‘would be at a loss to explain what it means.

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For now it has become fashionable, people like to call this musician or that painter an ‘existentialist.’ A columnist in Clartés goes by the pen name ‘The Existentialist.’ Indeed, the word is so loosely applied to so many things that it has come to mean nothing at all. It would appear that, for lack of an avant-garde doctrine analogous to surrealism, those who thrive on the latest scandal or fad have seized upon a philosophy that hardly suits their purpose.3 Although Sartre, especially in his 1945 lecture, Existentialism is a Humanism, went on to embrace and illuminate existentialism more than any other thinker (at least for a time), the point serves to illustrate that existentialism is a label predominantly imposed upon certain individuals from the outside. This is why most of the great existential works do not actually contain the term ‘existentialism’; an act which adds to the problem of definition. This is as true of Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Karl Jaspers, and Friedrich Nietzsche as it is of Albert Camus, Søren Kierkegaard, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. That said many works, such as Nausea (1938), Fear and Trembling (1843), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), and The Outsider (1942) all share titles that suggest a struggle with the meaning or absurdity of human existence. Nonetheless, the reason for the absence of the word in so many existential works, as Roger L. Shinn has written, is that to label oneself an existentialist is largely an intellectual contradiction in itself. ‘To say, “I am an existentialist”, is to say, “I am one of the classification of people known as existentialists”; whereas the existentialist wants to say, “I am myself – and I don’t like your effort to fit me into your classification.”4 A direct consequence of this remains that no specific and coherent body of existential writers and philosophers, that consistently state and contend the same thing, is distinguishable. Nor is existentialism ever expressed in a solitary manner or through a single and constant avenue. Thomas E. Wartenberg’s introductory text Existentialism (2008), conveys this detail well as his work covers many of the outright philosophical essays of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, but also takes in the more literary works of Camus and Dostoevsky, as well as contemporary cinematic expressions of existentialism such as The Matrix film trilogy (1999–2003), Donnie Darko (2001), and Stranger than Fiction (2006).5 Nor are we able to distinguish a common denominator between the existentialists. From Catholicism and Judaism, to Russian Orthodox Christianity, atheists and agnostics; religion plays no binding role. Nor does political standing or nationality act to fulfil this. Perhaps the sole ‘linking factor’ that is present amongst existentialists is the Euro-centric nature that is reflected amongst them.6 To most commentators existentialism carries a distinctly European character that is a product of Europe’s social, political, spiritual, and religious troubles of the past two hundred years. To be sure, it is Europe that has seen the ‘death’ of God, the decline in the importance of Christianity and Christian morality, the rise of capitalism, the ‘worship’ of secular ideologies, the occurrence of ‘total war’, and the advent of industrial-scale genocide.

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Hence ‘it is Europe’ as William Barrett writes, ‘that has been in crisis, and it is European thinkers who have brought the existential problems to a focal expression’.7 There is, therefore, as Barrett laments, a certain morbidity inherent in existentialism as a product of Europe’s physical upheavals and the ‘death of meaning’ to a civilisation addicted to this (perhaps this is why, and as I argue in the final chapter, de Gaulle, as a self-conscious manifestation of Europe’s past, was something of a pessimist). This was a spiritual morbidity that Nietzsche was one of the first to convey when he wrote (largely in relation to the waning of belief in Christianity and the ‘worship’ of science), ‘I know my fate. One day there will be associated with my name the recollection of something frightful – of a crisis like no other before on earth, of the profoundest collision of conscience, of a decision evoked against everything that until then had been believed in, demanded, sanctified.’8 Furthermore, and placed within the wider traditions of Western thought, we find that existentialism, strictly speaking, is not philosophy per se, and thus using such a term to describe the works of Sartre, Heidegger, and Nietzsche is an expression of careless semantics and exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of what ‘philosophy’ really is. Such a claim, it must be noted, implies that we understand philosophy as an essentially Greek way of engaging with the world (in a Platonic rather than a Homeric sense) through epistemology, ethics, and meta-physics. It is objectivity and universal truth for all rational beings at all times that sits at the heart of these modes of enquiry and by removing perception, emotion, tradition, and intuition one could, as Plato does in Euthyphro, look for the ethically right thing to do in any given situation.9 In many ways, the neorealist approach to IR strikes me as being, albeit unconsciously so, the intellectual descendent of Platonic thought in that it removes subjective human elements in order to pursue universal claims regarding state action. With philosophy understood in these terms as the search for the universal and which consequently leaves little space for the individual, it is not only the case that existentialism is not philosophy per se but that it is anti-philosophical at its core, hence the act of calling any existentialist a philosopher is an act that implies a contradiction. As such, and to paraphrase Thomas Nagel, if the Greek intellectual tradition is an attempt to find the universal ‘view from nowhere’, the existential approach should be understood as the search for a subjective ‘view from somewhere’, and it is to this intellectual tradition that de Gaulle (and probably the constructivist approach to IR), in terms of his views of the international system, really belongs. To be sure, the Greek method is only half of the story in terms of Western thought and although most existentialists are post-Christian thinkers, existentialism’s intellectual heritage belongs to that of Judeo-Christian thought in that it tries to keep alive a subjective meaning of existence even after ‘the death of God’. To put it in slightly clearer terms, existentialists are those thinkers who have been through the process of the death of Christianity, who still endeavour to begin with the subjective experience of the individual, and who are ultimately products of Western civilisation’s ‘addiction to

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meaning’. They are thinkers, in other words, who are fully engaged with Nietzsche’s foremost question: ‘How can we console ourselves, the murderers of all murderers!’10 Sartre’s war-time example of a student who is torn between fighting for his country and hence leaving France, and the act of remaining beside his grieving mother is the same Judeo-Christian expression of the subjective nature of existence that is at odds with Greek universalism. For Sartre, there is no ethically right thing for his student to do; there is no universal answer to seek. There is only the action that his student chooses and hence his example of action to all.11 In this respect Camus can hardly be called an existentialist given his willingness to not only accept the death of God but to accept that He never existed at all. Camus, as Richard Kamber has written, ‘liked to think of himself as instinctively pagan’ and is more akin to a pre-Christian thinker than an existentialist in the strictest of senses.12 Nonetheless, the use of the term ‘philosophy’ in my work is not so rigorously applied. This is so as although I aim to avoid the use of the term in relation to existentialism, many of the quotations that I employ here do talk of existentialism in philosophic terms, and although this may well be an expression of a casual approach to semantics and Western thought it is a problem that, once noted, is one we need to work with. In the absence of a definitive sense of existentialism we are nonetheless able to distinguish some reoccurring and common themes that existentialism is broadly concerned with. Given the emphasis on the subjective these quite naturally centre on questions that are concerned with the notion of finding, exploring, and defining individualistic meaning in life. Stephen Priest highlights this: Existentialism is the movement in nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy that addresses fundamental problems of human existence…there is no set of problems addressed by all and only those thinkers labelled ‘existentialist’. However, most of them are interested in some of: what is it to exist? Does existence have a purpose? Is there an objective difference between right and wrong? Are we free? Are we responsible for our actions? What is the right sort of religious, political or sexual commitment? How should we face death?13 Here we are invited to recognize that existentialism is an approach that takes the individual as the focal point of its inquiries into human existence rather than a broader investigation of the world. Yet before moving on to explore how Sartrean logic is echoed in de Gaulle’s rationale and the interconnectivity of this with his foreign policy, I firstly stress the point of individuality in a little more depth as this is a crucially important element of my overall argument. All existentialists must, by the logic of the field, stress the importance of individualism and hence a foundational consideration of existentialism is for the individual to pull away from mass conformity or, to borrow a Nietzschean term, ‘the herd’. For example Thomas Flynn tells us that, ‘existentialism is known as an “individualistic” philosophy…for the existentialist, being an

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individual in our mass society is an achievement rather than a starting point’.14 Stephen Earnshaw goes on to echo this statement, ‘Existentialism is a philosophy that takes as its starting point the individual’s existence…what sets it apart from most other philosophies is that it begins with the “individual” rather than the “universal” and so does not aim to arrive at general truths.’15 Perhaps it is Thomas Wartenberg who provides us with the clearest example of existentialism’s central feature and, as I go onto demonstrate, some of the key themes that were also expressed through de Gaulle’s foreign policy during the 1960s. What the Existentialists sought to counter was the tendency of human beings to live their lives guided by standards valid for all; what they advocated instead was the attempt by each of us to structure a life in a way that embodies what is distinctive about us as an individual. Rather than submit to the norms of what has been called ‘the mass,’ ‘the herd,’ and ‘the crowd,’ the Existentialists encourage people to develop their uniqueness, their own special qualities. This means that the answers people develop to the fundamental questions about how to live their lives are ones that they have to work out as individuals. Hence, the Existentialists’ distrust of the general and their admiration for the particular.16 It is this streak of individualism that is important for us to focus on in using existentialism as an external lens to illuminate how ideas condition foreign policy and to defend the claim that ‘de Gaulle was an existentialist of the nation’. This is done by taking three strands of existential thinking that reoccur within most works on the topic (those discussed in the introduction) and which Sartre openly embraced, and then demonstrate how these are to be found within de Gaulle’s understanding of nationhood and the wider international system. As also noted above, this provides an intellectual platform that is necessary to better understand de Gaulle’s sense of France in deeper ontological terms but, more importantly, it offers the foundational basis from which to explore the logic that actually drove the foreign policy of France in the next chapter. Before relating the existential themes that were highlighted in the introduction to de Gaulle’s sense of France and the international system, let us briefly explore the meaning of these in turn. The first is that which Sartre calls ‘the first principle of existentialism’; of how existentialists insist on seeing man’s physical existence coming before the development of his specific and defining characteristics that make him an individual.17 As Cooper points out, this is something that each existential thinker would broadly agree with, but it is Sartre’s own phrase that, ‘existence precedes essence’ which conveys this idea most eloquently.18 Sartre goes on to write, What do we mean here by “existence precedes essence?” We mean that man first exists: he materializes in the world, encounters himself, and only afterwards defines himself. If man as existentialists conceive of him

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cannot be defined, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself.19 This ‘first principle of existentialism’ is ultimately to refute that the essence of an individual can exist before he or she comes into being. Of course, certain generic human traits are largely predictable before one enters the world as we can expect a human to have one heart, be limited to one of two genders, and will preferably drink water rather than oil. But what makes the specific human an individual, this can only come after their existence has become a physical reality; it is something that must develop with their subjective existence. It is in this sense that existence precedes essence. This elementary principle leads to the second and third existential themes explored here. On the second point, that of individualism and identity, this can come only after one’s existence has become manifest, and in terms of existential rationale we can be certain of this. To state this point is to contend that it is only by living our lives, by going through certain experiences, and by progressing forward as time-bound beings, that we can become an individual whose defining characteristics are a product of this process. Wartenberg explains: Sartre had a tendency to turn profound insights into slogans…‘Man’s existence precedes his essence’…As a slogan this is pretty nice. It suggests that humans come into existence – are born – without any nature or essence to them. The birth of a child begins a process in which a being whose nature is undetermined, whose future is open, comes into existence. Only in the course of living will that child determine exactly what kind of being it is. Its being, to revert to another abstract philosophical term, is becoming.20 By definition, this process of becoming is something that is never complete as long as the individual lives. That is, to say that becoming is a continuous and on-going development and is a process that only ends with the death of the specific individual. By this it is meant that throughout one’s existence and throughout an individual’s lifespan, we are in a constant process of becoming. Given this logic, an individual cannot avoid existing in a perpetual state of becoming. Indeed, Sartre contends that we never have a fixed and static individual identity; rather we are in a continuous process of evolution as we move along the timeline of our lives. It is in this sense that the individual who wakes in the morning is never the exact same person at dusk. The point is simple enough and both Flynn and Wartenberg illustrate this well. ‘Becoming an individual’ Flynn tells us, ‘is a task to be undertaken and sustained but perhaps never permanently achieved…the time bound nature of the human condition requires that existing as an individual is always dynamic and under way, never static and complete’.21 Wartenberg writes, So, for Sartre, human beings, so long as they are alive, are never a finished product. Existing in a specific, factical situation, we have to exercise

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The final point here is the importance of maintaining one’s own essence, individuality, and subsequent identity during one’s own lifetime. Admittedly this is self-explanatory and must be present within existentialism as there would be little point placing such importance on individuality if the maintenance of this was of little value to the existential thinker. Of course, everyone is an individual to a certain extent as no two beings have ever lived an identical life and thus their two respective experiences and essences must ultimately be different. Indeed, a person, from an existential perspective, is nothing more than a culmination of subjective experience. But what concerned Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre was how one may distinguish oneself from the crowd or the ‘herd’. How one lives, in other words, and how one maintains an ‘authentic existence’. Flynn highlights this and explains that for the existentialist, a core theme is that in the contemporary world the trend ‘is that the pull in modern society is away from individualism and towards conformity’.23 Conformity, in turn, lends itself to an inauthentic existence as one’s own life is more a reflection of the standards and expectations of social norms rather than one’s own choices and desires. An authentic existence is to repudiate and disengage, as much as possible, from social conformity and become the individual that our own experiences compel us to be regardless of social pressures and demands. It is, in short, to become Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.

The personification of the ethno-symbolic Up to this point the chapter has focused on exploring existentialism as a treatise on the essence of individualism and the human condition in broader terms. I believe the confusion of existentialism dictates this to be a necessity. If I am, that is, to argue that de Gaulle’s rationale in relation to France’s place within the international system is best understood through the marrying of ethnosymbolism and existential philosophy then it is rather important to stress this here. To be sure, such was de Gaulle’s sensitivity to the ethno-symbolic characteristics that were evident within the French nation, but also within each nation per se, that in his mind, nations existed as individuals per se and it is this ontological claim that sits at the heart of this chapter (the ‘behavioural’ consequences of this follow in Chapter Five). Nations were, in other words, individuals in broadly the same sense that Sartre understood them to be. For de Gaulle, France’s ethno-symbolic development, from her birth, historical progression, and modern existence can certainly be explained in a distinctly similar way to that of Sartre’s views of the birth, development and existence of human individuality. Of course, we must always bear in mind that de Gaulle and Sartre’s perceptions and focus on the individual were hardly on

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the same ontological level. One, that is, saw the individualism of humanity, while the other was concerned with the individuality of nations. Yet de Gaulle, as I argue, was essentially seeing humanity grouped into individualistic entities, or nations, and was (whether consciously or not) doing so through existential rationale. Although odd in one sense, this is not without precedent as Heidegger’s existentialism was also, at times, expressed in relation to a national group or Volk. Indeed, Heidegger was to argue that a people or Volk can, and sometimes must, think and act as one if it is ‘to fulfil its historical destiny’.24 Jules Michelet, in far more explicit terms, also spoke of nations as individuals. ‘France is a person’, he wrote, Nations can be classified as animals. The common pleasure of a great number of its parts, the internal solidarity of those parts, their reciprocal functions and influences, – that is social superiority. That is the superiority of France, in all the world the country in which nationality, national personality, approaches most closely to the individual [human] personality.25 Nonetheless, before going on to explore how de Gaulle’s ontological understanding of the world had profound consequences for French foreign policy during the 1960s and, in turn, caused France to stand out in the Cold War international system, I feel it necessary to explore the anthropomorphic nature of his sense of nationhood as this is a crucial ‘linking-point’ for connecting ethno-symbolism with existentialism. As was stressed in the previous chapter, the ethno-symbolic characteristics of nations were so prominent and tangible for de Gaulle that this is what Lacouture really meant when he wrote, ‘He who is France speaks better with nations than with men.’ This perception of the anthropomorphic nature of ‘living’ national individualism is predominantly expressed in relation to France, and given de Gaulle’s nationality this is understandable, but such sentiment can certainly be found when discussing other nations. Indeed, and to recall de Gaulle’s words in the previous chapter we know that France, ‘is a living entity’.26 In The Call to Honour he expresses a similar, yet more poetic view. The emotional side of me tends to imagine France, like the princess in the fairy stories of the Madonna in the frescoes, as dedicated to an exalted and exceptional destiny. Instinctively I have the feeling that Providence has created her either for complete success or for exemplary misfortunes. If, in spite of this, mediocrity shows in her acts and deeds, it strikes me as an absurd anomaly, to be imputed to the faults of the Frenchmen, not to the genius of the land.27 In talking of his role and actions in 1940 de Gaulle stresses, ‘with no hereditary right, without a referendum, with nothing, I was led to take on the defence of France, and her fate. I answered her mute and imperious cry.’28

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While of his war time struggles and of the Liberation in 1944 he states, ‘Things might have gone well or ill, but she was behind me. She was with me all through the Resistance; there was no doubt about that when I reached Paris.’29 De Gaulle’s concluding words in The Call to Honour display this theme again, A truce to doubts! Pouring over the gulf into which the country has fallen, I am her son, calling her, holding the light for her, showing her the way of rescue. Many have joined me already. Others will come, I am sure! I can hear France now, answering me. In the depths of the abyss she is rising up again, she is on the march, she is climbing the slope. Ah! Mother, such as we are, we are here to serve you.30 Again we are not merely seeing France in an abstract sense, but France’s ontological status for de Gaulle is as a breathing, existing reality. She is, also, notably feminine. Of course, some of this may be attributed to the quirks of the French language (France is la France and hence feminine), but there is something more in de Gaulle’s words that comes close to de Beauvoir’s notion of men relating to the soil and earth as female. ‘Among the nomads’ writes de Beauvoir, procreation seemed hardly more than accidental, and the wealth of the soil remained unknown; but the husbandman marvelled at the mystery of the fecundity that burgeoned in this furrows and in the maternal body; he realised that he had been engendered like the cattle and the crops, he wanted his clan to engender other men who would perpetuate it while perpetuating the fertility of the fields; all nature seemed to him like a mother: the land is woman and in women abide the same dark powers as in the earth.31 As Jackson also illuminates, France for de Gaulle, consistently, expressed herself in both an anthropomorphic and maternal sense. His attachment to France was as to a physical being: one loves one’s country like a mother, he told the soldiers serving under him in 1913; one of his BBC broadcasts in 1940 is a sort of prayer to Our Lady of France holding out her hands to her ‘sons’ (16 December 1940); nothing is lost for a Frenchman when he rallies to France his mother, he proclaimed (25 January 1960).32 Until recently this gendering of nations has largely been left out of the discourse on nationalism and international relations. Yet the clear gendering of de Gaulle’s France and nations in a wider sense may well fit into the newly emerging approaches to nationalism and this, in itself, may require greater exploration in terms of how gender-based ideas and assumptions impact foreign policy and the decision-making process of certain leaders. Indeed, de Gaulle’s

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views on France may be usefully illuminated by the work of scholars such as Nira Yuval-Davis, Floya Anthias, Sylvia Walby, Deniz Kandiyoti and Cynthia Enloe. Nonetheless, exploring the ontological basis of France as an individual must be the task at hand here. So often we find France’s individuality expressed as ‘national existence’; a term de Gaulle liked to frequently employ. For example, in reference to France de Gaulle states, ‘By virtue of her physical and mental make-up France must either be well-armed or not armed at all. This is a harsh law which is perpetually at loggerheads with our idealism and our independent character which gives our national existence a curiously tortured aspect.’33 ‘Our national existence’, he also writes, ‘has become that of an empire, and, as time goes on, this character becomes accentuated’.34 We would do well not to dismiss this as mere poetic expression. As a physical being, with a body and soul that was to revive itself from the mutilation caused by the havoc of the Second World War de Gaulle was to stress, Now, in the aftermath of the last conflict in which she had all but perished, on what premise was France to base her progress and her actions? The first of these premises was that, in spite of everything, she was alive… who would have thought that, after suffering an unparalleled disaster, after witnessing the subjection of her rulers to the authority of the enemy, after undergoing the ravages of the two greatest battles of the war and, in the meantime, prolonged plundering by the invader, after enduring the systematic abasement inflicted on her by a regime founded on surrender and humiliation, she would ever heal the wounds inflicted on her body and soul.35 This notion of France possessing a ‘soul’ is a reoccurring theme in de Gaulle’s writings and we frequently find reference to this throughout his political and war memoirs. Of the fall of France in 1940 he writes, ‘if our leaders in consequence had at their disposal the instrument for shock and manoeuvre which had been often suggested to the politicians and to the High Command; then our arms would have had their chance, and France would have found her soul again’.36 De Gaulle also states of Pétain and France’s capitulation to Germany, ‘her self-disgust and the disgust she would inspire in others would poison her soul and her life for many generations’.37 Johnson similarly makes note of this.38 For de Gaulle it was the insistence and the force of making the French acknowledge France as a living individual that made men great, not simply great soldiers. In many ways de Gaulle was nothing if not a force to make the French acknowledge France and to make the French acknowledge the individual that was France. It was to make the French believe in the ‘religion’ and ‘Church’ that France was for de Gaulle. It was to make the French nation ‘aware of its own existence.’39 It was, as de Gaulle stressed to Malraux, to tap into something arcane and cabalistic within the national soul that made men follow the

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mythical figure that the General had become. For de Gaulle it was the same force that had compelled the French to follow the Bonaparte; Napoleon came to be considered a man of genius by nearly all his foreign enemies. For us, I understand it: he stated positively to France that she was worth more than she believed…He appealed to them; Pompey didn’t. Neither did Augustus. Victories are less important than people imagine. Turenne inspired greater respect than did Condé, although why is not clear, for none of his battles are as important as Rocroy. Maurice de Saxe, who never lost a battle, is nothing like the equal of Napoleon who in the end was beaten. Victories that are only victories do not lead far. Something else must come into play.40 Ultimately what de Gaulle is stressing here is the importance of national leadership, national representation, and hence a force that wills a population to believe. Napoleon, in this sense, willed the nation to believe in itself, to acknowledge itself and its own specific identity, and was, for de Gaulle, the greatest of influences on men. Indeed, while Malraux asks the question, ‘Why did the good men of the Isle of Sein come to join you? Why did we follow you?’, the answer for de Gaulle is that he alone made France more than the French believed she was in a way that Pétain was never able to do.41 It is precisely in this sense that Pétain wished to save the French while de Gaulle aimed to save France. Indeed, saving lives was one thing but to de Gaulle’s mind, saving the entity that gave lives meaning, identity, and a common purpose was a higher goal. It was this that made ‘great men’ and in many ways making the French acknowledge France, was all de Gaulle had ever tried to do. From this we must recognise the fundamental point that demands we understand that when de Gaulle talks of France this is always done in an anthropomorphic way that should not be easily dismissed. When we see him mention France, that is, this is not with the perception of France existing as a mere concept and passive notion; it is with the sense of France as an existing individual. But it was not merely France that he saw as such. Indeed, a journalist once remarked of de Gaulle’s description of Poland, ‘it was as though he was talking of a woman’.42 In this sense France becomes an existing entity. She is a cultural being and exists through those who inhabit the landmass of l’Hexagone. But perhaps above all else it is the soul of France, formed through the process of her ethno-symbolic historical development and which manifests itself through the collective consciousness of these people, that was most important for de Gaulle’s sense of France as a national individual. It was a soul that so often waxed and waned throughout France’s life but it was this, not the French per se, that he always sought to defend. De Gaulle did not fully understand this himself but he was well aware of its presence and impact. No historian has attempted to analyze the most curious element in history: the moment at which the current begins to flow. For us or against us:

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the Wehrmacht in 1940 and 1944; the Liberation and May 1968. It does not flow by chance, I am sure. Still, what makes it flow is never decisive. Sometimes it disappears as rapidly as it has come. I’m not referring to what makes a man of history suddenly abandon history, as did so many Romans, the Emperor Charles V, and your friend Saint-Just. I’m speaking of what gives a soul to a people – or to an army.43 Of course, and as mentioned periodically throughout the book, this should come as no surprise as de Gaulle’s first work, The Enemy’s House Divided, is primarily concerned with the question of what happens to a nation’s collective consciousness and an individual’s ‘soul’ when it acts in a certain way. What happens to a nation when it acts in a way contrary to its history; when it commits ‘moral suicide’ and abandons the past? What happens when a nation stops believing or even acknowledging itself, as Germany did in 1918 and as France was to do in 1940? These were de Gaulle’s questions. The result of this, according to the General, is that people stop believing in the individual, people stop believing in their respective nation, and people cut themselves off from the nation’s past. They turn their backs on the past and effectively abandon history. The land remains, the population lingers, but the soul and national character is tortured, disfigured, and blemished. It was this that led to the condition whereby, in de Gaulle’s words and speaking of the Revolutionary events that had tried to cut France off from her history; ‘France had been living for a hundred and thirty years in a chronic state of infirmity, insecurity and acrimony.’ De Gaulle continues: Physical decline went hand in hand with spiritual depression. The disasters which put an end to Napoleon Bonaparte’s attempt at hegemony and later the defeat inflicted upon the nation by the might of Prussia and her German satellites had submerged the French beneath such waves of humiliation that henceforth they were to doubt themselves. Certainly the 1918 victory revived their faith for a moment. But it cost so much and bore such bitter fruits that hopes died at once under the shock of 1940. The soul of France died a little more. Thanks to the wakening of the Resistance and to the miracle of our victory, it still survived, but lame, and so to speak, sclerotic.44 If de Gaulle had only ever been concerned with one goal it was to reaffirm peoples’ belief in France’s soul, in France as an individual, and to convert people back to the ‘faith’, ‘church’, and ‘religion’ that France was for the General. It was to reawaken the individual’s soul much in the same way that Napoleon had done for the French, as Lenin did for the Russians, and perhaps Hitler had done for the Germans. Above all else this was what mattered to de Gaulle; the soul of France as an individual; ‘I wanted to revive France’ he explains, ‘and, to a certain extent, I did so. As for the details, God will recognise his own.’45

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Yet it was not only himself, as the ‘reviver’ of France that he respected, but any force that would act to revitalize a nation’s ‘soul’ or any ‘force’ that would allow a nation to awaken itself to its own individuality and subjective identity. ‘Even if Communism lets the Russians believe in Russia for nonsensical reasons, that belief is irreplaceable’; this is precisely why he saw positives in Russian communism as it acted as a form of cardiopulmonary resuscitation to the heart of the Russian individual.46 This is what de Gaulle really meant when he asked, ‘did Lenin know he had come to re-establish Russia?’ and is precisely why he rarely referred to Russia as the ‘Soviet Union’.47 We may perhaps say the same of Vladimir Putin in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. Indeed, despite Crimea, despite the ‘retreat from democracy’, and despite worsening tensions with the West, Putin appears to be a force to make the Russians see Russia again. In claiming that he was France, as de Gaulle periodically did, he was stressing his belief that he represented the nation, not the nationality. That is, as a man who was ever faithful to France’s past and character, but above all, as Johnson highlights, her sovereignty; ‘I was the independence and the sovereignty of France, and it was for this reason that everyone obeyed me.’48 He also stressed to Malraux that no one he ever opposed within France reflected Gallic authenticity; ‘not once – you hear me, not once – did I find standing against me a man who represented France’.49 But such was de Gaulle’s sensitivity to the ethno-symbolic traits and individuality of other nations that he projected this same logic onto all other states. This is what de Gaulle really meant when he claimed, ‘I met Stalin, I did not meet Russia…I’m sorry, it’s Russia that counts.’50 Considered in this sense, Lacouture is correct; de Gaulle truly was a man who spoke better to nations than he did to men.

Existence precedes essence In order to take forward the principal argument of the work, and to explore how ideas impact on foreign policy, I now move to reconcile Sartrean thought with the individuality that courses through de Gaulle’s sense of nations as the entities that inhabit the wider international system. This is done by taking the three tenets of existential rationale as outlined above and aligning these with de Gaulle’s perception of national existence and development in order to better understand how his ideas on nationhood conditioned his foreign policy. In turn this allows us to explore how subjectivity was the starting point for de Gaulle’s sense of international relations and not an abstract understanding (such as the logic that marks Waltzian thought) that attempts to begin ‘outside’ of the existence of nations in order to produce universal claims. It is in this sense that de Gaulle’s understanding of the international system, the historical ‘content’ of this, and the existential undertones of his foreign policy may make him a constructivist thinker (of sorts). Nonetheless, to recall the three areas of existentialism used above I note that these are: (1) existence precedes essence; (2) that this essence, or individualistic identity, is only attainable through the

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act of becoming and hence is a constant process; and (3) that individuals, in order to maintain authenticity, must resist social conformity. These are, of course, somewhat generic existential terms and probably reflect the existentialism of Sartre and Kierkegaard above that of any other thinkers, but in working towards an existential understanding of de Gaulle’s foreign policy I now turn to explore the first of Sartre’s claims in relation to this. Sartre’s dictum of ‘existence preceding essence’, as we have already seen, argues that when an individual is born, when a human comes into existence he or she is, at first, nothing; ‘Man is indeed, a project that has a subjective existence, rather unlike a patch of moss, a spreading fungus, or a cauliflower.’51 If, as Nietzsche famously declared in both The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ‘God is dead’, and thus human nature does not exist because we have no God or higher being to prescribe this to us, then at the point of birth, at the point of inception into this world, the impending individual is a blank slate, or an empty shell. He is, in other words, yet to define himself in any meaningful sense. At this point of existence the pending individual has no discernible characteristics or essence. As Sartre would tell us, man simply is. Of the three points of existentialism used here, this notion of existence preceding essence is perhaps the most difficult to reconcile with de Gaulle’s ethno-symbolic understanding of nations. Indeed, as we have already seen, many scholars who focus on nationalism see nations as the product of nationalism, rather than the other way around. In this sense, and if nationalism exists prior to the nation, then this is as an idea and a concept of the nation that will come into being. It is a picture and idealised image of the specific peoples that exists before the physical reality of the nation that shall eventually come to pass. In this sense, and with the essence of the nation, represented by the specific nationalism, coming before the actual existence of a people and hence the nation, this contradicts Sartre’s maxim of ‘existence preceding essence’ when transposing existential thought onto nations. But the ethnosymbolists, de Gaulle very much included, would certainly refute this and argue that as no two nationalisms are the same, and as all are unique, each nationalism, in turn, is built upon shared histories, cultures, languages, and traditions that go back into the mists of history and hence the essence of each nationalism is merely a product of the existence of the countless numbers of previous generations that have inhabited the specific territory or landmass in which the new nation and nationalism is to be born. It is, in this sense, to merely underline and give definition to a nameless force that already existed but had yet to be harnessed and defined. For the General, France’s existence does precede her essence. This is precisely why Debray claimed that, ‘de Gaulle was an existentialist of the nation’. Of all de Gaulle’s works, it is perhaps The Army of the Future and France and Her Army that are most imbued with a sense of France’s history and the continuity of Gallic themes that stretch from the time of Christ through to the twentieth century. This is especially so in the first chapter of The Army of the Future, ‘Protection’, that stresses the problems in protecting ancient Gaul

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are ultimately the same as those for defending France in the modern day; geography here dictates all. As de Gaulle writes: In the North-East there is a terrible breach between the essential basins of the Seine and of the Loire and German territory…This breach in the ramparts is the age-old weakness of the country. Through it, Roman Gaul saw the Barbarians hurl themselves upon her wealth. It was there that the Monarchy struggled to resist the pressure of the Holy Roman Empire. There Louis XIV defended his power against the combined forces of Europe. The Revolution all but came to grief there. Napoleon succumbed there. In 1870, disaster and shame advanced along the same road. In this fatal passage-way we recently buried one-third of our young men.52 From this work we also know that de Gaulle saw France as existing for two thousand years. He asks, ‘Is this poorly protected nation, then, at least on her guard? Does she seem capable of getting the best out of her war machine at a moment’s notice? Can she strike in real earnest from the outset? Twenty centuries answer, No!’53 In Felled Oaks de Gaulle also states, ‘There is a pact twenty centuries old between the grandeur of France and the liberty of others.’54 Throughout his principle works de Gaulle sporadically refers to his forbearers as ‘Gauls’ and while this is not surprising, as in one sense every French child will be taught this history, for de Gaulle there is a certain sense within his words indicating his explicit Bergsonism whereby history is something that still remains present and constant within twentieth-century France. Malraux even exclaims of de Gaulle, ‘how thoroughly he was the past of France, an ageless face, like the snow covered forest behind him to which he was now wedded’.55 While de Gaulle was happy to speak, in a historical sense, of the French as Gauls, and even the Germans as Teutons, this language is used in a more modern sense too. For example, when looking back into history we are told of ‘The Rhine, which nature meant the Gauls to have as their boundary and their protection…’, and ‘that between Gauls and Teutons alternate victories have solved nothing and fulfilled nothing’.56 Even when talking of the modern world we still find this language entrenched in his words. In Memoirs of Hope, for example, de Gaulle provides an account of his discussions with the former German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. This Rhinelander was imbued with a sense of the complementary nature of the Gauls and the Teutons which once fertilized the presence of the Roman Empire on the Rhine, brought success to the Franks and glory to Charlemagne, provided the rationale for Austria, justified the relations between the Electors, set Germany afire with the flame of the Revolution, inspired Goethe, Heine, Madame de Staël and Victor Hugo, and in spite of the fierce struggles in which the two peoples were locked, continued to seek a path gropingly through the darkness.57

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Through de Gaulle’s understanding of Gallic history, however, there is no sense that the existence of the Gauls, as a people, automatically equated to any sense of nationhood. For de Gaulle, the presence of the Gauls, which predated his time-frame of France existing for two thousand years, gives us no tangible individual or ‘essence’ to speak of. Nothing bound these peoples together, nothing acted as an adhesive to draw the Gauls together as a people, as a specific entity, and as a formal group. If anything, quite the opposite was true as the Gauls were predominantly seen to be a disparate people who were ever divided and many of the themes that are prevalent in Caesar’s own views on ancient Gaul also seem to be the same notions that de Gaulle picks up on in his own frustrations of the divisions among the French.58 Few similarities could be found between the Gauls as a people and it is predominantly this element of division and self-interest that historically marks their character and was reflected in de Gaulle’s remarks when he spoke of the French resembling too many types of cheese. To the scholar of FPA this domestic concern must be kept in mind at all times when considering the foreign policy of de Gaulle. It was, for de Gaulle, only in response to Roman aggression that ‘France’ as an individual was born in the years before the birth of Christ, namely around the time of the Gallic chief, Vercingétorix (83BC to 46BC). It is from here that the ethno-symbolic traits that were to form de Gaulle’s national individual originate. In Memoirs of Hope he writes, ‘war gives birth and brings death to nations’, and it was indeed the war of resistance fought by Vercingétorix against Caesar’s invasions that de Gaulle saw as giving birth to France.59 As seen above, de Gaulle clung to the notion of France as existing for two thousand years and it was the resistance of Vercingétorix that signals the start of this, ‘twenty centuries: that takes us back to Vercingétorix: he was the first resister of our race’ de Gaulle explains.60 Interestingly though, we never hear of de Gaulle talking of any tangible ethno-symbolic characteristics of the Gauls or French at this point in history; this only comes after the Roman conquest that eventually bound the Gauls together and forged a specific identity. For de Gaulle, the birth of this individual is a historical event; of this we can be certain, but at this point it is only in opposition to a common enemy. It is merely the existence of a people who will eventually become France. That is, a united people without any notable ethno-symbolic characteristics and a people without any tangible ethno-symbolic essence to speak of. Of course we cannot be entirely sure of this, as although de Gaulle never really speaks of the Gauls as having a set of characteristics that would be sufficient to label as some form of national essence at this point, this cannot entirely preclude the point. The old adage, ‘the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’ captures this point well. Yet without this, and with de Gaulle only speaking of the existence of an individual in the years around the birth of Christ, we can hypothesize from this that he perceives of the existence of an individual without any substantial essence being present. With the formation of France as a ‘hollow’ individual created, this now fills the first requirement for seeing de Gaulle’s sense of France, supported by the

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twin platforms of Bergsonism and ethno-symbolism, in existential terms. To be sure, from the General’s perspective we have an individual without an essence and a ‘France’ without a ‘soul.’ It is the creation of an individual who will become France, that the character, identity, and the ethno-symbolic nature of this individual now begins to take shape and thus the soulless entity moves toward the possession of an essence and hence individuality. As is argued in Chapter Five, this was an individual that could only have a sense of itself in opposition to another nation that was not France. De Gaulle, as he stresses, sees this identity come into being by the gradual emergence of the Gauls developing a set of Roman ethno-symbolic characteristics as a product of imperial administration. France has imprinted on the men who live there her own stamp, making a balanced whole out of their differences and welding their many-sidedness into unity. History herself lent her aid. The Roman conquest, by giving the peoples of Gaul the same language, the same laws and Christianity and by making them accept a single morality, and later the monarchy, which was a force for unity, increased the common bond which withstood so many efforts to break it up.61 If it is the case that Vercingétorix’s actions created an individual and this ‘common bond’ from Gallic opposition and resistance to Roman invasion (albeit an unsuccessful one), then it was from the subsequent Roman occupation that the inhabitants of Gaul derived their collective identity and character. It was, in existential terms, the source from which the existence of the individual took its ethno-symbolic essence. Of course, the acquisition of this essence, like that of a human individual, was no sudden event, and there is no specific point in which this character ‘appears’. De Gaulle once wrote that ‘Men do not change so quickly, or so completely, nor does human nature move by leaps and bounds’; the same is certainly true of his perception of nations.62 Rather it was the slow development and evolution of this essence that entrenched the characteristics of Roman language, laws, and morality within these early Frenchmen. When we reach the reign of Clovis (481–511AD) who introduced Christianity into Gallic France (and hence what would become a core ethno-symbolic trait of ‘the France’ that was to come), it is around this time that de Gaulle sees the real emergence of those who would become Frenchmen; ‘fifteen centuries, that takes us back to Clovis: in uniting Roman Gaul and Christianity, the King of the Franks was the true creator of France’. By the time we reach the start of the Capetian Dynasty (987AD) de Gaulle sees Paris as the epicentre of this Gallic-Roman identity, and as spreading this ethno-symbolic essence to the whole of France and thus consolidating the identity of the nation as an individual; ‘Ten centuries, that takes us back to Hugues Capet: he installed the dynasty which extended French power from the area around Paris to the whole of the Hexagon.’63

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When we reach the modern day, de Gaulle still sees France as Roman, and unmistakably so, and this is a clear example of his Bergsonism and hence the presence of the past in his modern day homeland. Indeed, even though fifteenhundred years had passed since the Roman legions and Consuls had graced her land, even though the age of Trajan and Constantine had long faded into history, the myths, memories, and traditions that had been given to the fledgling France by the five-hundred-year-period of Roman occupation, remained as an irrevocable imprint on the national soul. Perhaps nowhere is this better illustrated than in Felled Oaks as de Gaulle constantly refers to France as being a modern day Rome and frequently uses Roman-based metaphors to stress this belief. For example, when discussing the future of Algeria, he told Malraux, ‘We shall leave Algeria. Algeria will remain French as France has remained Roman.’64 De Gaulle also refers to French culture as ‘the heritage of Rome’, and of his actions throughout his life, ‘we had to do what we did; but the future is that which doesn’t yet exist. Like Christianity for the Roman philosophers.’65 When discussing the need for politicians to disregard danger de Gaulle states, ‘you know very well…that courage always involves disregarding danger. And then, it is best to die assassinated or struck by lightning. When Caesar was killed, he was holding the list of the conspirators in his hand, and had not read it.’66 In marking out the differences between the people of Northern Europe and those of the South the General stresses, Their democracy is equality; it is also a feeling that places the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian democracies above ours: a worship of the Law. And when all is said, the Law is the State. In politics, in religion, the Latins have never been sure when they were Rome, and when they were pretending to be. Was it you who said that Rome was the opposite of Mediterranean restlessness?67 Finally, in discussing political divisions in the ancient city of Byzantium de Gaulle explains, ‘I once tried to understand what really divided the Blues from the Greens at Byzantium. In vain. Whereas I understand Rome.’68 In this sense, and as France for de Gaulle is an individual, this understanding fits with Sartre’s ‘first principle of existentialism’, that is, that France first exists as nothing, enters into the world as nothing, and it is only afterwards that France takes on her defining ethno-symbolic characteristics. That said, a crucial and salient point is also noticeable that taints the fit of the individuality of human existence with that of de Gaulle’s nation. As seen above, the Gauls that existed before the creation of de Gaulle’s individual, that of Vercingétorix’s Gallic France, had little in the way of an ethno-symbolic bond that could bind them as one people. The only traits that were discernible were those of division and self-interest; characteristics that would logically act against the formation of a disparate people into a nation. The ‘pre-French’ Gauls in this context, were certainly seen to be so by Polybius. Craige Brian Champion stresses this point:

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Existence preceding essence A Pattern emerges. Like Illyrians, Gauls subordinate collective interests and communal concerns to individual desires. Polybius illustrates this point with an event in the third century. In 299 Gauls raided Roman territory and made off with a massive amount of war booty. Upon returning home they argued over the divisions of spoils and proceeded to destroy not only the plunder but each other as well. Polybius adds that this sort of behaviour is a common occurrence among the Gauls, a people given over to license and debauchery. Gallic pleonexia appears to have overwhelmed the Allobroges in Hannibal’s passage of the Alps. In Polybius’s account they have no self-will, as they are called out by the prospects for plunder.69

A 2006 BBC documentary-film, that depicts the Second Punic War, captures the essence of this well as Hannibal, when passing through what is now the south of modern day France, comments of the Gauls, ‘loyal to neither Carthage nor Rome, only to themselves’.70 Yet this characteristic, that certainly pre-dates the birth of France is evident when de Gaulle’s France comes into being as it seemingly endures for two thousand years and persists through to the time of the Fifth Republic, expressing itself through political infighting, instability and a distinctly binary view of issues, events and international affairs; a trait that Oliver Todd has called a ‘very French attitude’.71 Of the modern French the General stresses, ‘other people like following the leader, living in compact groups, doing just like everyone else. That is not our spirit. We do not like the strict order which is acceptable to large flocks. Our processions march in confusion, we dislike one-way streets, we are incapable of singing properly in chorus.’72 De Gaulle continues, ‘Every Frenchman is too concerned for his own independence…Among us, solidarity and discipline have a quality of hesitancy, reserve and instability which make common action uneven and awkward.’73 Finally he writes, ‘in the course of time storms would inevitably rage, whether blowing in from outside, or rising within the confines of a country which, since the Gauls, had been periodically the stage for those “sudden and unexpected upheavals” which astonished Caesar.’74 What we are essentially seeing here is de Gaulle echoing the comments of Polybius and thus some of the essence that is part of the existence of de Gaulle’s individual, which certainly existed amongst the Gauls prior to the birth of France, and has lingered into the modern day. Obviously this process, perhaps, weakens the case for ethno-symbolic existentialism as here we have a tangible part of France’s essence that pre-dates her existence and thus goes against Sartre’s dictum (at least in part). Nonetheless, although I acknowledge this problem it is an exception to the above argument and, on the whole, the question of the birth and development of de Gaulle’s national individual and the existential view of human individuals is deemed to be sufficient to give legitimacy to the notion of de Gaulle’s sense of France’s existence tallying with Sartre’s dictum of existence preceding essence.

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On becoming Before moving on to explore how existentialism is a pertinent lens through which to rationalise the ‘behaviour’ of Gaullist France within the international system, and hence the interconnectivity between ideas and foreign policy, it is important to complete my argument here in relation to the ontological basis of this. This compels us to explore how Sartre’s second existential principle is also expressed in the General’s understanding of France. Indeed, although I contend that France, through the General’s eyes, is an ancient individual, imbued with a Roman essence that took shape only after the initial individual came into existence, we may also detect the appreciation for the process of becoming in de Gaulle’s understanding of France as a living entity. It will be recalled that the process of becoming demands that an individual can only become what he or she already is, that is, one may only progress forward as a time-bound being with a view or an aspiration of one’s own specific future which is, in turn, a product of one’s own past and experiences. As Sartre explains, we may will ourselves to become, but this is a consequence of our subjective past; we cannot cut ourselves off from our own history; ‘man is nothing else but what he makes of himself…I may want to belong to a political party, write a book, get married; but all that is only a manifestation of an earlier, more spontaneous choice that is called “will.”’75 As Wartenberg simply sums up, ‘our essence is to become what we are’.76 From an FPA perspective, what is important to note here is the claim that we cannot cut ourselves off from our own histories as this had significant implications when de Gaulle looked to the world stage. In reconciling this with de Gaulle’s understanding of the life of nations as individuals we need to look at his Bergsonian understanding of the past. Of how history, time, and ‘duration’, that is, are the seminal influences on individualistic evolution and how nations must stay true to this. De Gaulle, certainly saw time and history as the process and force from which France’s essence was forged. It was not something that could be dictated by those in power. It is time that makes history. If France’s history goes by the way of independence for Algeria, let it! By way of our marriage with Germany, let it! Regretting Algerian independence was not pleasant. But the important thing was to know that we had the responsibility for France. Contrary to what politicians think, politicians do nothing. They gather territories together until they lose them, and they defend interests until they betray them. History is accomplished in other ways.77 What we are seeing here, and bearing in mind that for de Gaulle France is an individual, is the expression of the same existential logic in relation to France, as Sartre claims of the human individual. France here can only be a product of time, of her experiences and of her past. She may change, she may move forward and develop her character but this ‘future’ and ‘developing’

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France is only a reflection of her ethno-symbolic past, and for France to become, as with human individuals, she must go through the process of becoming. Anything that went against this, anything that sought to deviate France from her own historical course, and endeavoured to alter her age-old ethno-symbolic character, was unrealistic and dangerous idealism and was to be avoided. An ancient individual, that is, could not just suddenly become. Camus has written, ‘If history is our hell, then we cannot turn away’ and in some ways this captures the very essence of de Gaulle’s worldview and sense of the broader international system.78 As a product of Roman occupation and imperial administration, France’s ethno-symbolic character, for de Gaulle, revolved around certain elements such as a common Romance language, Roman law and morality, a Christian faith, and, crucially, a figure that personified and stressed the unity and grandeur of France. It was a figure who acted as an anthropomorphic representation of the nation and hence a figure that helped the French to acknowledge France. It was, in de Gaulle’s words, a figure that could transcend the French inability to sing ‘properly in chorus’ and was a figure that would, ultimately let the French ‘see’ the State.79 It is in this sense, perhaps, that Wendt’s employment of the Leibnizian term of ‘dominant monad’ (that de Gaulle is representative of) in his ‘flatland’ ontological thesis helps to answer the question of where the state is. Indeed, if the state is merely a metaphysical abstraction, then it may well be said that the state is where people believe it to be; in other words, an actual anthropomorphic representation of this. Napoleon, for de Gaulle, was but one example of this in that he compelled the French to believe in France and to acknowledge the presence of the past in the present. The kings of old also fulfilled this role as did those such as Foch and Clemenceau. Either way, throughout history de Gaulle’s France had remained true to her historically imbued traits, and there is certainly nothing in his words to suggest otherwise. Thus, by this rationale, France remained true to the existential logic of becoming. She was, that is, a true and authentic product of her own history, her subjective myths and memories, and a true reflection of her own Gallic past. That is however, until the events that flowed from 1789. Although de Gaulle rarely speaks of the Revolution (probably as it would prove to be an overwhelmingly divisive issue for the French) in outright terms, in his words we are able to detect his disdain for what the Revolution tried to do to France. It attempted, in existential terms that is, to make France something that she was not; something that strove to break from her past and hence ‘abandon history’ and to ‘escape’ from her hell as Camus would perhaps say. In an existential sense one may surmise that the actions of the sans-calottes were ‘authentic’ as these were the manifestations of earlier experiences that revolved around feelings of social injustice and Enlightenment philosophy. But when the actions of Desmoulins and Danton gave way to Robespierre and Saint Just the earlier act of rebellion against the French King became an impossible and ill-fated revolution against the French past. In turn, de Gaulle suggests, this set France, French society, and European culture into

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a downward spiral and a long protracted slide towards moral and cultural suicide. ‘It is strange’, he lamented to Malraux, ‘to live consciously at the end of civilization! That hasn’t happened since the end of Rome. What preceded the French Revolution and the American Revolution wasn’t the end of a civilization – it was only the end of a society. Which could well be the date of the first snowfall.’80 In holding such contempt for the French Revolution and perhaps a Hegelian sense of dialectical historical progression, de Gaulle, as already noted, is in agreement with one of France’s foremost critics of the Revolution, Camus, and for a moment, let us deviate to his work. In The Rebel (L’Homme révolté, 1951) and although Camus is more concerned with the question of why revolutions tend to produce more tyrannical, unequal, and repressive regimes than those which they seek to overthrow, he rightly points out that the Revolution, through Robespierre and Saint Just sought to create a new vision of France that was a break with the past. Camus states, Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793, and before the regicides of the nineteenth century. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the King. They wanted another king and that was all…according to Michelet, Louis XVI wanted to be king in prison. In a France entirely governed by new principles, the principle that had been defeated still survived behind prison walls through the mere power of faith and through the existence of one human being.81 Camus continues, A religion which executes its obsolete sovereign must now establish the power of its new sovereign; it closes the churches and this leads to an endeavour to build a temple. The blood of the gods, which for a second bespatters the confessor of Louis XVI, announces a new baptism. Joseph de Maistre qualified the Revolution as satanic. We can see why and in what sense. Michelet, however, was closer to the truth when he called it purgatory. An era blindly embarks on an attempt to discover a new illumination, a new happiness, and the face of the real God. But what will this new god be?82 As Camus highlights here, the Revolutionaries, chiefly Robespierre and SaintJust amongst others of the Committee of Public Safety, sought to forge and create a fresh vision of France. This was a ‘republic of virtue’ as Robespierre repeatedly exclaimed. This new vision, this ‘attempt to discover a new illumination’, that de Gaulle saw as being a form of self-torture and self-delusion, tore apart some of the deeply rooted ethno-symbolic characteristics within the Gallic individual. Hence, and in doing so, France during the revolutionary-era attempted to go against Sartrean rationale. France sought, that is, to simply

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become, and to be, without the historically rooted process of becoming. This was to go against both the existential logic of Sartre and de Gaulle’s assertion that ‘it is time that makes history’, and we may well say the same of postrevolutionary Russia which sought to be communist without progressing through the social and economic process that Marxist rationale dictated. Robespierre’s future projection of France that he sought to create, and as with most revolutions, was a deliberate break from the past. In relation to France it was a break with some of the core elements that had been entrenched within the Hexagon since the time of Clovis. Indeed, the disregarded notion of the divine right of the King to rule would certainly weaken God within France, but more importantly it was the removal of the monarchy as the focal-point of national unity that most troubled the General. De Gaulle was all too aware of the vital effect that the French monarchy played within Gallic national life up until 1789, and while he speaks little of the Revolution per se we can certainly see this in his words. This is so as while he holds the monarchy in high regard, at the same time he laments the ‘France’ that emerged after the removal of Louis XVI, and in this sense the General passes judgement on the Revolution without directly engaging with it. Indeed for de Gaulle, and among a people ever prone to division, the monarchy was of the upmost importance; ‘a force for unity’ as de Gaulle calls it.83 It was a force that kept at bay the French ‘inner demons that strove to divide them’.84 If, for de Gaulle, this eminently French ethno-symbolic trait that had persisted since the days of Vercingétorix, had been kept in check, so to speak, by a national figurehead; a war chief at first and later on the establishment of a monarchy, then this is something that had become entrenched in the ethnosymbolic structure and essence of the French individual. It was something that had developed within the soul and character of France over time much in the same way as characteristics develop within the human individual for Sartre. The removal of this fundamental principle is, in de Gaulle’s eyes, catastrophic. Not particularly because de Gaulle believed that monarchy was the best form of government as such. Indeed, de Gaulle never made an objective claim about a ‘best’ form of political system. Rather his rationale reflected the belief that if France’s ‘inner demons’ still lurked deep within the Gallic soul, and if it was ‘time that makes history’, then the instantaneous removal of this ‘force for unity’, that went against the existential logic of becoming, could only lead to a France that, in de Gaulle’s words, ‘had been living for a hundred and thirty years in a chronic state of infirmity, insecurity and acrimony’.85 France, from the Revolution until the Fifth Republic certainly had been so. The removal of the monarchy as the guarantor of Gallic unity, without time and history dictating the course of this, certainly went against the process of becoming and as de Gaulle suggests, left France infirm, unwell, and debilitated. It was a France, in Malraux’s words, that had ‘sunk into a terrible sleep’.86 Of course France, as a physical entity, still existed, but the soul and essence of France only lingered in an incapacitated and inauthentic form. In this sense France, for de Gaulle, was ‘a lie’ and an impossible abdicator of the past.87

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The nature, and cause of this nightmarish slumber that France found herself in, was the divisive ‘inner demons’ that de Gaulle was so keen to avoid; ‘Fifteen regimes had succeeded each other since 1789, each in turn installed by revolution or coup d’état, none succeeding in ensuring equilibrium, all swept away by the catastrophes and leaving ineffaceable division behind them.’88 This also led to disdain and ridicule from foreign powers. As Franklin Roosevelt once said to de Gaulle, ‘Even I, the President of the United States, sometimes found myself incapable of remembering the name of the current head of the French government.’89 In Memoirs of Hope de Gaulle contends that it was his responsibility to ‘wake’ France from this sleep. ‘If France in the depths of her being’, he laments, ‘once more called upon me to serve as her guide, it was surely not, I felt, in order to preside over her sleep.’90 In talking of his use of referenda during his years in power, de Gaulle stresses to Malraux, ‘Participation, you see – I felt it would be a way of awakening the country, of making it aware of its own existence, of shaking it up!’91 In this sense, de Gaulle felt that the Revolution had torn away a vital element of France’s essence and had thusly plunged her into a motionless state. France became a nation that slept while ‘the world had forgotten her voice’.92 Pétain’s actions, to de Gaulle’s mind, therefore represented the end point in the death of France that the Revolutionaries had begun, ‘at stake was not only expulsion of the enemy from her territory, but also her future as a nation and a state. Should she remain prostrate until the war’s end, her faith in herself would be destroyed, and with that faith her independence as well. From the ‘silence of the sea’ she would pass into a permanent coma, from a slavery imposed by her enemies she would decline to a subordination enforced by her allies.’93 Such was the General’s desire to see a force for French unity restored, and hence reinstate one of France’s core ethno-symbolic traits, he felt it no unfortunate thing that the Second World War lingered on following the Allied invasion of Normandy as this would provide a temporary unifying effect on France. It would also, de Gaulle hoped, reattach the French to the reality that France was a belligerent power, with an interest and stake in the war. That the war was to continue was certainly tragic from the point of view of the losses, damage and expense which the French would still have to endure. But from the viewpoint of France’s higher interests – which is something quite different from the immediate advantages of the French population – I did not regret it. With the war dragging on, our help would be needed in the battle of the Rhine and of the Danube…what an opportunity this supreme phase offered to national unity.94 Yet wars, even those between France and Germany, cannot last indefinitely, and de Gaulle saw something else as necessary to restore this historically-rooted element of France’s essence. At the most fundamental level this was the creation of an ‘elected monarchy’ and a balanced political system that was to wake France in much the same way that Communism had rekindled the Russian

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flame. The term ‘elected monarchy’ does not imply that de Gaulle actually restored, or wished to restore any of the mid-twentieth century claimants to the French throne, although such claimants certainly exist. Rather de Gaulle, in his design of the constitutional structure of the Fifth Republic created the strongest and most prestigious political position in Western Europe. It is in this sense, and writing in Salvation that de Gaulle explained: ‘I had every apparent justification for prolonging the sort of monarchy which I had recently assumed and which general consent had subsequently ratified.’95 By 1958, and very much based on the principles outlined in the Bayeux speech (1946), de Gaulle’s creation of the role of French President embodies his perception of what the French monarchy would have looked like if it had survived into the twentieth century, and if this strand of France’s ethno-symbolic essence had gone through the process of becoming, rather than brutally being forced to suddenly become by the Revolution. ‘In none of these discussions was any fundamental opposition raised to the changes I had for so long demanded’, wrote de Gaulle, That the Head of State should really be the head of affairs; that he should really be answerable for France and the Republic; that he should really appoint the government and preside over the Cabinet; that he should really be responsible for appointments to the highest civil, military and judicial offices; that he should really be the head of the armed forces – in short, that all important decisions as well as all authority should really emanate from him; that he should be able of his own accord to dissolve the National Assembly; that he should have the power to submit to a referendum any government bill dealing with the working of the country’s institutions; that in the event of a grave crisis, internal or external, he should be empowered to take any measures demanded by the circumstances; and, finally, that he should be elected by a college much larger than parliament.96 In addition to this de Gaulle also demanded that the new system would produce political majorities, rather than bickering factions, and, in de Gaulle’s words, restrain ‘the regime of the parties’ that crippled the Third and Fourth republics.97 For de Gaulle, the reestablishment of a powerful figure would finally put France’s ‘evil demons’, represented by ‘the regime of the parties’ to sleep and in turn awaken France to her own authenticity. De Gaulle certainly saw the British monarch, Elizabeth II, as fulfilling a very similar role during his own lifetime.98 Of course, the obvious difference between the role of French President and role of the King is that of the divine right to rule, but this should not take away from the fact that there are, effectively, only three constitutional checks on the twentieth-century embodiment of the former Gallic monarchy: the French Presidency. Although the General was the obvious driving force behind the ‘restoration’ of the French ‘monarchy’, we are not merely seeing de Gaulle’s desire to recreate this figure of unity, and hence part of France’s essence, but perhaps

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we are also seeing a reflection of a characteristic that has lingered and expressed itself within France since 1789. This is why, in Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: What Makes the French so French (2004), Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow point out, De Gaulle created an elected monarch – the president – who would serve a term limited in length, but who could, theoretically, be re-elected all his life. He gave this figure a lot of power, even power over the constitution. That made the president the supreme judge of right and wrong, of good and evil, just like France’s ancient kings. The French, it seems, can’t resist making kings.99 Nadeau and Barlow’s final point of the inability of the French to give in to the temptation of king-making certainly has credence here and is of interest to the foreign policy analyst. After all, there is nothing natural about this but it helps to explain certain elements of de Gaulle’s conduct on the world stage and his sense of rectitude. Nonetheless, there remains something deeply Bergsonian in the Gallic essence and character that seemingly compels France to act in a certain way. Perhaps an apt metaphor would be of the human individual who attempts to give up a deeply imbedded addiction all too quickly; they will inevitably fail to resist the temptation to return. In this regard Nadeau and Barlow’s claim makes sense as from Bonaparte, Napoléon III and Georges Boulanger, to Clemenceau, de Gaulle, and even the ill-fated turn to Pétain; there is certainly something, perhaps in the soul of de Gaulle’s individual, that induces the French to create, and rally to great men. Was France’s call to the General the ‘will’ of her ethno-symbolic character reasserting itself ? The General certainly seemed to suggest so when he claimed, ‘Foch, Clemenceau, de Gaulle: it’s all one’.100 His point is clear enough. De Gaulle also makes similar remarks of the Gallic tendency to turn to ‘kings’ in his memoirs. ‘Once more in the face of a national emergency’ writes de Gaulle, ‘whose primary cause was the incapacity of the regime of the parties, the latter would have made a show of abdicating in favour of a demiurge entrusted overnight with the country’s salvation: in 1914 Joffre; in 1917 Clemenceau; in 1940 Pétain, and then, the error having been recognised, de Gaulle’.101 Although all these former ‘kings’ had been ‘deposed’ by either the events of war or France’s ‘inner demons’, de Gaulle was single-minded in his determination to reattach France of the mid-twentieth century to her ethno-symbolic and pre-revolutionary past; ‘I saw myself as the engine-driver in the American film who continues to drive his train, ignoring the alarm bells being rung by frightened or ill-intentioned passengers.’102 This perhaps echoes J. L. Talmon’s sense of ‘totalitarian democracy’ whereby the ‘assumed preordained will, which has not yet become the actual will of the nation… gives those who claim to know and to represent the real and ultimate will of the nation – the party of the vanguard – a blank cheque to act on behalf of the people’.103 In reconnecting France to her past it would certainly seem that

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de Gaulle felt a certain sense of achievement; ‘the blessed good fortune which our people have known from time to time, is making a renewed appearance. A new France is resuming her historical course.’104 Yet it was not solely the Gallic figurehead that needed to be restored to France. For example, the economy had to be rebuilt, Paris was to be restored to its former glory, and France needed to return to the ‘front rank of nations’. Grandeur, in short, had to exist which certainly had implications for French foreign policy. Yet all these problems, for de Gaulle, stemmed from the ‘inner demons’ that were awoken by the events of 1789 and which were only cured by the creation of a political regime that reflected the French past. In Memoirs of Hope we are given the sense that France had fallen out of step in economic terms with the time. We are told, ‘the country could only thrive internally and carry weight abroad if its activity was in tune with the age’.105 In this sense de Gaulle suggests, throughout the whole chapter on ‘The Economy’, France had failed to become what she should have been as she failed to go through the process of becoming.106 De Gaulle certainly makes clear his displeasure for ‘dragging’ France into the twentieth century and hence forcing the ‘eclipse of this rustic society, immemorially established in its enduring occupations and enclosed by its traditions’, but this was only to ‘correct’ the lack of French progress or becoming that had failed to take place following the Revolution.107 With regard to the army, de Gaulle also stressed a similar rationale and the necessity of France to be defended by the French, ‘all France’s soldiers are a part of the French Army, and the French Army, like France herself, must remain one and indivisible’.108

Resisting the herd The third point considered here, albeit briefly, relates to the question of ‘authenticity’ and the maintenance of this in mass society, is of most interest to the FPA scholar, and provides the formal basis for the discussion in the next chapter. For those such as Sartre, and in relation to the question of humans in the world, this is expressed as ‘individualism’, while for de Gaulle as an ‘existentialist of the nation’, this is expressed as ‘national independence’ and is, perhaps, the most familiar ‘face’ of 1960s Gaullist France in international society. It is, in other words, the image of de Gaulle’s refusal to conform to the global norms as dictated by the East–West split in the Cold War-era. This is the image of France that so irked Washington and London during de Gaulle’s time in power and which is habitually explained as a product of irrational and destructive nationalism, anti-Americanism, and his inability to understand that the world had moved on. In capturing the essence of the attitude towards de Gaulle by many in the West Debray writes, ‘The old boy just could not grasp the fact that Communism had altered the European set-up. He went on stubbornly talking about “Russia” as if we were still in the time of the Tsars.’109 In a sense, this third existential notion needs little rationalization as it is largely self-explanatory as becoming, being, and remaining an

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individual is the logical conclusion of existential reasoning. Nonetheless, for one to take de Gaulle’s repudiation of international compliance as an initial starting point, as is so often done within Anglo-American academia, and in attempting to ‘understand’ the General with little appreciation for his sense of France as an ethno-symbolic individual and two thousand years of Gallic history, only leads to misplaced attacks on him that fail to engage with the ways in which ideas impact on foreign policy. This is not the art of the foreign policy analyst. As seen earlier in the chapter, existentialists such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre value individualism and the attempt to pull away from conformity above all else, yet this is an achievement that must constantly be strove for. It was, in short, and rather like the task of Sisyphus, a ceaseless undertaking. For the General, and in relation to France, the same was always true. Of course, for de Gaulle and his sense of foreign policy, his ‘society’ was that of large distinctive entities, or nations, but a society in which France’s conformity was to be avoided at all costs if this diminished herself and her authenticity. While disruptive at times this was not to be ‘difficult’ per se (although this is certainly one way of standing out from the crowd), but it was only in this way that France could be France in the General’s mind. Indeed, if we consider de Gaulle’s extraordinarily long-sighted appreciation for history, why would one strive to restore France to her past, and to herself, only to then surrender this individuality to the demands of the international Cold War order? ‘Why’ as de Gaulle asks, ‘at the very moment when our success is becoming apparent, should we begin to lose heart, like the fisherman described by Shakespeare who, finding a pearl that terrified him by its beauty, threw it back into the sea? I did not throw back the pearl.’110 Once we begin to see de Gaulle’s France as such we are able to understand that there is no anti-European sentiment here, there is no anti-Americanism, de Gaulle was only ever any of these things by necessity and not by principal. Guichard has even gone so far to suggest that de Gaulle was, at times, as antiFrench as he was anti-American and there is much in this claim.111 American troops on French soil, Washington dictating France’s foreign policy, Europe sheltering under the US nuclear umbrella; what was this to do to France’s individuality and soul other than quash it? This was really what concerned de Gaulle and all Gaullist foreign policy must be seen as an expression of this. This is why de Gaulle once claimed that ‘The defence of France must be in French hands…If a nation like France is obliged to make war, it must be its own war; its effort must be its own effort. No doubt the defence of France might, in certain circumstances, be concerned with that of other countries. But it is imperative that it should remain our own, that France should defend herself by herself, for herself and in her own way.’112 To my mind, such utterances and ideas are deeply existential in both character and nature yet to see this one must appreciate de Gaulle’s Bergsonism, his ethno-symbolic understanding of nations, and his anthropomorphic sense of France. Only by doing so may we produce an existential reading of his foreign policy.

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In de Gaulle’s mind, and as seen in previous chapters, the relationship and interaction between manoeuvrability and intuition was the essence of successful military planning and it was these values that sat at the heart of the conduct of Gaullist France during the 1960s, yet what constrained this in no uncertain terms was the smothering nature of the East–West split. Indeed, while the Cold War, and driven by the logic of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), was so-called given the absence of outright conflict between the Soviet Union and the US, it was also ‘cold’ in the sense that it froze the ability of many European states to interact with each other in any meaningful sense and led to a state of intellectual inertia in the minds of many leaders and policy planners. The ideological encampment of two blocs, that is, offered constraint, not diplomatic discretion. How could France, who had ‘slept’ since the Revolution, be reawakened to her own sense of being, existence, and individuality whilst politically paralysed from within, subjugated from the outside by foreign powers, and subdued by the ‘frozen’ nature of international relations? The Cold War, significant although it may well have been, when placed within the perspective of de Gaulle’s Bergsonism, and therefore two thousand years of French existence, was merely a fleeting moment. Put another way, and to the General’s mind, it was an ideological and temporary cloud passing over a permanent and enduring Gallic landscape. France, as an individual still existed, as did Russia, Spain, and the UK. These were ‘individuals’ that France had been familiar with since time immemorial and it would be folly to see communism or any other temporary label in the place of this individuality when each specific individual persisted regardless of the ideological ‘cloak’ they wore. For de Gaulle, time, history, and becoming, dictated all and the pull towards conformity within the Cold War international relations arena was to be resisted just as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre demanded that the human individual avoid the pull towards ‘the herd’ within everyday society. For many in the Anglo-American world this is the familiar face of de Gaulle and Gaullist France. This is the France that is so easily portrayed as the nationalistic ‘stick-in-the mud’ which attracted so much criticism from de Gaulle’s political opponents and while I offer no normative claim here regarding his actions I do object to any simplistic claims that fail to engage with the General’s intellectual basis. Ultimately, what de Gaulle is expressing is the encouragement of national individualism, the pull away from global conformity, regardless of other concerns, and the acceptance that it is time and becoming that fundamentally drives change; not politicians nor ideology. Indeed, France, Germany, Russia, England, China; all were part of the ‘family of national individuals’ and thus de Gaulle’s Cold War was ultimately a struggle against the logic of the Cold War itself; not any of its participants per se. It was, in other words, against the pull towards conformity that was demanded by the rationale of the Cold War and was against the restriction of individuality just as the existential mind is against human conformity and an existence not of one’s own making. It is in this sense that de Gaulle’s Cold War was a fight

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that pitted the perceived permanent national realities of France, Russia, England, China, and America, against the fanciful, transitory, and passing notions of a Soviet Eastern Bloc, a US dominated West, a protracted nuclear arms race, and a senseless fear of a communist world revolution. None of these, as it turned out, managed to become permanent features within international relations. None of these, as de Gaulle stressed, could possibly replace the permanence of nations and national character. The Cold War, communism, and Marxist world revolution were entirely ephemeral phenomena to de Gaulle. What mattered was that each nation, ‘had its own national personality which it must preserve’.113 In the end, and despite Reagan, Gorbachev, Strategic Defense Initiative, glasnost, and perestroika none of these were won or lost, they merely faded away as various nationalisms gnawed at an alien ideology. It was ‘a process of organic rejection of communism’ as Zbigniew Brzezinski would later call it.114 They could not ‘out-last’ the permanence of nationhood and the co-existence of the past with the present. As de Gaulle once summed up, ‘in the ceaseless movement of the world, all doctrines, all schools, all rebellions have one moment only. Communism will pass. But France will not.’115

Conclusion Based upon the Bergsonian and ethno-symbolic themes explored earlier, this chapter has sought to establish a framework that enables us to work towards an existential understanding of de Gaulle’s ontological perception of nations and this is of great value to the FPA scholar. By exploring how de Gaulle’s nationalism was driven by an anthropomorphic sense of France that echoes Wendt’s description of ‘state persons’, we are better placed to understand how and why he acted as he did during the 1960s. We are better able, that is, to appreciate the international system as he perceived it to be and the reasons why he saw the Cold War as largely illusory and lacking any historical basis that was grounded in temporal reality. Of course, there exist numerous avenues through which to explore this but to my mind, and given Debray’s cryptic remarks, the most pertinent is that of Sartrean existentialism as although de Gaulle and Sartre explored the question and importance of individualism on different ontological levels, their answers and rationale share much in common. Indeed, Sartre’s descriptions of ‘existence preceding essence’, the question of ‘becoming’, and the notions of ‘individualism’ and ‘authenticity’ are all to be found in the General’s sense of France as a historical reality and national individual. Yet this way of viewing nations was never solely used in relation to France. De Gaulle, that is, was ever the ‘pan-nationalist’ in that he looked for ethno-symbolic characteristics wherever his attention fell. As will be argued in the next chapter, this plurality of ethno-symbolic ‘individuals’ was a necessity for de Gaulle and France’s existence and her authenticity, and it is this platform that allows us to fully appreciate de Gaulle’s sense of the Cold War world and to fully grasp the rationale that drove his foreign policy.

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Cooper, D. (1992). Existentialism: A Reconstruction. Oxford: Blackwell. 11. De Beauvoir, S. (1987). Force of Circumstance. London: Penguin. 45. Sartre, J. P. (2007). Existentialism is a Humanism. London: Yale University Press. 20. Shinn, R (editor) (1968). Restless Adventure: Essays in Contemporary Expressions of Existentialism. New York: Scribner 13. Wartenberg, T. (2008). Existentialism: A Beginner’s Guide. Oxford: Oneworld. Ibid. xiv. Albert Camus is, of course, a notable exception to this as he was born in Dréan, Algeria in 1913. Barrett, W. (1990). Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy. New York: Anchor Books. 20–21. Nietzsche, F. (1992). Ecce Homo. London: Penguin. 126. For a wider discussion of this see Dryfuss, H. and Kelly, S. (2011). All Things Shining, Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age. London: Free Press. In particular Chapter 3, ‘Homer’s Polytheism’ and Chapter Four, ‘From Aeschylus to Augustine: Monotheism on the Rise’, 58–117. Nietzsche, F. (2008). The Gay Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 120. Sartre, J. P. (2007). Existentialism is a Humanism. London: Yale University Press. 30–32. Kamber, R. (2001). On Camus. London: Wadsworth. 7. Priest, S. (editor) (2001). Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings. New York: Routledge. 20. Flynn, T. (2006). Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 24. Earnshaw, S. (2006). Existentialism: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum. 1. Wartenberg, T. (2008). Existentialism: A Beginner’s Guide. Oxford: Oneworld. 5. Sartre, J. P. (2007). Existentialism is a Humanism. London: Yale University Press. 22. Cooper, D. (1992). Existentialism: A Reconstruction. Oxford: Blackwell. 68. Sartre, J. P. (2007). Existentialism is a Humanism. London: Yale University Press. 22. Wartenberg, T. (2008). Existentialism: A Beginner’s Guide. Oxford: Oneworld. 28. Flynn, T. (2006). Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 24–25. Wartenberg, T. (2008). Existentialism: A Beginner’s Guide. Oxford: Oneworld. 29. Flynn, T. (2006). Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 24. Davis, B. (2006). Heidegger and the Will: One the Way to Gelassenheit. New York: Northwestern University Press. 71. Kaplan, E. (1977). Michelet’s Poetic Vision: A Romantic Philosophy of Nature, Man, and Women. Amherst: University of Massachusetts. 21. De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 3. De Gaulle, C. (1955). War Memoirs: The Call to Honour, 1940–1942. London: Collins. 9. Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 17. Ibid. 16. De Gaulle, C. (1955). War Memoirs: The Call to Honour, 1940–1942. London: Collins. 305–306.

Existence preceding essence 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

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De Beauvoir, S. (1993). The Second Sex. London: Everyman. 72. Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 139–140. De Gaulle, C. (1940). The Army of the Future. London: Hutchinson. 31. Ibid. 72. De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 163–164. De Gaulle, C. (1955). War Memoirs: The Call to Honour, 1940–1942. London: Collins. 54. Ibid. 87. Johnson, D. (1965). ‘The Political Principals of General de Gaulle.’ International Affairs. 41:4. 654. Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 20. Ibid. 66–67. Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 84. Williams, C. (1993). The Last Great Frenchman: A Life of General de Gaulle. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons. 455. Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 108. De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 231–232. Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 97. Ibid. 28–29. Ibid. 100. Johnson, D. (1965). ‘The Political Principals of General de Gaulle.’ International Affairs. 41: 4. 657. Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 52. Ibid. 116. Sartre, J. P. (2007). Existentialism is a Humanism. London: Yale University Press. 23. De Gaulle, C. (1940). The Army of the Future. London. Hutchinson. 11–12. Ibid. 27. Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 76. Ibid. 22. De Gaulle, C. (1940). The Army of the Future. London: Hutchinson. 11 and 19 respectively. De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 173–174. Andrews, E. A. (1852). C. Julius Cæsar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War. Boston: Crocker and Brewster. De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 163. Quoted in, Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 61. De Gaulle, C. (1940). The Army of the Future. London: Hutchinson. 27. De Gaulle, C. (1960). The Edge of the Sword. London: Faber & Faber. 53. Quoted in, Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 61. Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 32. Ibid. 98 ad 93 respectively. Ibid. 78.

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67 Ibid. 81. 68 Ibid. 99. 69 Champion, C. B. (2004). Cultural Politics in Polybius’s Histories. London: University of California Press. 115. 70 (2006). Hannibal: Rome’s Worst Nightmare. BBC–HBO. 71 Camus, A. (2000). The Rebel. London: Penguin. xvi. 72 De Gaulle, C. (1940). The Army of the Future. London: Hutchinson. 80. 73 Ibid. 28. De Gaulle also states that the constant bi-polar political attitudes of the French have a tendency to threaten to pull France apart, ‘The problem in France is that the Right is against the nation and the left detests the State’, Raymond, T. (1967). La Tragédie du general. Paris: Plon. 10–11. 74 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 305. 75 Sartre, J. P. (1993). Essays in Existentialism. New York: Citadel Press, 1990. 36. 76 Wartenberg, T. (2008). Existentialism: A Beginner’s Guide. Oxford: Oneworld. 28. 77 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 123. 78 Camus, A. (2000). The Rebel. London: Penguin. 214. 79 De Gaulle, C. (1940). The Army of the Future. London: Hutchinson. 80. 80 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 113. 81 Camus, A. (2000). The Rebel. London: Penguin. 82–84. 82 Ibid. 91. 83 De Gaulle, C. (1940). The Army of the Future. London: Hutchinson. 27. 84 De Gaulle, C. (1959). War Memoirs: Unity, 1942–1944. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 44. 85 De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 231. 86 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 84. 87 Ibid. 92. 88 De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 232. 89 Ibid. 259. 90 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 36. 91 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 20. 92 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 305. 93 De Gaulle, C. (1959). War Memoirs: Unity, 1942–1944. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 7. 94 De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 32–33. 95 Ibid. 233. 96 Ibid. 235–236. 97 Ibid. 281. 98 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 235. 99 Nadeau, J. and Barlow, J. (2004). Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: What Makes the French so French? London: Robson. 118. 100 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 49.

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101 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 308. 102 Ibid. 148. 103 Talmond, J. (1963). The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. London: Mercury Books. 48. 104 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 149. 105 Ibid. 133. 106 Ibid. pp. 131–162. 107 Ibid. pp. 156–157. 108 De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 12. 109 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 67. 110 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 162. 111 Guichard writes, When one has had, like myself, the opportunity to hear the general express himself in private and without constraints, one could have the impression that he was against a lot of things. He knew the words that exalted people in their own eyes, as well as the words that demolished and disdained them. But almost always, he kept the latter for personal use. He supposedly called the French people by the pejorative term ‘veaux’, meaning calves. Does this mean that the general was anti-French? Some have said it, I admit it, but they were often the same ones who accused the general of anti-Americanism. But if the general was as anti-French as he was anti-American, I don’t very well see what the problem is! See Paxton, R. and Wahl, N. (editors) (1994). De Gaulle and the United States: A Centennial Reappraisal. Oxford: Berg. 348. 112 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 204. 113 Ibid. 190. 114 Brzezinski, Z. (1989). The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century. New York: Schribner. 105. 115 De Gaulle, C. (1955). War Memoirs: The Call to Honour, 1940–1942. London: Collins. 271.

5

Nationalism is an existentialism

Chaos: there is no better word in the English language to sum up the social environment of France in late 1945. The gloom of Nazi occupation still hung over the country, the shame of collaboration descended into attacks and executions of those expected of having connections to Vichy, economically France was devastated, and Allied troops still littered her lands. Of the political atmosphere that emerged from this de Gaulle wrote, ‘for myself, when I looked into the distance I could see blue skies on the horizon. But close at hand, seeing the terrible elements of chaos seething in the crucible of public affairs, I was reminded of Macbeth before the witches’ cauldron.’1 It was against this backdrop and sense of national milieu that Sartre, on the evening of October 29, delivered his lecture ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’ to a packed hall at the Club Maintenant in Paris. Although not especially long, the lecture, that was soon after published as a slender book, was largely a defence of his far more substantial work Being and Nothingness as well as the philosophical movement that existentialism had become in the immediate post-war years. The defence of both of these was necessitated by the negative perception that existentialism carried in war-time France; negative perceptions that primarily stemmed from either a half-reading of Sartre’s work, or misconceptions as to what existentialism fundamentally represented. Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre captures this well: The controversies surrounding Sartre’s assertions were intensified and muddled by what we would call today a media circus – hype and misunderstandings met by hostility and priggishness. The result of it all was a quasi-mutual invasion: of the writer by a notoriety that dumfounded him, and of the public by existentialism. Expressions taken out of context, such as ‘Hell is other people’, ‘Existence precedes essence’, or ‘Man is a useless passion’, wandered into the tabloids and were banded about like so many sinister slogans.2 The lecture itself was a boisterous affair, held in a hot and claustrophobic atmosphere in which numerous people fainted, yet throughout this Sartre sought to demonstrate that the core of existentialism’s message was a positive one. It was, in other words, an optimistic answer to the question of how individuals should interact with each other and an inquiry into how to face

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certain circumstances. It addressed questions such as how one should live, what we should do when faced with problems and responsibility, and how to live an authentic existence and not a life of existential self-deception. Thus far Chapters Two, Three and Four have developed a framework through which to rationalise de Gaulle’s ontological sense of the key ‘units’ that inhabit the international system in both historical and anthropomorphic terms. While this is useful and tells us much of the principles that drove his foreign policy we are able to pursue this to a deeper level of understanding and existential rationale in terms of France’s ‘behaviour’ during de Gaulle’s tenure. Indeed, Existentialism is a Humanism is not merely concerned with questions of ‘becoming’ and ‘individualistic authenticity’, it also explores how individuals act in relation to one another and this, as an external framework, tells us much of de Gaulle’s sense of international relations. It is in this sense, and from an FPA perspective, that the present chapter is perhaps the ‘lynchpin’ of the book in that it explores a formal existential reading of de Gaulle’s foreign policy. Hence my aim here is the application of a deeper layer of existential understanding to that used in Chapter Four to further rationalise the General’s sense of the Cold War international system and national conduct within this. Put another way, and if the last chapter offered an existential understanding of de Gaulle’s foreign policy in ontological terms, this chapter explores a behavioural reading of this through Sartrean existentialism. Of course, and as stressed elsewhere none of this is to claim that de Gaulle was explicitly following the existential rationale of Sartre in any sense of the term. Nor do I claim that he overtly used existentialism to guide his conduct of France within the international system. But my argument here is that once we reconcile ourselves with de Gaulle’s ontological understanding of France and nations in a wider sense we may see the strain of existentialism that courses through his foreign policy. This implies that national history, national individualism, and national authenticity above all must be the starting point in any analysis of de Gaulle’s foreign policy. In other words, the platform of national subjectivity must be the point from which we embark, or, as Sartre once declared, ‘that subjectivity must be our point of departure’.3 The chapter itself is split into five sections and here I primarily use specific Sartrean terminology that is present in Existentialism is a Humanism to explore de Gaulle’s foreign policy in philosophic terms. These are (1) the other, (2) abandonment, (3) anguish, (4) despair, and (5) bad faith and authenticity, and while some of these are complex and rather technical terms I offer an explanation of these as we encounter them. I have chosen to explain things as such (rather than discussing these notions in the introduction) as I believe that this brings a better and more flowing element to the chapter.

France and others in the world We know from the previous three chapters that de Gaulle understood nations to be individuals and as the chapter progresses I talk of France, America,

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Russia, Britain, and China as individuals in an attempt to better rationalise de Gaulle’s sense of international society and the decision-making process that this drove. Yet for now, let us keep the focus and emphasis on France. For de Gaulle, and although France began her existence around the time of Vercingétorix, and although she had developed her fledgling essence through Roman occupation, administration, and influence, at times she slept, or was not always self-aware. This we have already seen and it is clear that, for de Gaulle, episodes such as the Revolution, the ‘Regime of the Parties’, and Vichyite collaboration were the phenomena that induced national ‘slumber’ and hence France’s self-consciousness was never guaranteed. The antidote for this was for France to walk in the ‘front rank’ of nations.4 Her national selfconsciousness, that is, became manifest through grandeur. Grandeur, in this sense, was a fundamental element of France’s consciousness and may well be said to be an expression of Gallic self-awareness. Martel, Bonaparte, de Gaulle; when France caught sight of a refuge that truly was French, of a figure that embodied her subjective national character and essence, her own sense of self was rekindled. When, at times, France’s propensity to create kings took hold of the nation, her self-consciousness was given back to her; France ‘lived’. We know from our understanding and reading of his works that de Gaulle encouraged the French to recognise France at all times. Yet, and while de Gaulle’s life seemed to centre on reawakening France to herself and her own existence he also did this with all other nations that had a ‘perceivable’ ethnosymbolic essence; an essence that was imprinted upon the people who lived within the national group. Indeed, if de Gaulle was ‘he who spoke to nations’ then his persistent attempts to talk to the ethno-symbolic individuals of the Cold War must be seen as such. By ‘talking’ to Russia as an individual, rather than the Soviet Union, he was ultimately trying to reawaken an individual that ‘had been familiar to France since time immemorial’, but who had seemingly lost sense of her own historically developed ethno-symbolic essence.5 That Russia recognise herself as a nation, and that through this recognition a degree of self-consciousness would come into being and become manifest in the international arena, was France’s policy toward Moscow. It was a policy that encouraged Russia to put down the sickle, to toss away the hammer, to once again reawaken the bear and hence it became a way ‘to offer to Russia… a way to return to the international community’.6 In his direct contact with China, who he saw as a ‘sovereign and independent power’, he was to do the same; he was to talk directly to the Chinese individual.7 ‘China is a big country inhabited by many Chinese’; this is what de Gaulle meant by this often ridiculed remark. De Gaulle’s actions were an attempt to bring China back into the global community, to see past communism, and to see the ethno-symbolic essence of China. As such he was adamant ‘that France must be able to listen to China directly, and also to make herself heard’.8 In referring to the East European nations by their traditional names, the encouragement of national self-consciousness was France’s goal. Vietnam, Palestine, Germany,

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England, Hungary, Algeria; this is what de Gaulle was doing when he spoke on the world stage; when he encouraged nationalism everywhere. It was a nationalism that was the polar opposite of Nazi Germany and a nationalism that sought to inject a pan-ethno-symbolic self-consciousness back into the slumbering Cold War world. As an individual, and with de Gaulle as principle decision-maker, this was France’s aim. ‘Those’, as Debray pertinently writes, ‘who attack nationalism at random are like experts on the Dreyfus Affair who use the same word to describe the pro-Dreyfus and anti-Dreyfus camps. Hardly the best way to clarify things.’9 De Gaulle’s was the nationalism of national self-consciousness. In answering why France acted as such; in understanding why she encouraged national individuality everywhere, we move beyond Bergsonism, ethno-symbolism, and existential becoming and henceforth arrive at the concept of ‘the other’ and this is a vital element for us to engage with if we are to understand de Gaulle as a decision-maker. Indeed, although de Gaulle tells us that he tried to ‘wake’ France and make her aware of her own existence and, henceforth, her own self-consciousness, by encouraging other national individuals to take note of their own essences and characters, the General was, in an existential sense, also doing something profound that he does not so clearly delineate. A Sartrean reading of de Gaulle’s rationale enables us to see this. The Other is a vital concept within Sartre’s existential thought and it is fair to say that his attitudes on this alter from the negativity in Being and Nothingness to his more positive views in Existentialism is a Humanism. Based, in part, on the themes of Hegel’s 1807 masterpiece, Phenomenology of Spirit, but also the idea of ‘intentionality’ as found in the works of Edmund Husserl, Sartre’s Other, put simply is any other consciousness that is not one’s own. At the origin of the problem of the existence of others, there is a fundamental presupposition: others are the Other, that is the self which is not myself…the Other is the one who is not me and the one who I am not. This not indicates a nothingness as a given element of separation between the Other and myself. Between the Other and myself there is a nothingness of separation.10 What Sartre is largely describing here is the importance of others in relation to one’s own consciousness. Indeed, from a phenomenological perspective ‘intentionality’ implies that at the heart of a consciousness is a ‘gap’, or a state of ‘nothingness’, meaning that we can have no experience of the self without facing another consciousness, object, experience, or phenomena. Hence our inability to be truly aware of the self, independent of things which are not itself is, for Sartre, explained as nothingness; a ‘gap’ which one cannot actually experience per se but nonetheless remains the point from which we are conscious of our own existence. In this sense, and if a being was to never experience another consciousness it would have no way of realising its own existence. Hence nothingness, in short, implies that a fundamental ‘absence’ sits at the

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heart of our consciousness of the world and it is only by encountering the Other that an individual may experience a conscious existence and hence existence in itself. For the existentialist this ‘other’ consciousness is a fundamental necessity: that is to say; if the Other does not exist, then nor do we. Ursula Tidd stresses this point well: Self-consciousness cannot exist in isolation, for it needs an external object – that is, another self-consciousness – from which it can differentiate itself. I can only be aware of myself if I am aware of something else which is not myself. But this external object, desired by self-consciousness as a means to define itself, is also a threat. Self-consciousness cannot negate or obliterate this external object because, in doing so, it will negate or obliterate the means of its own existence. To achieve confirmation of the certainty of its existence, self-consciousness needs to be recognised as such by another self-consciousness: human beings need to recognise each other as similarly conscious beings in the world to be sure that they exist.11 Hence, although we may believe that we are aware of our own existence and individuality, Sartrean existentialism implies that this can only be so in recognition of another consciousness whose existence is separate from oneself. As Sartre sums up, ‘the Other is essential to my existence, as well as to the knowledge I have of myself ’.12 In relating this logic to Gaullist foreign policy of the 1960s, and in using this as a lens to better understand de Gaulle as a decision-maker, we find that the concept of the Other (in addition to ‘nothingness’ and phenomenological intentionality) is highly illuminating. Indeed, if we take France as our subject, we know that de Gaulle insisted on making France take note of her own existence and consciousness during the times that she had ‘slept’. This we have seen. But this, from an existential perspective, is only half of the picture. In ‘speaking’ directly to Russia, in ‘conversing’ with China long before the advent of the Kissinger-inspired Nixon Doctrine, in opening dialogue with Hungary, Romania and the nations of Eastern Europe, France was speaking to the unique essences of such nations and individuals that de Gaulle recognised through his Bergsonian and ethno-symbolic understanding of the world and the ‘content’ of the international system. In short, de Gaulle’s France, as an individual, was ‘talking’ to the essences of those she recognised in an attempt to awaken the ‘dormant’ individuals of the Cold War world order; an artificial and frozen international system that, to de Gaulle’s mind, was more a reflection of ideological fabrication than historical reality. While these other ‘state persons’ slept, destructive ideologies plagued the world. Still it would thaw, the chimeras would inevitably pass, and nations would re-emerge.

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It is in seeing how de Gaulle sought to speak to the national and hence historical essences of the world’s nations, rather than the ideology of each state’s ruling elites, we may appreciate what Debray meant when he wrote, ‘Nationalism is a hideous evil which, since its appearance just two centuries ago, has disfigured mankind and the planet. De Gaulle’s version of the nation was not a continuation of this pox by other means, but the beginning of a cure.’13 As Guichard has also commented, de Gaulle ‘saw himself as the champion of a cause that didn’t correspond completely with the cause of freedom. Freedom was sufficient for millions of men to define their camp, but it wasn’t enough for him.’14 It is in this respect that de Gaulle’s nationalism was far from that of twentieth-century Germany and Italy; the former sought national recognition; the latter merely represented the will to power. An existential reading of this must be to understand that France was attempting to reawaken the ‘sleeping’ individuals of de Gaulle’s sense of international society in order to awaken the consciousnesses of these nations and if it is the case that for one to have a consciousness of oneself it is necessary to have an opposing consciousness through which one may differentiate oneself, then this really is what France and de Gaulle was attempting to do. Indeed, if these other conscious individuals did not exist then it must follow that neither did France. This de Gaulle understood all too well. The US and Soviet Union, who wanted to paint every nation in their own respective images, perhaps did not. With things understood in these terms, and from the existential perspective of the Other, de Gaulle was attempting to engage with the ethno-symbolic essences of Russia, China, and the suppressed nations of Eastern Europe, not to be ‘difficult’ or to antagonise the Anglo-American world, rather he sought to reawaken the Cold War’s nations to their specific individualities, authenticities, and to their own historical realities. Hence in seeking to re-establish an international order that reflected the historical and national rather than the ideological de Gaulle’s foreign policy was largely about recognition meaning that France’s own existence would become a more tangible reality. ‘The Europe whose nations hated one another had more reality than the Europe of today. It is no longer a matter of wondering whether France will make Europe, it is a matter of understanding that she is threatened with death through the death of Europe’; this we can recognise in de Gaulle’s lamenting to Malraux.15 Indeed, other than love, what other emotion can confirm the existence of another so forcefully? Essentially, and from this perspective, France’s own consciousness was subject to the consciousnesses of the other ethno-symbolic individuals of Europe and the world. In short, France’s own ethno-symbolic essence and character could only be recognised by the Other. Whether it was European unification, or whether it was European subjugation by America and Russia; the Other, in either situation was dimmed and hence France’s own existence was lessened. Both such forces had to be fought and contested. Perhaps the same forces were expressed in the 2014 European elections and during the UK’s EU referendum of 2016.

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Abandonment: no master, no God In moving towards a deeper existential reading of de Gaulle as decision-maker and the foreign policy that this produced, I now turn to four further notions that are central to Sartre’s claims in Existentialism is a Humanism. These are abandonment, anguish, despair, and bad faith. In this section we explore the first of these. For Sartre, abandonment is a way to simply say that God does not exist, and that man, and hence humanity, has no higher authority. There exists, that is, no external force or pre-ordained purpose that is able to guide us in our lives. ‘Thus’, as Sartre writes, ‘there is no human nature since there is no God to conceive of it. Man is not only that which he convinces himself to be, but that which he wills himself to be, and since he conceives of himself only after he exists, just as he wills himself to be after being thrown into existence, man is nothing other than what he makes of himself.’16 We are, in short, forsaken beings; we have no God, no higher deity, and our desertion is total, ‘when we speak of “abandonment” – one of Heidegger’s favourite expressions – we merely mean to say that God does not exist, and that we must bear the full consequences of that assertion’.17 This implies, as Sartre continues (quoting Dostoevsky), “If God does not exist, everything is permissible.” This is the starting point of existentialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and man is consequently abandoned, for he cannot find anything to rely on – neither within nor without. First he finds there are no excuses. For if it is true that existence precedes essence, we can never explain our actions by reference to a given and immutable human nature. In other words, there is no determinism – man is free, man is freedom.18 The assertion that God does not exist is a common starting point for most existentialists (notable exceptions include Kierkegaard, Jaspers, and Marcel) which is to really say that no higher authority exists to guide us in our action as we have no ‘maker’ to conceive of any such essence. ‘Man’, as Sartre concludes, ‘is nothing’.19 This is not to say that an individual is actually nothing per se. Rather it is to contend he or she begins as nothing and will only become something afterwards. This is really what we should understand when Sartre says that existence precedes essence or, put differently, nothing precedes something. Nonetheless, and if we are to understand Sartre’s notion of individual freedom then we must understand that man is abandoned and forsaken in this world. As Western society moved away from Christian morality and its traditional understandings of good and evil, it was this ‘freedom’ that ultimately concerned Nietzsche as it gave to man a void that lent itself to man’s supreme liberty as with the death of God humanity loses both its creator and master. Indeed, if God does exist as our typical perception dictates, that is, as an allknowing creator and omnipresent force, then we ultimately have no freedom; only in His death does our freedom become manifest. This really is to say,

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and following Sartrean logic, that if God does exist and if He has ultimate knowledge of everything, then he already knows how our lives are to be played out and hence the course and details of our lives are already written out which must negate our freedom. To free ourselves of this, we must free ourselves of God, or, at least, imagine God in a different way. Hence Sartre’s logic demands that we have no creator and thus no master to worship. When we turn to de Gaulle’s foreign policy, and in using Sartrean abandonment as a lens to rationalise his sense of the international system and the essence of national individualism within this, we arrive at the following question: is it simply the case that the General’s nations are abandoned by both creator and master or is it just one of these? It is my contention that although there is no god per se in his sense of the international system, abandonment only exists in one sense; that of our abandonment by a solitary and omnipresent master. What do I mean by this? If, through the logic developed thus far in this present volume, it is the case that de Gaulle’s sense of nationhood is ethno-symbolic at its core, then it must follow that history, the weight of antiquity, and the presence of the past exists as creator in this world. This is not to confuse the point of existence with the development of essence. ‘War gives birth and brings death to nations’; as detailed in the previous chapter some form of historical event gives birth to nations.20 France’s historical event, for de Gaulle, was Vercingétorix’s resistance and the collective consciousness that was born out of this. It is in this sense that the individual that would become and develop into modern France simply was. It is these historical forces that brought the General’s nations into being and have, as we have seen, forged the modern peoples of the world. ‘France has emerged from the depths of the past’; this we know well. It can only be the case that for de Gaulle, each nation was also a product of history but, and this is important to note, its own specific and subjective history. Hence each nation had its own creator and ‘god’ to which it was to remain faithful. Perhaps it is in this sense that de Gaulle’s world of national individuals becomes one of polytheism whereby each nation worshiped its own ethno-symbolic ‘creator’ to which it remained loyal. Put another way, the history that had brought each nation into being was its own specific point of homage and this is why ‘founding myths’ play such powerful roles in the context of national cohesion. As a process of ‘inventing’ the past, highlighting certain events, and emphasising the certain norms and behaviours expected of the specific nation such myths are indeed powerful. This is why de Gaulle once claimed that France’s ‘chief duty is to be strong and to be ourselves’, which was to say to be true to France’s history.21 But this was also to say that every nation, in being true to its history, its founding myths, its ethno-symbolic peculiarities, and its national essence, had to be ‘master in its own house’.22 The General was always unequivocal on this point. Russia, Algeria, France, Germany; regardless of the specific individual, and save seeing history as a singularity, there was no solitary creator of these ‘state persons’, and hence there could be no one god to which these ethno-symbolic

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individuals were subservient. This is, in other words, the polytheism of nationhood; the polytheism of de Gaulle’s national individuals whereby the General could accept no god as a singularity in his global society. Seeing things from this perspective it is a small step to using this rationale to explain the reasoning of de Gaulle in relation to supranational bodies and the senseless ‘worship’ of Cold War ideologies. Through this perception of the world, a monotheistic god, or anything that tried to fill and take on the role of an all-powerful deity, would be unreal; that is to say, a false prophet. Hence it is in this sense that we are able to understand and comprehend abandonment in relation to de Gaulle’s perception of things. The American dominated West, the Russian subjugated East; neither of these rang true for de Gaulle; neither appeared as anything other than passing fabrications. Neither had created the world in its entirety yet they wished to shape it in their own vision. It was irrelevant if these false ‘gods’ appeared as the European Union, as the United Nations, as the Soviet empire or American hegemony. What mattered was the specific entity’s attempt to be God; the polytheism of France meant that she could not accept any artificial deity; or at least no deity above herself and her essence. Hence, in many respects such entities (especially America and Russia) were more akin to Lucifer than God; they were, as he once declared, ‘the worst evil of our time’.23 Indeed, the polytheism inherent in de Gaulle’s ethno-symbolic existentialism is not selective; it must reject any monotheistic ‘god’. Those monotheists who wanted to create Europe as a single federal entity were simply dreaming. To build Europe, that is to say, to unite it, is evidently something essential. It is trite to ask why this great centre of civilization, of strength, of reason, of prosperity is being smothered by its own ashes. All that is necessary, in such a domain, is to proceed, not by following our dreams but according to realities. Now, what are the realities of Europe? What are the pillars on which it can be built? The States are, in truth, certainly very different from one another, each of which has its own spirit, its own history, its own language, its own misfortunes, glories and ambitions; but these States are the only entities that have the right to order and the authority to act. To imagine that something else can be built that would be effective for action and that would be approved by the peoples outside and above the States – this is a dream.24 It is probable that the scholar of IR would see this as an expression of realism (probably that of Waltz or Mearsheimer) or perhaps the notion of sovereignty in both the internal and external senses of the term. Indeed, both neorealism and sovereignty reject and henceforth, refuse to worship the ‘gods’ that liberalism pays homage to. Yet talking as such is not overtly useful. The language of political science, that is, does not fit de Gaulle particularly well in that it removes the personal element from the equation; the personal element of de Gaulle’s sense of nationhood. It eradicates the

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subjective essences of each state in its search for universal truths and within this the centrality of de Gaulle’s rationale is lost. Kierkegaard once remarked that to measure a girl or woman by statistics of height and of girth is to explain her in abstract terms. As John A. Gates points out, ‘to describe a thing objectively in terms of dimensions, density, or weight, is to describe it abstractly’; such things ‘do not express what she means to her friends’. Hence, ‘Kierkegaard believed that all abstract descriptions and explanations fail to convey the real meaning of our deepest experiences’ and leave us disconnected from the world.25 It is, in the same sense that we must see de Gaulle’s world; one does not approach de Gaulle’s concept scientifically; one does not measure the meaning of God to a Christian; one does not measure a nation. In seeing de Gaulle’s sense of the international system as such, independence from any force that attempted to play an all-powerful ‘god’ must become a constant guide to one’s own conduct. Hence when Brussels, as the head of a supranational structure, appeared as a higher authority to that of the national individual, it had to be fought and resisted. Acceptance of abandonment insists that one must. ‘These organisms’ as de Gaulle stressed, have their technical values, but they do not have authority and, consequently, political effectiveness. As long as nothing serious happens, they function without much difficulty, but as soon as a tragic situation appears, a major problem to be solved, it can then be seen that one “High Authority” or another has no authority over the various national categories and that only the States have it.26 When the United Nations came into being as pretender to the role of ‘God’ de Gaulle had no choice in whether or not he could have any faith in this. The same was unquestionably true of the Cold War superpowers; that is to say, the ethno-symbolic individuals who insisted on attempting to export their ideologies and values around the world. ‘The banner of ideology’, as de Gaulle tells us, ‘in reality covers only ambitions. And I believe that it has been thus since the world was born.’27 In The Rebel, and on the subject of a revolutionary nation trying to play God, Camus tells us that, ‘the society born of the 1917 revolution is fighting for universal dominion. Total revolution ends by demanding…the control of the world.’28 The same logic could be said of 1776 and 1789; of the American and French Revolutions. It is in this sense, and in the polytheistic international system, that the power and role reserved for a non-existent, monotheistic god is therefore dispersed to the individuals; that is to say, the nations. In an age of deposed kings, in a time of fading memories of lost gods, and as Camus declares, ‘power is no longer what is, but what should be’.29 Put another way, the world is seemingly open to the individual’s will to bend and shape it to their own image. What should be? It is a good question, yet in terms of de Gaulle’s sense of the international system, and as there is no monotheistic order, there is nothing that should be per se; his ethno-symbolic individuals

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can only be that which they already are. In short, they are merely the sum of their own specific experiences and pasts. Revolutionary France did not understand this. By 1958 her lesson had been learnt. Hence France came to understand this; in wanting to create and forge the world and other individuals in their own visions, Russia and the United States did not. This is a point that I return to shortly when discussing the Sartrean notion of despair.

Anguish: the condemnation of the national individual At this point let us briefly return to an existential understanding of things at the human level. If it really is the case that we exist in a polytheistic world, then this has profound implications for our freedom. Abandonment must inevitably lead to the acceptance that we are not bound by any higher authority and hence as individuals we are free. For Sartre, and although it may appear as a slightly counter-intuitive claim, this is something that is eminently difficult for us to accept and to contend with. Indeed, although it is easy to proclaim our freedom in the death of God, reconciling oneself with this is far more difficult as the crushing reality of our freedom is, for Sartre, a truly terrifying emotion that many of us choose to run from. This emotional response to abandonment is expressed as anguish: Existentialists like to say that man is in anguish…a man who commits himself, and who realizes that he is not only the individual that he chooses to be, but also a legislator choosing at the same time what humanity as a whole should be, cannot help but be aware of his own full and profound responsibility. True, many people do not appear especially anguished, but we maintain that they are merely hiding their anguish or not trying to face it. Certainly, many believe that their actions involve no one but themselves, and were we to ask them, “But what if everyone acted that way?” they would shrug their shoulders and reply, “But everyone does not act that way.” In truth, however, one should always ask oneself, “What would happen if everyone did what I am doing?” The only way to evade that disturbing thought is through some kind of bad faith. Someone who lies to himself and excuses himself by saying “Everyone does not act that way” is struggling with a bad conscience, for the act of lying implies attributing a universal value to lies.30 What Sartre is ultimately expressing here is a profound difficulty that haunts our lives and actions. Learning to accept our freedom is to accept that we are responsible for all our actions and decisions. The emotion we feel when we deny this freedom, that is to say when we blame other people for our actions, outcomes, and decisions is anguish; the denial of our freedom and hence the denial of responsibility. Hence to overcome the feeling of anguish, we must take responsibility for our own lives in each and every aspect.

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The notion is not overly complex, but on another level this responsibility has far deeper implications and certainly captures a particular aspect of Gaullist foreign policy. Sartre writes: When we say that man chooses himself, not only do we mean that each of us must choose himself, but also that in choosing himself, he is choosing for all men. In fact, in creating the man each of us wills ourselves to be, there is not a single one of our actions that does not at the same time create an image of a man as we think he ought to be. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We must always choose the good, and nothing can be good for any of us unless it is good for all. If, moreover, existence precedes essence and we will to exist at the same time as we fashion our image, that image is valid for all and for our whole era. Our responsibility is thus much greater than we might have supposed, because it concerns all mankind.31 This really is to say that when we act, in doing so we give an example to others. This is an example of what we choose to do with our freedom and thus in our actions we reveal our values that serve as an example for humanity to observe, imitate, or reject. In this sense, and if it is the case that we are condemned to be free, then it must be, as Sartre concludes, ‘that man is therefore without any support or help, condemned at all times to invent man. In an excellent article, Francis Ponge once wrote: “Man is the future of man.” This is absolutely true.’32 This really is to say that if no objective morality exists, and that if all values are henceforth subjective values, then it is only by example that we create the world as we would like it to exist. Hence in making choices, and due to our abandonment, we must take complete and personal responsibility for every individual who makes the same choice as one’s own. If I throw litter on the floor I may have no complaints if others choose to do the same; if others, that is, follow my example of action and existence. We are, in this sense, condemned to create mankind through example. Let us now relate this notion of anguish to de Gaulle as decision-maker, his sense of the international system, and the conduct of France within this and thereby develop our existential reading of his foreign policy. If France subscribed to no god other than her subjective creator (that is her own history), if France accepted that no other individual could act as ‘God’, and thus if all such individuals should henceforth enjoy freedom and sovereignty, yet in turn, had to take absolute responsibility and give example of how to exercise this freedom in the international system, then this enables us to better understand de Gaulle’s sense of the Cold War world in philosophic terms. The General, as we know all too well, treasured France’s independence above all else. French sovereignty, in other words, was placed above all other values. Indeed, human freedom from a higher power, and national freedom from a

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higher and external authority pertain to be the same thing. Speaking for France de Gaulle once declared, The defence of France must be French. That is a necessity which has not always been too well understood in recent years. I know this. It is absolutely essential that it become recognised once more. With a country like France, if war should come, then that war must be her war. Its effort must be her effort. If it were otherwise, our country would be acting counter to everything it has been since its origins – to its role, to its self-respect, to its very soul…it is indispensable that our defence belongs to us, that France defend herself by herself, for herself, and in her own way.33 Summing up, de Gaulle stresses, ‘In any period of history, the government’s raison d’être is to defend the independence and the integrity of the territory. It arises from the necessity. Especially in France, all our regimes have been based on the ability to do so.’34 In 1963 we hear a similar sentiment: In order to be prosperous, to be masters of ourselves, and to be powerful, we French have done a great deal. Much remains for us to do. For progress demands effort. Independence is not free. Security is costly. That is of course why the State, whose role and rasion d’être is to serve the general interest, has no right to let things go…any system that would consist of handing over our sovereignty to august international assemblies would be incompatible with the rights and the duties of the French Republic.35 Here, and as with all discussion on such matters, national independence is ever presented as France’s freedom. An existential reading of this dictates that under de Gaulle’s leadership France had not only reconciled herself with her own abandonment and hence freedom, and that she not only welcomed this absolute freedom but she sought, through de Gaulle and in her entirety, to attack any force that threatened this. In this sense, de Gaulle’s France sought to avoid the feeling of anguish that Sartre writes of. For de Gaulle this was fundamental to France’s existence and hence he strove towards ever greater Gallic independence. It is in this sense that Britain, when faced with the same Cold War dilemmas as France, chose to do the opposite; she chose the ‘special relationship’, to soften what John Dumbrell has called, ‘the post imperial fall’.36 As de Gaulle contends, Cold War Britain, as a national and ethno-symbolic individual, was faced with the choice of ‘the permanent acceptance of American supremacy’, or independence and the inevitable path that ‘led her towards Europe’ and a central role within this.37 This was the choice between abandonment and the responsibility of her freedom, or ‘religion and faith’, and henceforth her own anguish; we know too well what she chose to do.

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It is probable that no Cold War British Prime Minister personified the Anglo-American ‘Special Relationship’ more than Harold MacMillan, and it was within his words that de Gaulle seemingly detected the gloom and melancholic anguish that stemmed from Britain’s acceptance of bondage over independence and freedom. MacMillan stressed to de Gaulle, “The recent cataclysm, which brought into being the vast Soviet Bloc and weakened the other powers of the Old World, has put all of us West Europeans in a situation of permanent danger. We must restore the balance. It is true that for the moment the American presence guarantees our security. But it is doubtful whether it will last indefinitely. Moreover, it has placed the Europeans in a position of painful subservience, from which you French would like to free yourselves, and which we English endure only with reluctance. Let us bring Europe together, my dear friend”…these words struck a sympathetic chord in me. No one was more convinced than I that it would be highly desirable for England to belong to an organized and independent grouping of the States of Western Europe, and any steps she took in this direction would be extremely welcome. But was she prepared to submit to the constraints inseparable from such an association, one so alien to her historic nature and to what was still the basis of her existence?38 Was this crushing emotion, as explained by Macmillan, an expression of Britain’s existential anguish at accepting a master, even though she had historically been a sovereign nation as de Gaulle so well understood? For the General this was the case and given de Gaulle’s insistence on talking of Britain as an individual, from an ethno-symbolic and existential perspective de Gaulle was shaking the ‘old enemy’ in order to make her aware of her own consciousness and anguish ridden-servitude. It will be recalled that we should, and through Sartre’s understanding of existential anguish, take responsibility for our own freedom and henceforth give example to mankind of our values and desires for the world to reflect this. Indeed, if God is dead, if there are no inherent and absolute moral laws, and hence if everything is therefore permissible, then man is forced and condemned to create mankind by his actions and examples. To avoid anguish, in other words, we must be aware of our freedom and take responsibility for our example of this at all times and when we turn to de Gaulle’s perception of international relations we find that this expression of human freedom and responsibility is essentially the expression of national independence and conduct. Indeed, it is probable that in de Gaulle’s eyes the two were one and the same and this is why France had to be the master of her own fate and hence she had to be free. In addition, within the Atlantic Alliance – indispensable so long as the ambitions and the threats of the Soviets are raised – our country, while

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For de Gaulle, this independence was ‘something that we prize above everything else’.40 The role and responsibilities that France should have taken were emphatically constrained by NATO and American hegemony. Therefore, France, through her leadership within Western Europe had to give example and take responsibility for her own existence; hence France, Should maintain an alliance with America in which, in the North Atlantic, both are interested so long as the Soviet threat remains. But the reasons which, for Europe, made this alliance a form of subordination are fading away day by day. Europe must assume its share of responsibility…we French feel that it is a question of Europe being made in order for it to be European. A European Europe means that it exists by itself for itself, in other words in the midst of the world it has its own policy.41 In taking on such a responsibility, France as an individual, through her actions, and hence examples, took on responsibility for the whole world and de Gaulle was acutely aware of this. This was, ultimately, to give example to the other individuals of de Gaulle’s global society. To leave the ‘running’ and ‘creation’ of national existence to Russia and America was to leave Moscow and Washington, through their existential condemnation, to create the nature of the international system in their own respective images. De Gaulle laments, When, in both camps, everything is arranged so that means of destruction, capable of annihilating continents, could be unleashed in the space of a few seconds…when two thirds of the inhabitants of the earth lead a miserable existence, while certain peoples have at their disposal what is necessary to ensure the progress of all – what is the use of dangerous wrangling over West Berlin, the [East] German Democratic Republic and German disengagement?42 Gaullist France, therefore, could not sit back and watch as a mere spectator; Paris had to speak up and give example to the world. We know all too well that she did so; Washington and London know this better than most. It is this that de Gaulle discusses and explains with reference to France’s foreign policy; she indeed wanted to will the world to value what she did; not merely that of the two superpowers. France had to grasp her freedom and responsibility, and as de Gaulle explicitly stresses, France had to provide her existential example of national conduct within international society.

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This would serve only to perpetuate the two blocs, whose very existence precluded a true peace. On the other hand, a rapprochement between one European nation and another, brought about on the basis of existing realities and confined, at the outset, to economic, cultural, technical and tourist matters, would offer a far better chance of dismantling the Iron Curtain piece by piece, of toning down the frenzy of the arms race little by little, and even of bringing the totalitarians to relax step by step the severity of their regimes. France, who had taken nothing and had nothing to take from the Russian people or from any of those now associated with them, who had been familiar to them from time immemorial, and for whom, through the centuries, they had always felt a special attraction, could and must give an example.43 Shakespeare once wrote that the whole world is a stage; many have since repeated this. ‘At one time the richest, the mightiest people among those in the centre of the world stage, after great misfortunes it came, as it were, to withdraw within itself’; de Gaulle even refers to it as such.44 For Sartre the same is true and through this, and as already noted, man is henceforth condemned to create man. Yet in the mind of de Gaulle the same was also true for all national individuals. All, that is, who take to the stage of the international arena are equally condemned and hence nations are condemned to create the future of nations and the future norms of national conduct in the international system. Given the enormity of this task it could not be the responsibility of just two individuals; and certainly not two antagonistic and ‘warring’ individuals whose joint example was the subjugation of national character, the stockpiling of nuclear weapons, and proxy warfare in Vietnam, the Middle East, and on the Korean Peninsula. By giving example to Russia, that is, and seeing her historically rooted character, France was attempting to influence Russia and create the world as she wished it to be. It is in this sense that de Gaulle’s example of national existence echoes the logic of Sartre’s notion of anguish and an existential reading of his foreign policy allows us to see this in clear terms. In 1965 the General expressed this with regard to France’s immediate locality within international society and hence amongst her fellow ethno-symbolic individuals of Europe. The vital fact of these last seven years is that we have resisted the sirens of surrender and have chosen independence. It is true that independence implies conditions, and that they are not easy ones. But, as can be seen, we are succeeding in meeting them. In the political sphere, we must, without renouncing our American friendship, behave like the Europeans we are and, in that capacity, attempt to re-establish, from one end of our continent to the other, an equilibrium based on understanding and cooperation among all the people who live on it as we do.45 There is nothing to say that these values were objective; as Sartre tells us, all values by their very nature must be subjective. Nonetheless, these were the

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values that belonged to France and hence, as de Gaulle concludes, ‘Men and women of France, as you can see, for us, for everyone, as ever, France must be France! Vive la République! Vive la France!’46 But this was not solely the case of France being France for herself, her responsibility ran far deeper. Indeed, if France, as Duverger once noted, had to reject the two great examples of the Cold War world, ‘Soviet or American domination’, then she had to reject this value for every individual, not merely herself.47 It was in this sense that Algeria, so long suppressed and held under the imperial domination of France had to be given back to herself. The Algerian nation, in other words, had to be given ‘the right to be their own masters’.48 If the international arena was indeed a polytheistic stage (in that there exists no creator or universal set of values that exist above and beyond the nation state), and thus there was no higher authority than that of the ethno-symbolic individual, then France could not fundamentally reject the hegemonic values of America and Russia in their entirety while she, in all the callous brutality of the Fourth Republic’s war in Algeria, suppressed another individual. She could not both reject and play ‘God’ at the same time without living in a contradictory state that was the pure expression of existential anguish. It is also worth noting (in a Hegelian sense at least) that, and as is the case with most acts of imperialism, the ‘master’ subsequently becomes a slave to the ‘master–slave’ relationship in itself and becomes dependent on this state of affairs (often with problematic consequences). De Gaulle, for his part, acknowledged this, and hence Gaullist France under his leadership took on responsibility for every nation. Indeed, if existence does precede essence then France’s actions were a reflection of how de Gaulle wished the world to be. De Gaulle was willing into existence his sense of the ‘correct’ state of the international system through the example of France. The same may not be said of America and Russia; their examples and desires ran contrary to their values. Yet America, in one sense, advocated the polytheism of nationhood, as did Russia. Granted, and although NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and the United Nations were and are supranational bodies, they were only backed by Washington and Moscow in so far as they were subservient to the national authorities of the two superpowers. None of these supranational entities truly appeared as God; they were merely the means of extending hegemonic dominion in the world. It is, in this sense, and through de Gaulle’s implicit existentialism, that we must see America and Russia as accepting existentialist abandonment, and hence absolute freedom, yet failing to take responsibility for their actions and hence examples. To be sure, if ‘we must always choose the good, and nothing can be good for any of us unless it is good for all’, then what did the actions and examples of America and Russia say to the world? Yet if God existed in our mid-twentieth-century global stage then He existed as the United Nations. But although America and Russia rejected this body as God, they did not fundamentally reject the principal of the divine as this was a role both individuals tried to play themselves. Regicide, it is true, is one thing; Danton, Robespierre, and Saint Just is something quite different.

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On this point, that is the attempt by some national individuals to play God, we return to this in the next section, but through an existential reading of the Cold War world, and if the values of America and Russia really were those of peace and a more harmonised world, and if our ethno-symbolic individuals are condemned to create the future of nations and international norms, then it must be the case that their own hegemonic actions and hence examples, defeated the very values which they supposedly espoused. As Sartre writes: In reality, however, for existentialists there is no love other than the deeds of love; no potential for love other than that which is manifested in loving. There is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art; the genius of Proust resides in the totality of his works; outside of which there is nothing. Why should we attribute to Racine the ability to write yet another tragedy when that is precisely what he did not do? In life, a man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing.49 Indeed, when this logic is used to understand the actions of the US and Russian individuals then nuclear weapons, brutal oppression, aggressive wars, murderous invasions, national hegemony, national suppression, death and destruction were their fundamental examples and hence the values to which they subscribed. Hence, if we are to understand de Gaulle’s sense of the international system through an existential lens then these were Moscow’s and Washington’s portraits; they were America and Russia’s examples of national existence. Belief in their own well intended morality that seemingly justified such actions is absolutely null and void here; nothing lay outside of their actions. They were nothing more than the sum of their example to the world and the notion of American exceptionalism thusly becomes a pure expression of existential anguish. It is in this sense that de Gaulle’s France, as an individual suffered less anguish and self-deception in the Cold War world than either our American and Russian individuals who seemingly refused to take responsibility for their freedoms and examples.

Despair: ‘conquer yourself rather than the world’ Through the discussions on the Other, abandonment, and anguish, we now reach the Sartrean notion of despair. By the term of ‘despair’ Sartre explains that ‘it has a very simple meaning’; It means that we must limit ourselves to reckoning only with those things that depend on our will, or on the set of probabilities that enable action. Whenever we desire something, there are always elements of probability… From the moment that the possibilities I am considering cease to be rigorously engaged by my action, I must no longer take interest in them, for no God or greater design can bend the world and its possibilities to my

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This really is to say that through our freedom and anguish we must remain aware of our limitations and that which we may achieve in the world. It is something fundamental that we should not lose sight of. Sartre goes on to attack those such as Christians who take this as an argument that seemingly advocates inaction, idleness, and apathy; something that leads to an existence of hopelessness and ennui; a dangerous state that Sartre calls quietism. That is, a state whereby we believe that there is nothing we can do, hence nothing is exactly what we set out to do. Thus, Sartre’s message here is that we need to learn and reconcile ourselves with the limits of what we can achieve. Despair manifests itself as a notion that we must realise that much is beyond us; that there is much that we can do nothing about. We must, as Descartes argues, ‘conquer ourselves’, and become the master of ourselves rather than everyone and everything and not be overly concerned by what is beyond us. From this notion of despair we are able to perceive three possible outcomes in Sartre’s logic. The first of these is the denial and rejection of despair; a state that pertains to ignore that one is limited in one’s ability to change the world and to influence others. That is, a state whereby one believes that one may conquer the world and to play the fool’s game of acting on this belief. The second of these is the recognition that one may not conquer the world but must nonetheless strive to conquer oneself; thus a reconciliation of one’s own limitations. The third is the state that Sartre warns us of, that is, quietism as the state of inaction and the failure to even conquer oneself. If we now allow ourselves to drift from this human-centric application of existential despair to that of the national individual, and if we use the principal examples of France, Britain, America, and Russia in relation to this notion of despair we are able to develop our existential reading of de Gaulle’s sense of the international system and the expressions of national conduct within this. Firstly, and for us to pursue this goal, a brief digression: let us momentarily deviate from Sartre and return to Camus’ work. On the notion of revolutions, Camus argues that they must logically ‘aspire to world unity and act as though…history were dead’.51 There is something unquestionably profound in this remark. Nonetheless, Michelet, as Camus points out, regarded the French revolution to be the first since that of Christianity, yet as Camus insists, France (if we consider her to be an individual) was not merely content with conquering herself in 1789; her republican values were to be spread well beyond her borders and Bonaparte was clearly the force or ‘world spirit’ that would drive this.52 Her example was not to be hers alone; other European individuals were to be conquered and hence they would reflect France’s subjective values and will. I need not state what happened to France’s attempts to paint the world in her own colours as the story and ‘facts’ are well known. Yet the fallout of this led her into a state of existential quietism. She began, that is, to let others control her destiny and let others take responsibility for

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her defence. Decline on the continent, empire in turmoil, dependent on the Allies for liberation, reliance on the American nuclear umbrella for her protection; on the world stage her example was to seemingly accept that things were beyond her control and national independence, in the strictest of terms, was never truly an option. As seen earlier, it had been de Gaulle’s self-appointed task to reawaken France and to rescue her from quietism. This was to revive France and to rectify the fact that her voice had waned on the world stage during his lifetime. Yet as Sartre’s logic demands, she should only aspire to conquer herself and not follow the revolutionary logic that demanded the opposite. Sartre’s reasoning insists that France should move from quietism and aspire towards independence, but also, at the same time, recognise her limits and the extent to which she could assert her will in the international system. She also had to give example of her image of what ‘nationkind’ should be, what values she was condemned to promote, and what her future projection of national norms were. Hence to become the master of herself was to conquer herself and herself alone. It was, in other words, to put France in harmony with herself. For de Gaulle, and through his time as Head of State, this had been achieved. The French nation is at peace. It is at peace with herself, where the political struggles have no profound reality, where subversion has been dispelled, where the social divisions are becoming blurred thanks to the general prosperity and to a growing and necessary fairness in the distribution of the fruits of national progress. The nation is at peace in the world, where, at the present time, it is not engaged in any conflict of any kind, while putting itself in a position to possess, if necessary, modern and powerful means of defence.53 ‘Gaullist foreign policy’ or the ‘politics of grandeur’; regardless of how we frame such things, national independence, coupled with limited power, rejection of American hegemony, and influence by example rather than coercion was the core of de Gaulle’s foreign policy. A Sartrean-existential reading allows us to see this and to understand that France sought to reconcile herself with existential despair through de Gaulle’s perception of international relations. France in this sense conquered herself rather than the world. On the other hand, the reaction to the existential despair of other national individuals in the international system, such as America and Russia, was patently different. Indeed, if it really is the case that a national revolution must lead to attempted world revolution, as Camus dictates, then this logic should also stand, and to borrow a Wendtian term, in de Gaulle’s community of ‘state persons’. Revolutions are never entirely domestic affairs and this is certainly true of both the Russian and American revolutions. Indeed, if the principals upon which a revolution stands henceforth become some of the ‘pseudo’ and transient characteristics of an individual then, and in an existential sense, this is an attempt to conquer oneself and to take control of oneself. This, for Sartre is

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desirable as self-conquest is a noble goal. But to then attempt to ‘export’ such values to other individuals through coercion is to deny and ignore one’s own limitations. It is a failure of an individual to reconcile the self with one’s own restrictions and becomes a denial of existential despair. Democracy or communism; republicanism or totalitarianism, it matters not. If a national individual’s values are like that of a human individual, that is to say entirely subjective, then one may not just spread such values to them. One can, it is perfectly true, through example, show others the merits of one’s own values and hope that they adopt these, but this is something entirely different from imposition. One is Napoleon’s France; the other is de Gaulle’s. The General often stressed that the ideologies which led to revolution were ultimately transient fantasies that lacked little tangible reality unlike historically rooted values that had developed over the centuries. Indeed, capitalism and democracy for de Gaulle, and unlike communism, had developed over time and were the products of the past. Forged by the weight of history and hence the furnace of the past, these values had passed through the process of becoming and were, in this respect, historically authentic. As such they had developed incrementally; they came to us gradually. We did not, that is, go to them. This is why the ethno-symbolic individuals of the West accept these so easily as they are products of certain values and hence examples. Acting as examples on the world stage, democracy and capitalism have given a plethora of successful ‘performances’ and ‘displays’. As an age-old idea various individuals had toyed with the idea of democracy and through such examples others have accepted these values. In this sense de Gaulle’s ethno-symbolic individuals, ever condemned to create the world and in taking responsibility for all states in the international system have, perhaps inadvertently, forged an ostensible march towards the democratisation of the world; a notion that brings us close to Fukuyama and ‘the end of history’. By this I mean that from a certain perspective I agree with Fukuyama who claims that the political world and the development of history should be seen as an evolutionary process whereby the triumph of liberal democracy as the dominant and final form of government in the West serves as an example for mankind to aspire towards and hence all nations may subsequently move towards some form of democratic rule despite contemporary concerns regarding the perceived international ‘democratic recession’. Nonetheless, entirely subjective values now appear as seemingly natural to most Western nations and may well be said to act as substitute for Christian morality in Nietzsche’s godless world. In terms of the application and imposition on humanity, the same cannot be said of Marxism and of communism; of Stalin’s cloud, of Castro’s mist, of Mao’s fog. That which is contained within Das Kapital (1867) is unquestionably laudable, and may well translate into a form of communism, but for de Gaulle, for our ethno-symbolic existentialist, for an individual haunted by ‘the presence of the past’ and hence temporal co-existence, such ideologies, when transposed onto a national group lack any existential authenticity. The world stage has to be given successful acts of

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communism for the rest to observe as example. It is in this sense that nations must evolve, and perhaps in this sense, we see an element of Camus’ rationale here in the respect that revolution is a fundamental impossibility given that history really is ‘our hell’. If France had reconciled herself with her own existential despair of the past and hence the limitations as to what she could achieve within the world, and if America and Russia had failed to recognise this and hence denied their limited ability to change aspects of international society that they disliked, it is arguable that Britain fell into quietism; the category that Sartre warns us of. For if ‘quietism’, as Sartre declares, ‘is the attitude of people who say: ‘Others can do what I cannot do’, then Britain’s open acquiescence to American hegemony and protection is perhaps indicative of this.54 The Anglo-American agreement at Nassau in 1962, where London agreed to purchase the submarinelaunched Polaris missile system from Washington but in doing so effectively placed Britain’s nuclear deterrent under American command, serves to underline this dependence and if one of the General’s ethno-symbolic individuals must rely on another for protection then, and from an existential reading, it must exist in a state of quietism. For de Gaulle Britain’s quietism had presented itself during World War II. ‘Ever since the dark days’, he writes, ‘when to avoid being submerged in spite of all her sacrifices, she had accepted Roosevelt’s offer of lend-lease, she had found herself under American hegemony’; something that was compounded by her ‘docility’ in exchange for ‘nuclear secrets’.55 Indeed, if quietism demands that ‘man is nothing other than his own project’, then, and as Sartre concludes, man is ‘nothing more than the sum of his actions, nothing more than his life’, then for Britain, as an individual, this has profound and severe implications when we see the Cold War world in existential terms.56 Within all of this, one must wonder if we are able to detect an understanding that allows us to see France’s actions as being favourable and well-meaning to the other ethno-symbolic individuals of the Cold War world. Indeed, if it is the case that, as when faced with despair, de Gaulle’s national individuals act in one of three ways then, and through Sartre’s logic, the only sincere and meaningful option to choose is that of our acceptance of despair; that is, to conquer oneself, to do what we can, and not concern ourselves with that which lies beyond our own ability to change the world or international system. From my understanding of things, I assert that de Gaulle’s France reflected Sartre’s preferred course of action when an individual is faced with despair and hence within this, the example of Gaullist France was a positive influence within the global community: she stabilised herself as an individual; she rejected foreign influence; she took responsibility for herself and refused to play the hegemonic game as either ‘master’ or ‘slave’. This was France’s example in a frozen world of Cold War tensions and suppressed nationhood; this was de Gaulle’s illustration of national conduct. Yet, and while giving example to other individuals, France also took action to convince others of the ‘correct’ way to act. If America and Russia, in going beyond the pursuit of self-conquest, were misguided and in denial of

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existential despair; that is, they wished to play God regardless of abandonment and anguish, then de Gaulle’s France, and given her reduced status post-1945, could not pretend to directly challenge this. But what was within her ability was revolt and rebellion, rather than outright revolution; an alteration of the world system rather than complete rejection of the Cold War norms. That is to say that France did not wish to kill, overthrow, or replace those who were attempting to play as gods and kings; she merely wished to speak to them as equals. In this sense it is the revolt of Spartacus and Rome, rather than the revolutions of Lenin and Saint Just. For Paris to speak to Washington and Moscow, as well as Beijing, London, Mexico City, Algiers, and Hanoi, as equals was not merely to give example of her values and hence accept her limitations, but this was to also, and indirectly, advocate such values to the superpowers of the Cold War world. It was to will Gaullist France’s values into existence in a broader context. It was to say that there were somethings, indeed, perhaps most things, in the world that were well beyond the control of any individual; but acceptance of this was a necessity. In the early twenty-first century it would seem that Paris and Moscow (despite the annexation of Crimea in early 2014) have learnt this lesson well. Yet despite Korea, despite Vietnam, ignoring Iran, regardless of Iraq, regardless of Afghanistan and Libya, in opposition to European resistance to hegemony, in the shadow of the irremovable de Gaulle, America is still in denial of her existential despair. The essence of this is captured by Kagan when he writes of American governments, ‘they want to be left alone but can’t seem to leave anyone else alone’.57 As the next section explores, there is perhaps something within America’s nature that makes this lesson a difficult one to learn. On the point of Britain, or ‘England’ as de Gaulle liked to call her, my perception must be that she had slipped into quietism; that she saw much of the world as being beyond her; she was, in de Gaulle’s words, ‘handing everything over to the Americans’.58 In trying to break the bond and subservient role that London played to Washington and in encouraging her to play a role in Europe that was hers and hers alone, France, in this sense, was appealing to Britain to conquer herself. Indeed, de Gaulle once stressed to Malraux that, ‘even the English no longer have national ambition’; and to have no national ambition was surely a sign of her crushing despair.59 In believing, yet perhaps deceiving herself of the ‘special relationship’ with America, and in trying to play the role of the Greeks in the age of Rome, Britain was too closely identified with the US to move beyond quietism. France’s examples of conduct, coupled with her appeals for Britain to conquer herself were, in this respect, an attempt to break her crushing quietism; a positive force in the ethno-symbolic Cold War world. Thus far we have seen that once we see nations as individuals then it is the case that existentialism helps us to rationalise and understand de Gaulle’s sense of international relations in a way that conventional political science cannot. Indeed, for Sartre existentialism may well be a humanism, but for de Gaulle, nationalism was an existentialism. As already stated, I am not arguing that de

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Gaulle was overtly using existentialism per se in his conduct of international relations and France’s role within this. But from a FPA perspective and once we see the world as one comprised of national individuals, formed around ethno-symbolic characteristics, the language of existentialism brings a greater level of clarity and comprehension to de Gaulle; an understanding that takes the subjective individuality of each ‘state person’ as its starting point, not an all-encompassing theory that suppresses this. Seeing and understanding this through the notion of the Other, abandonment, anguish, and despair has brought this to life. Yet it is possible to build on this by utilising two final notions of bad faith and authenticity.

Bad faith and the authenticity of nations Thus far, and following the logic developed in the present volume, we are able to make several claims regarding de Gaulle’s sense of the world and the international system in which his foreign policy was situated. It is in this sense that we may claim that (1) de Gaulle’s intellectual understanding of the world was Bergsonian in nature; (2) the ‘content’ of the international system very much reflected this; (3) this inherent Bergsonism, in turn, makes de Gaulle an ethno-symbolist when we consider his views on nations; (4) while being ethno-symbolic in their nature nations, for de Gaulle, also carried a distinctly anthropomorphic element; (5) the most appropriate lens through which to rationalise both the ontological and behavioural implications of this is Sartrean existentialism. Once we see the world as such and once we see the parallels between Sartre and de Gaulle’s reasoning, a whole range of existential paradigms may be employed to explore and explain the General’s foreign policy. Indeed, in developing certain existential themes in this chapter, and by relating notions such as the Other, abandonment, anguish, and despair to de Gaulle’s anthropomorphic sense of the international system, we now have an understanding of how national individuals related to, and interacted with, one another. Yet to complete this discussion we need to explore the final two notions that Sartre discusses in Existentialism is a Humanism: those of bad faith and authenticity, and it is discussion on this that takes up the remainder of the chapter. Toward the end of Existentialism is a Humanism Sartre moves onto the notion of what he refers to as ‘mauvaise foi’ which is so often translated as ‘bad faith’, but may also be interpreted as ‘self-deception’. Whichever way one translates this, Sartre’s meaning is thus; bad faith is principally the act of fleeing from personal freedom and denying the consequences of our responsibility and examples to the world that flow from this. It is, in other words, to take flight in the face of one’s own abandonment, to live in a state whereby we ignore our anguish, and to live out an existence whereby we blame others and certain circumstances for our action or inaction. Bad faith, at root, is the binary act of finding reasons for not accepting personal responsibility for our lives and lends itself to an existence whereby we either end up as part of the amorphous

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crowd and living out a prescribed existence, or believing that one’s own existence is actually required and that one’s actions and values are valid for all. As such the self-deception that Sartre speaks of describes individuals whose existence is one of half-lived inauthenticity, determinism, and crowd-following or those who exert some form of ‘messianic complex’ and a belief that their subjective values are somehow objective. In Existentialism is a Humanism we are presented with three types of individuals: cowards, bastards, and those who live an authentic existence. Sartre writes: Consequently, when, operating on the level of complete authenticity, I have acknowledged that existence precedes essence, and that man is a free being who, under any circumstances, can only ever will his freedom, I have at the same time acknowledged that I must will the freedom of others. Therefore, in the name of this will to freedom, implied by freedom itself, I can pass judgment on those who seek to conceal from themselves the complete arbitrariness of their existence, and their total freedom. Those who conceal from themselves this total freedom, under the guise of solemnity, or by making determinist excuses, I will call cowards. Others, who try to prove their existence is necessary, when man’s appearance on earth is merely contingent, I will call bastards.60 There are, of course, fundamental issues and criticisms that one could level at Sartre here; namely the issue of why one should not choose bad faith; indeed, why should one not run from self-deception; why should one not choose bad over good faith and hence authenticity? Sartre anticipates this in his lecture and retorts, We may also judge a man when we assert that he is acting in bad faith. If we define man’s situation as one of free choice, in which he has no recourse to excuses or outside aid, then any man who takes refuge behind his passions, any man who fabricates some deterministic theory, is operating in bad faith. One might object by saying; “But why shouldn’t he choose bad faith?” My answer is that I do not pass moral judgment against him, but I call his bad faith an error. Here, we cannot avoid making a judgment of truth. Bad faith is obviously a lie because it is a dissimulation of man’s full freedom of commitment.61 Strong language, but in taking Sartre’s point let us move on from this humanistic level of existence and transpose it onto de Gaulle’s perception of ‘living’ national individuals. France, America, Russia, China, Britain; if we take the five principal ‘individuals’ of de Gaulle’s Cold War world in turn, and attempt to question whether each of these were living in a state of self-deception or authenticity, what are we able to observe? It is a good question and, in a sense, is perhaps the fundamental question of this chapter. Indeed, it may well be the fundamental

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question of the book. If we begin by looking at our five individuals de Gaulle would probably declare that all five were living in a state of bad faith or selfdeception in the post-war era. Nations and national individuals existing in a state of self-deception; perhaps this was the defining characteristic of the Cold War world for de Gaulle. Nonetheless, it is possible to observe that three of these individuals (France, China and Russia) shifted from self-deception to authenticity during the course of the Cold War. Two individuals (the US and Britain), however, did not. At the outset of the Cold War (let us say 1945–1950) de Gaulle’s perception would be to declare all five nations to be in bad faith; France, China, and Britain due to their subservient positions and failure to will their own freedom (the bad faith of cowards); America and Russia due to both their belief in the necessity of their existence and their failure to will the freedom of others (the bad faith of bastards). Indeed, if it is the case that the routes to self-deception are the hiding from, rejection of, or denial of one’s own freedom and that of others, then, and through Sartre’s logic, we must hold all to be in bad faith in this period. As we have seen, Sartre recognises that ‘when operating on the level of complete authenticity, I have acknowledged that existence precedes essence, and that man is a free being who, under any circumstances, can only ever will his freedom’ and thus any individual who sought to hide from or deny this freedom was ultimately living an inauthentic existence. France of the Fourth Republic, Mao’s China, Britain of Atlee and Churchill, as we know all too well, none of these willed their own freedom per se. France of the post-war world found herself very much running from her own freedom. Of de Gaulle and France Macridis writes, ‘he retired from power at the very time when French weakness and American supremacy became even more pronounced than they were during World War Two’.62 The subservience of France to America was soon to transpire and the imprisoning entanglements of Indo-China and Algeria also acted to constrain her national existence. Hence, France’s freedom was ultimately denied by both her acquiescence to the US and her insistence on the fundamental necessity of Algérie Française. France’s dual self-deception as both coward and bastard was, in this respect, a fundamental characteristic of the Fourth Republic. Britain also played a similar self-deceptive game as a coward. As Macridis points out, ‘In a stormy meeting…Churchill is reported to have declared that British interests were inextricably associated with American ones and that any time a question of choice was involved England would follow American leadership’; again, this we already know.63 As with France, Britain’s freedom was absent as her sovereignty was not self-willed. It is, in this sense, that her ‘Special Relationship’ becomes a pure expression of her existential bad faith. Logically, and in the same respect, the same must also be said of China as an ethno-symbolic individual. That is, she also existed in a state of self-deception. True, her Communism appeared to be that of her own and Mao’s victory over Chiang Kai-shek seemingly gave a sense of authenticity to her; but as de Gaulle so well understood, China, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, existed in

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a state of reluctant hegemony and docility to ‘Mother Russia’, her ill-intended communist mentor. It is true that Soviet Russia at first lent China considerable aid: establishing credit for the purchase of tools and supplies, furnishing mining and industrial equipment and specialists, sending engineers, technicians, skilled workers to the spot, and so on. This was the period when the Kremlin, utilizing here as elsewhere its rigorous preponderance with the Communist Church to support the supremacy of Russia over the people whom a dictatorship similar to its own had subordinated it, intended to keep China under its rule and thereby dominate Asia.64 Hence, with China understood in anthropomorphic terms, de Gaulle’s description of China is one of an individual in flight of existential freedom. Indeed, it seems fair to claim that China’s actions and example of existence were not those of an individual who willed her own freedom ‘under any circumstance’ and it is in this sense that China’s bad faith was manifest in her actions; Mauvaise Foi became the culmination of her close association with Russia. Determinism, circumstances, belief in objective morality; it really mattered little what the reason was for such close association between ethno-symbolic individuals. Whether it was France and Britain’s dependency on America, or China’s mentee role to Russia, national self-deception coursed throughout the Cold War world. ‘It can help another, but it cannot identify itself with another’; this is what de Gaulle was fundamentally expressing by such language in regard to international relations. His claim, that is, that nations cannot identify with others is an expression of Sartrean bad faith. Things, of course, also worked the other way around. The existential self-deception we perceive within Britain, France, and China is that of Sartre’s first type; the concealing ‘from themselves the complete arbitrariness of their existence, and their total freedom.’ Thus, it is in this sense that all three would be regarded by Sartre and de Gaulle’s logic to be ‘cowards’; individuals in flight of their freedom. The bad faith displayed by America and Russia was more akin to Sartre’s second category of self-deception; a belief in the necessity of their own existence and a delusional belief in the objective morality of their own subjective values. America’s case is easy to observe and quantify. ‘For we must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us’; John Winthrop is often said to have preached the missionary and messianic aspect of America’s character.65 It is something that perhaps remains entrenched within the American mentality; something that became a belief in her own civilising mission and absolute moral authority; a notion that lends itself to the belief in the necessity of her own existence and life. The great American sociologist, Seymour Martin Lipset, captures this well. Americans are utopian moralists who press hard to institutionalize virtue, to destroy evil people, and eliminate wicked institutions and practices. A

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majority even tell pollsters that God is the moral guiding force of American democracy. They tend to view social and political dramas as morality plays, as battles between God and the Devil, so that compromise is virtually unthinkable. To this day, Americans, in harmony with their sectarian roots, have a stronger sense of moral absolutism than Europeans and even Canadians.66 Lipset continues: A sense of moral absolutism is, of course, part of what some people see as problematic about American foreign policy. As Samuel Huntington has noted, Americans give to their nation and its creed, “many of the attributes and functions of a church….” These are reflected, as Bellah points out, in the American “civic religion,” which has provided “a religious dimension for the whole fabric of American life, including the political sphere.” The United States is seen as the new Israel. “Europe is Egypt; America the promised land. God has led his people to establish a new sort of social order that shall be a light unto all nations.”67 It was this ‘moral absolutism’ that , when turned on itself, led to the American Civil War where it was ‘the tendency of both sides to view the other as essentially sinful, as an agent of the Devil’. ‘But’, as Lipset concludes, ‘if we fight the evil empire, if we fight Satan, then he must not be allowed to survive’.68 Within this belief, within this worrying and entrenched ethno-symbolic characteristic of the American individual, lies the genesis and epicentre of her self-deception and her inability to see the ‘complete arbitrariness’ of her existence and that her values should not be values for all. For most of the Cold War, Russia was this Satan; a Russian ‘devil’ that an American ‘god’ had to oppose. As Dumbrell points out, ‘The US in particular is frequently described as seeking an “other”, preferably atheist and collectivist – the USSR was ideal.’69 Hence Russia had to exist, but she had to exist in this way. Indeed, Sartre once said that even if the Jew did not exist the Nazi would have invented him anyway; the same is probably true of America’s relationship with an ‘evil’ other. But Russia must also be seen as an individual in a state of bad faith. To be sure, although such charges could not be levelled at her throughout her long history, in the post-War world she certainly appeared as a self-deceptive individual; she too was convinced of the necessity of her own existence. This was not the necessity of her own moral standards and ‘objective’ morality for all. Rather it was the necessity of her own messianic existence which was a means to offer salvation to all humanity. Indeed, if pre-revolutionary Russia as an ethnosymbolic individual was infused with that most Germanic of nineteenthcentury attitudes, nihilism, and her belief in God was thus negated, then she must replace God, ‘but what’, as Camus has asked, ‘will this new god be?’70

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The Russian revolution and the goal that it set for both itself and humanity helps us to perceive the self-deception of Russia when she is considered as an individual. But while this is the bad faith of Sartre’s second distinction, such actions must also, inevitably, lead Russia to the bad faith of Sartre’s first category. Indeed, by creating the Soviet Union as an association of communist states, Russia was not only to force ‘salvation’ upon herself, but was also to force ‘salvation’ upon her neighbours and thus satellite states. This was to deny self-determination to her fellow national individuals and was thus, not the act of willing the freedom of others. In turn, it was a self-constricting act given Russia’s own imprisonment by her Leninist mission of salvation. Hence, it is in this respect that Russia found herself in self-deception in both of Sartre’s understanding of the term; she both enslaved herself and others. Of course, much of this flows from abandonment, anguish, and despair, and is henceforth connected to this. But the bad faith of Russia and all de Gaulle’s ethno-symbolic individuals discussed here must be seen as an interconnected culmination of this, not something distinct from it. Of both America and Russia’s attempts to forcibly spread objective morality and human salvation around de Gaulle’s global community, Sartre’s logic can also be used at a deeper level. That is to say that existential logic must also insist that America and Russia’s values, when imposed upon other individuals, must be seen as a falsehood for it contradicts the very truth of individual consciousness. Sartre explains: For strictly philosophical reasons, our point of departure is, indeed, the subjectivity of the individual – not because we are bourgeois, but because we seek to base our doctrine on truth, not on comforting theories full of hope but without any real foundation. As our point of departure there can be no other truth than this: I think therefore I am. This is the absolute truth of consciousness confronting itself. Any theory that considers man outside of this moment of self-awareness is, at the outset, a theory that suppresses the truth, for outside of this Cartesian cogito, all objects are merely probable, and a doctrine of probabilities not rooted in any truth crumbles into nothing.71 Russia’s ‘truth’ certainly crumbled and one may argue that America’s promise of democratic salvation is in crisis. That the ethno-symbolic and national individuals think as a collective entity is to say that each individual exists; this is Sartre’s truth of humanistic individual consciousness transposed onto de Gaulle’s national individuals. Yet Russia’s communism began outside the consciousness of her existence and hence would not last. This is what de Gaulle truly meant when he claimed, ‘Russia will absorb communism as a blotter absorbs ink’. If it is the case, in de Gaulle’s words, that ‘once a nation has been aroused, no foreign power, however strong, can impose its will upon it’, then this really pertains to conclude in the same logic as Sartre’s understanding; a nation only

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exists because it ‘thinks’, therefore it is. This is the foundation of its existence; the bedrock of a nation’s consciousness. It is from this that all its knowledge must spring, and hence, in the same way that Sartre declares any theory that begins outside of this to be a falsehood, de Gaulle’s logic also declares the same to be true in relation to national individuals; ‘any theory that considers man [a nation for de Gaulle] outside of this moment of self-awareness is, at the outset, a theory that suppresses the truth’.73 With respect to Russia’s communism, and from de Gaulle’s understanding of national individuals, it is for this reason that communism not only failed to take hold within other nations but also Russia herself. Communism in the Soviet Bloc began outside of each nation’s consciousness and was henceforth a suppression of de Gaulle’s ‘truth’; that is to say, each nation’s subjective consciousness. It is probable that the same could be said of America and her actions in our global community and as such the whole Cold War world in the 1950s became a suppression of individual national consciousness and hence national individualistic truth. It is in this sense that we may truly understand de Gaulle’s fight as a war against the Cold War itself; a war against the suppression of national consciousnesses. Following this, and following the General’s rationale and logic, and while all five nations found themselves in some form of bad faith, not all remained so, and it is at this point that I declare that France and China both took action, or ‘commitment’ as Sartre would understand it, to emerge from their own selfdeception, Russia was to do the same over a generation later. The same, however, may not be said of the Anglo-American countries. Both individuals remained, and perhaps still linger, in a state of bad faith and flight from their freedom. On what grounds do I make such claims? I do so, and let us observe that while France and China, perhaps deluded and deceived by the Cold War chimeras and the apparent inevitability of a bi-polar world in the 1950s, accepted domination and hegemony from America and Russia, they soon moved beyond this. Indeed, if both such individuals really were monotheistic, but nonetheless accepted a god in the form of one of the superpowers of de Gaulle’s global community, then this must be a supreme and elementary contradiction of their abandonment, anguish, and despair; the consequence of which could only culminate in self-deception and thus retreat from their freedom.74 Yet, and by the 1960s, this was no longer the case; both France and China emerged to challenge the bi-polarity of the world and henceforth challenged their own bad faith as a consequence of this. The force de frappe, withdrawal from NATO’s integrated command, conduct of her own diplomacy, denunciation of America’s actions in Vietnam; de Gaulle’s and hence France’s actions became her commitment; her challenge to her would-be American master; France mutinied against this self-deceptive ‘god’. ‘I rebel, therefore we exist’; it was in this sense that France not only willed her own freedom and hence moved from bad faith towards authenticity, but her actions inevitably willed the freedom of all.75 Within this charge towards authenticity we see, perhaps, a reason for France’s stronger sense of national identity and character than most other European nations. China, as de Gaulle so often predicted also reflected this in 72

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the East; communism would not hold nations together, China would thusly rebel against her Russian master. The break? Over what ideology? During my lifetime, Communist ideology has been personified by many people. There have been the eras of Lenin and Trotsky and Stalin – whom I knew personally – and of Beria and Malenkov and Khrushchev and Tito and Nagy and Mao Tse-tung. I know as many holders of the Communist ideology as there are fathers of Europe. And that makes quite a few. Each of these holders in his turn condemns, executes, crushes, and at times kills the others. In any event, he firmly fights against the personality cult of the others. I refuse to enter into a valid discussion on the subject of the ideological quarrel between Peking and Moscow. What I want to consider are the deep-rooted realities which are human, national, and consequently international.76 The small, but hugely significant Sino-Soviet clash over Zhenbao Island in 1969 echoed de Gaulle’s words and firmly reasserted Chinese sovereignty which was to also signal China’s move away from bad faith and towards authenticity in a world marked and characterised by deception and the crushing suppression of national existence. It was in this regard that de Gaulle’s France and Mao’s China have never shone brighter than when they did during the tense years of the Cold War. In a world of slumbering nations and national individuals where two ideologies masked the reality of national ambitions and where ‘nationalism’ had become a dirty word, France’s actions, and those of China were fundamentally the same; one in the West rebelled against the West; one in the East rebelled against the East; both rebelled against the same crushing forces that suppressed de Gaulle’s national realities. In doing so, both, as legislatures for all in the international system, willed their own freedoms, and hence that of the world. In turn, both moved away from existential bad faith and toward authenticity. What of Russia and America? I have stated that both also began the Cold War era in a state of bad faith. Both pertained to be gods; their ‘objective’ morality and messianic promises were ever the source of their aspirations. Yet, in the case of Russia, this was not to last; it could not. The Russian past and thus an authentic national history would eat away at a forcibly imposed transient idea; an idea that existed and originated outside of her consciousness and would not persist. Death, when it finally came for Lenin’s shadow, came quickly, suddenly, and unexpectedly. Yet with the passing of Russia’s communism her self-deception also died; elements of her authenticity were revealed. The period since 1989 is too brief in which to judge this authenticity, but it is clear that communism failed, and with it her selfappointed messianic mission of global salvation. The suppression of others henceforth dissipated too; her suppression of freedom thusly and partially died with Lenin. This is not to say that within this, Russia became a truly authentic being; her willing of others’ freedom is not entirely clear or certain

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at present. Nonetheless, the death of an alien ideology meant, from a certain perspective, she moved away from self-deception and towards a more authentic existence. America’s case is decidedly different and perhaps more concerning. Through de Gaulle’s reasoning, and principally due to her faith in ‘objective’ morality, I also understand America to be a national individual in bad faith. American Exceptionalism, the ‘Taming of the West’, the Trail of Tears, the Monroe Doctrine, the moral superiority of the Lady of Ellis Island; the whole fabric of America’s being and consciousness has been formed around her righteous ethical conviction of her own values. Indeed, even before 1776 the belief in her God-given morality was evident; this was to later become that of Manifest Destiny. As I have already touched upon, this belief in her own morality is the source of her bad faith and hence her crushing self-deception. That is to say, her belief in the necessity of her own existence to oppose ‘evil’; something that is so often expressed as American ‘leadership’, which, in turn, lends itself to the imposition of her entirely subjective morality on other individuals in the guise of objectivism. For de Gaulle this really was ‘national ambition’ hiding behind the cloak of ideology and hence the will to power in the international system, yet for Sartre this would be an act of self-deception as America’s actions hardly willed freedom. Yet both interpretations are fundamentally the same. That is, de Gaulle’s logic and Sartre’s rationale are merely expressing the same bad faith on two differing ontological levels of individualistic existence. Whether it is the national or the human individual it matters not; the equation remains the same. Nonetheless, and unlike Russia, America still maintains this fundamental and self-deceptive characteristic of her individuality and existence. North Korea, the Soviet Union as the ‘Evil Empire’, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, the ‘Axis of Evil’, ‘terrorist’ Afghanistan; the language she uses today is somewhat different than that of centuries past. As William Kristol and Robert Kagan argued back in the 1990s, and while this goes against John Quincy Adams’ much earlier warning, America should now go in search of monsters to destroy.77 Hence, and within de Gaulle’s sense of the international system, America’s attempts to play God, her inability to reconcile herself with her existential abandonment, anguish, and despair, and her self-defeating examples of forcing ‘freedom’ on others only serves to expose America’s elementary self-deception. I think, therefore I am; furthermore, and if we briefly return to Descartes, a greater and more salient point remains. As we have already seen, Sartre maintains, any theory, notion, or idea that ‘considers man outside of this moment of self-awareness is, at the outset, a theory that suppresses the truth’. He continues, ‘for outside of this Cartesian cogito, all objects are merely probable, and a doctrine of probabilities not rooted in any truth crumbles into nothing’.78 Thus the communisms of Russia and China were suppressions of national realities; de Gaulle endlessly, tirelessly, and laboriously, told us so. Yet, and from an ethno-symbolic and existential perspective, the point at which America’s

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consciousness was attained was through a perceived moral objectivity in opposition to the Old World. America thought, therefore she was, yet she was, and still is a ‘being’ of moral absolutes. America, in this sense, simply is. But this ‘is’, is a creature of innate and perpetual self-deception; a creature and individual in denial of her own existential freedom but also the freedom of all. In this sense, and if we follow such rationale to its logical conclusion, America becomes the absolute opposite of that which she believes herself to be. Indeed, so entrenched is the extent of her bad faith that she becomes the imperator of the world; the would-be master of all individuals. Refusal to accept that no monotheistic gods may exist; refusal to take responsibility for her existential examples; inability to reconcile herself with despair; all this that is so entrenched within her own individuality culminates in her self-deception and self-perpetuating bad faith. For Britain, her self-deception is a similar, yet far simpler case. Her Special Relationship has, and perhaps still is, a relationship of subservience to America. For the most part the relationship since 1941 has been friendly, close, and cordial. But throughout the Cold War it always was a distinctly one sided affair. Scholars can, and will, argue the extent of this, yet they only disagree over the degree of Britain’s subservience, not the principal per se. Hence Britain’s bad faith was a consequence of this; a consequence of not willing her own freedom. What remains less clear now however, is the nature of the relationship in the twenty-first century. It is probably that with the passing of the Cold War the relationship has lessened as has Britain’s self-deception. Nonetheless, here is not the place to discuss the extent and intricacies of this trans-Atlantic relationship in the modern day. Yet from an existential perspective Britain’s bad faith is certainly tied up within this relationship and with the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would seem that Britain’s open acquiescence and deferral to America’s wishes suggests that her selfdeception remains. That said, in the context of the ‘Brexit’ vote in 2016, the UK clearly went against the stated wishes of the Obama Administration and started along the long path to extricating herself from the EU project and the goal of ‘ever closer union’. While we do not yet fully understand how things will turn out in the long run, from an existential perspective it may well be the case that a vote to leave the EU implies an act that may be conducive to producing a greater degree of British authenticity in the coming decades.

Conclusion It is probably the case that Sartre never expected his existentialism to be used in such a way. He never intended, that is, for existential logic to be applied to France’s conduct within the international system in order to analyse and rationalise her Cold War actions during the 1960s. Nonetheless, and through the application of existentialism to France and the other major states of the Cold War world we have at our disposal a novel way through which to view de Gaulle’s sense of France, the ‘appropriate’ course of action that dictated

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French foreign policy, as well as de Gaulle’s interpretation of the nature of the international system and the forces at work within this. All of this is of great use to the foreign policy analyst in that it offers an additional lens through which to interpret the world. Of course, viewing de Gaulle through the conceptual prisms of realism, liberalism, or constructivism may have some value but none of these approaches are able to grasp the nature of his sense of nationhood, the Bergsonian basis of this, and the anthropomorphic essence that lay at the heart of de Gaulle’s idea of international relations. Indeed, systemic theories of IR, in attempting to rationalise the nature and essence of the international system, have the tendency to cut things down to such a level that it removes the personal and idiosyncratic basis of the system’s key components. To use existential language, it is a theoretical approach that begins outside the ‘consciousness’ of each individual nation and henceforth cuts things down to match its theoretical and abstract sense of reality. De Gaulle’s ‘reality’ was that which began with the subjective individualism and ethno-symbolic forces of each nation and never sought to arrive at a grand conclusion. In acting as a pan-nationalist de Gaulle was essentially encouraging national individualism everywhere in order to ‘awaken’ the authenticity of France, Russia, China, and the nations of Eastern Europe to their true ‘selves’, which was, in essence, to attack the fundamental principles of the Cold War world at its sources rather than any Cold War state per se. It was such logic that Debray caught sight of when he claimed ‘de Gaulle was an existentialist of the nation’ and we can now see how and in what sense the General’s nationalism and foreign policy was existential at its core. Indeed, developing de Gaulle’s France into a national and ethno-symbolic individual has enabled the placing of her within a wider global community of national individuals which unlocks, as it were, an existential reading of Gaullist foreign policy. Of course, this does not cover and explain de Gaulle and his foreign policy in its entirety and I make no claims here to the contrary. Nonetheless, and using that which has been developed here is useful in helping us to understand the General’s perception of international relations in a way that is far more fitting than any standard notions offered by political science. As explored in the chapter, the notion of the Other is central for us to appreciate how de Gaulle’s sense of French authenticity and individualism was fundamentally dependent on the other states of the Cold War world. De Gaulle’s France, as I have argued, could only exist through self-consciousness, which is something that, in turn, could only exist through the recognition of other individuals. But once we start to bring into the equation other ethno-symbolic individuals then the questions that human-centric existentialism explores may also be asked in relation to the wider international community of national individuals. How should one act in relation to others? How does one distinguish oneself from the crowd? How does one live an authentic existence? It is at this point that one is able to work through the same questions that so concerned Sartre, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Camus through the employment of the themes that sit at the heart of existential abandonment, anguish, despair, and

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bad faith. As stated at the outset, this is not to say that de Gaulle was overtly expressing existential logic per se in regard to his perception of nationhood and international relations. Rather it is my contention that his foreign policy was implicitly existential and in the absence of this analytical prism the foundations upon which de Gaulle’s foreign policy was dependent leaves things as somewhat hollow. However, in the concluding chapter, and in turning away from a formal exploration of de Gaulle’s foreign policy in an existential sense, I wish to explore a number of concluding remarks on de Gaulle as an individual and thinker. It is to this task that I now turn.

Notes 1 De Gaulle, C. (1960). War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944–1946. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 93. 2 Sartre, J. P. (2007). Existentialism is a Humanism. London: Yale University Press. viii–ix. 3 Ibid. 20. 4 De Gaulle, C. (1955). War Memoirs: The Call to Honour, 1940–1942. London: Collins. 9. 5 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 212. 6 Cogan, C. (1996). Charles de Gaulle: A Brief Biography with Documents. New York: Bedford Books. 146. 7 (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York. French Embassy Press. 257. 8 Ibid. 9 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 75. 10 Sartre, J. P. (1977). Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. London: Methuen. 230. 11 Tidd, U. (2004). Simone de Beauvoir. London: Routledge. 16. 12 Sartre, J. P. (2007). Existentialism is a Humanism. London: Yale University Press. 41. 13 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 75. 14 See Paxton, R. and Wahl, N. (editors) (1994). De Gaulle and the United States: A Centennial Reappraisal. Oxford: Berg. 344. 15 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 124. 16 Ibid. 22 17 Ibid. 27. 18 Ibid. 28–29. 19 Ibid. 22. 20 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 163. 21 (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York. French Embassy Press. 226 22 Ibid. 221. 23 Ibid. 75. 24 Ibid. 92–93.

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25 Gates, J. (1961). The Life and Thought of Kierkegaard for Everyman. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 50–51. 26 (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York: French Embassy Press. 93. 27 Ibid. 237. 28 Camus, A. (2000). The Rebel. London: Penguin. 77–78. 29 Ibid. 85. 30 Sartre, J. P. (2007). Existentialism is a Humanism. London: Yale University Press. 25. 31 Ibid. 24. 32 Ibid. 29. 33 See Macridis, R. (1966).De Gaulle: Implacable Ally. New York: Harper and Row. 133. 34 Ibid. 133. 35 Ibid. 113–114. 36 Dumbrell, J. (2001). A Special Relationship: Anglo-American Relations in the Cold War and After. London: Palgrave MacMillan. 220. 37 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 216. 38 Ibid. 218–219. 39 (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York: French Embassy Press. 225. 40 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 209. 41 See Macridis, R. (1966).De Gaulle: Implacable Ally. New York: Harper and Row. 165. 42 (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York: French Embassy Press. 44. 43 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 212. Emphasis added. 44 (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York: French Embassy Press. 79. 45 See Macridis, R. (1966).De Gaulle: Implacable Ally. New York: Harper and Row. 240. 46 Ibid. 242. 47 Ibid. xxi. 48 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 83. 49 Sartre, J. P. (2007). Existentialism is a Humanism. London: Yale University Press. 37. 50 Ibid. 34–35. 51 Camus, A. (2000). The Rebel. London: Penguin. 78. 52 Ibid. 82. 53 (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York: French Embassy Press. 245. 54 Sartre, J. P. (2007). Existentialism is a Humanism. London: Yale University Press. 36. 55 De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 216. 56 Sartre, J. P. (2007). Existentialism is a Humanism. London: Yale University Press. 37. 57 Kagan, R. (2012). The World America Made. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 14. 58 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 61. 59 Ibid. 17. 60 Sartre, J. P. (2007). Existentialism is a Humanism. London: Yale University Press. 49. In discussing ‘mauvaise foi’ or ‘bad faith’ it would be fair to say that Sartre’s

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language is particularly strong and referring to people as cowards and bastards is seemingly harsh. This is perhaps even more so when we consider that Sartre insists that he is not morally judging people, yet nonetheless refers to them as cowards and bastards, which is, it must be said, to seemingly offer a moral judgement. Charging someone with an act of self-deception is a simplistic accusation in itself, yet, and if we are not to offer a moral judgement on such a person then claiming their bad faith or self-deceptive actions should suffice. To refer to such self-deceivers as cowards and bastards is to seemingly transcend Sartre’s original terms, and goes beyond Sartre’s claims of merely declaring one’s self-deception to be an error. Gerald Jones et al. highlight the probable reason for the use of such language: We can understand Sartre’s use of ‘Coward’ to describe people who run in fear from their freedom. But Sartre defines as ‘scum’ [Jones et al. use Philip Mairet’s translation in which ‘scum’ is used instead of ‘bastard’ (see Sartre, J. P. (1973). Existentialism and Humanism. London: Methuen. 53] those people who think of their existence as necessary…but to say that people who believe in this are ‘scum’ is very harsh language for an offence that seems quite minor. It could be that Sartre was thinking of the Nazis when he used the word ‘scum’: part of the Nazi ideology was their belief that they were part of an Aryan ‘master race’, who were destined to rule the world. So it is possible that Sartre’s mention of cowards and scum as examples of bad faith was influenced by the post-war context of the lecture. Sartre may have wished to point a finger at the Nazis and their collaborators and say: ‘you claimed that you were superior to others, and you slavishly followed the myth that you had invented. But you all refused to recognise what you knew to be true – that you were free and could have acted differently. See Jones, G., Cardinal, D. and Hayward, J. (2003). Existentialism and Humanism: Jean-Paul Sartre. London: Hodder Murray. 77–78. Ibid. 47–48. See Macridis, R. (1966).De Gaulle: Implacable Ally. New York: Harper and Row. 204. Ibid. 196. (1964). Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964. New York. French Embassy Press. 256– 257. This term is said to be taken from Winthrop’s 1630 sermon ‘A Model of Christian Charity’, which carries heavy biblical undertones from Matthew 5:14, ‘You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.’ Lipset, S. M. (1997). American Exceptionalism: A Double Edged Sword. London: W.W. Norton & Company. 63. Ibid. 63–64. Ibid. 65. Dumbrell, J. (2001). A Special Relationship: Anglo-American Relations in the Cold War and After. London: Palgrave MacMillan. 11. Camus, A. (2000). The Rebel. London: Penguin. 91. Sartre, J. P. (2007). Existentialism is a Humanism. London: Yale University Press. 40. De Gaulle, C. (1971). Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour. New York: Simon and Schuster. 256. Sartre, J. P. (2007). Existentialism is a Humanism. London: Yale University Press. 40. As Dumbrell points out, it is questionable whether the European nations ever fully accepted America’s visions of the world: ‘Michael Vlahos, a State Department employee, noted: “Neither European states, nor Japan ever believed in ‘The West’. They mouthed the words dutifully in the presence of Americans because they needed the security America provided”’. See Dumbrell, J. (2001). A Special Relationship: Anglo-American Relations in the Cold War and After. London: Palgrave MacMillan. 11. Camus, A. (2000). The Rebel. London: Penguin. 28.

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76 See Macridis, R. (1966).De Gaulle: Implacable Ally. New York: Harper and Row. 6. 77 Kristol, W. and Kagan, R. (1996). ‘Towards a Neo-Reganite Foreign Policy.’ Foreign Affairs. 20. July/August. 78 Sartre, J. P. (2007). Existentialism is a Humanism. London: Yale University Press. 40.

6

De Gaulle, political science, and the problem of pessimism

It was François Mitterrand who told us that de Gaulle was the last great statesman of the nineteenth-century. He was, that is, backwards-looking, a man out of step with his time, and the last of Bismarck’s intellectual kin. Courteous, yet hardly complimentary. To my mind, and when we turn to the traditional Anglo-American image of de Gaulle as decision-maker, his sense of the international system, and the broad themes of the Cold War world, it seems that most still see him as such. In short the General is so often seen as somewhat antiquated and little more than an ardent nationalist thus, and as Debray writes: anyone who mentioned General de Gaulle in one of these innumerable seminars or ‘special issues’ (yesterday devoted to ‘totalitarianism’, today to ‘whither the East?’) would be treated as a risible halfwit…The intellectual world sees nothing wrong with quoting and celebrating itself, but would find utterly ridiculous any reference to the trivialities of such a simple mind. One is tempted to say, like a uniformed Groucho Marx staring in perplexity at a military map: ‘Bring me a seven-year-old child. Bring me General de Gaulle.’1 Yet there remains, and as Debray concludes, another way of seeing things whereby the General was not so much out-dated but was really a man ahead of his times: it occurs to me that the course of things may have played one of its habitual low tricks on us. Consider the possibility that de Gaulle was really the first great man of the twenty-first century, and that it was Mitterrand who is the last one of the nineteenth. Perhaps we all saw the realist as an illusionist, and thought him anachronistic when he really was awkward for other reasons.2 The point is certainly worthy of consideration given that de Gaulle’s foreign policy would have been much more ‘at home’ in the present day. It is in this sense that the General saw beyond the international chimeras of the 1960s and is why Debray concludes that ‘De Gaulle was a lunatic, mad enough not

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to take images of things for the things themselves.’ This metaphysical point alone implies that de Gaulle, the ontological argument that he sought to forward on the nature and ‘content’ of the international system, and the intellectual basis of his existential rationale should be the subject of study for the FPA student as it tells us much about the Cold War world and much of the enduring power of the national realities that both preceded and survived this period. In intellectual terms, and in coming to see the world as he did, it would be fair to say that de Gaulle was first and foremost a historian. He was tortured and maddened by his Bergsonism and his sensitivity to the enduring ethno-symbolic traits of the world’s nations, thus it is in this sense that ‘novelty’, for the General, was an abstract concept. The Cold War international arena, while plagued by ideological forces which seemed to suggest that the historical nature of the world had passed on, was transient and thus the essence of Gaullist foreign policy sought to ignore the temporary and engage with the lasting. Ever manifested in the nations of the international system, it was to work with ‘the presence of the past’ and to develop a foreign policy that corresponded to this, not to abstract ideologies. Hence one could not simply establish a ‘new world order’ in a historical vacuum precisely because such temporal voids were largely illusory. Camus once noted that the cities of Europe are occupied by history; ‘they are too full of the din of the past’.4 For the existentialists, that is, the conventional existentialists whose focus is the human individual, history is that inescapable force that walks with us until our final day and which conditions the human will and hence the nature of our becoming. It is the source of our essence and is, at root, what we are. For the ‘national existentialist’, that is de Gaulle, history has the same lingering and haunting effect, yet it shapes and forges nations above and beyond the human individual. This is why de Gaulle once claimed, ‘people do not die…they remain themselves with their own characteristics, their collective temperament, their soul. They live as long as the olive tree.’5 Or, as Kissinger recently put it, ‘for nations, history plays the role that character confers on human beings’.6 In working through the themes that allow us to see de Gaulle as such, and hence to see the Bergsonian, ethno-symbolic, and existential themes that conditioned his decision-making and the foreign policy that reflected this, has much academic value. This is so as FPA, in terms of actor-specific theory and in light of de Gaulle’s importance to twentieth-century international relations, is largely concerned with seeking an exploration of the personal beliefs, the operational code, and the intellectual rationale that is fundamental in driving the nature of specific state action at particular points in time. As far as possible, I have sought to avoid the offering of a formal justification of de Gaulle as decision-maker and hence sought to avoid claims of a normative or judgemental nature. Whether I have succeeded in this endeavour is a question for my reader to answer but I now feel that the intellectual journey, as outlined in the opening chapter, is largely complete and hence I would like to believe that the

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argument advocated here is able to offer an appropriate framework through which to view de Gaulle’s often curious foreign policy that he pursued in the face of much international criticism. Thus in seeking to bring the study to a close in this final chapter I wish to explore a series of concluding questions that, to my mind, naturally flow from the discussion offered thus far. None of these are pursued in any great depth but all have something to say regarding de Gaulle’s value to FPA, IR, and Political Science in a wider sense. First, I am interested in exploring the value of de Gaulle in relation to Political Science in four particular ways: (1) how he lends support to the ways in which we think about the state in IR; (2) how de Gaulle’s views on the historical fit into contemporary IR discourse; (3) how de Gaulle’s worldview both supports and questions various theories of IR; (4) how de Gaulle, as an individual leader and with a nod in the direction of future research, makes a fascinating case study to which the ‘cognitive psychology’ branch of FPA may be applied. In the second section I ask, albeit briefly, whether there was a more traditional and literary-rooted message in de Gaulle’s words that emerges from his Bergsonism and existential rationale (here I have in mind that of utopianism), which offers a platform to discuss the work’s concluding question. Indeed, in the final section I explore why so many in the West were reluctant to take de Gaulle and his sense of the international system seriously. It is true that the militaristic and authoritarian façade offers one answer to this, but I wonder if there is something more at work here. Thus I explore the claim that if de Gaulle’s foreign policy was driven by something akin to an ‘nationalexistential’ interpretation of the international system then this, to my mind, implies that his understanding of international relations was categorically pessimistic (in philosophic terms) and once placed within the context of the distinctly modern notion of ‘progress’ that marks Western society, and the foreign policy of the US in particular, do we capture a glimpse of why de Gaulle appeared so ‘out of step’ with the pace and dominant trends of the twentieth-century?

De Gaulle and Political Science Although he got many things wrong during his lifetime, and although he often pursued contradictory aims de Gaulle was, on balance, correct in his views on France’s political system, the course of European integration, and the nature of the Cold War world. As pointed out in various chapters de Gaulle’s views on tank warfare and battlefield manoeuvrability during the 1930s were shown to be correct when the French defences collapsed in 1940 following the German assault through the Ardennes. When asked about the political regime France required (rather than wanted) his insistence on the present values that sit at the heart of the Fifth Republic have proven to be the most durable since the fateful events of 1789. When de Gaulle’s attention turned to the question of the French empire his instinctive qualities told him, and unlike so many of his contemporaries, that the game was up; that Algerian

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independence must become a political reality given that it was already a national reality. When looking at the question of European integration he asserted that the UK would never happily surrender its sovereignty to an aspirational super-state and was thoroughly correct to do so. On the question of Israel, he constantly warned against the problem of ‘land grabbing’ and the poisonous political environment this would engender. When acting as statesman during the 1960s de Gaulle saw ‘the East’ as an international chimera that lacked any tangible, national basis and that the passing cloud of communism could not hold this together. This allowed him to follow a form of Ostpolitik and détente long before the advent of the Nixon Doctrine and also informed his view that the Americans were fighting committed nationalists in Vietnam, not ideological revolutionaries. De Gaulle was probably also correct to question whether the international system would have looked radically different in the absence of Russia’s communism. While it remains important to explore how de Gaulle’s foreign policy was deeply rooted in the ways in which he viewed the international system, it is just as pertinent to ask what we may take from him and thus explore his wider scholarly value to our discipline. Hence I feel it pertinent, and given the disciplinary basis of the work, to explore his intellectual value in terms of our understanding of the state, the role of history in the international system, how he fits into our theoretical understandings of IR, and his value in terms of applied cognitive psychology. All of this is certainly important in relation to de Gaulle as a historical figure but it should also remind us, in broader terms, that the study of individuals has great value as an end in itself as it enables us to observe ‘real world’ examples of the interconnectivity between ideas, values, ontological assumptions, and foreign policy outcomes. Relative to its importance it is fair to say that IR’s most neglected question is that which Erik Ringmar has termed ‘the ontological status of the state’ and on this problem it is clear that de Gaulle has much to offer. Of course, in the sense that this study is in agreement with Wendt’s quantum ontological framework, and in the context of my actor-specific focus, the state as political phenomenon is of peripheral importance. Indeed, from a purely physical basis the state does not exist yet for many in IR, such as the systems theorists, this is hardly the case. However, in relation to this question it would be fair to say that IR’s scholars have been comprehensively neglectful, instead relying on various ontological assumptions but still proceed to attribute certain characteristics to the state that imply a broadly conceived understanding of intentionality. It is in this sense that IR scholars tend to talk about states as if they were persons with goals, desires, and emotional states (precisely as de Gaulle did), but habitually stress that this is little more than a metaphor (and would probably have mocked de Gaulle’s ‘primitive’ views on this), yet in doing so back themselves into an ontological corner. As Ringmar writes: Having prefaced their analyses in this fashion the same scholars then go on to rely on the same vocabulary as one of the most fundamental – and

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Political science and pessimism in practice irreplaceable – assumptions of their research. There is something very odd about this way of proceeding. If the metaphor in question indeed was purely arbitrary we would not expect it to be so difficult to avoid. If it is indeed the case that the anthropomorphic terminology consists of nothing but ‘mere’ metaphors, we would expect scholars to switch from time to time and occasionally talk about the state in some other set of terms. Or – to be true to the purported tenets of science – to drop the reliance on the metaphorical language altogether and instead talk about the state as it really is.7

The reluctance to properly engage with this central question is reflected in most courses and textbooks on IR that, while theorising state action and exploring arguments in relation to its decline, say little (if anything) of what sort of entity is formally under investigation.8 This is why undergraduate students (at least in my experience), when asked ‘What is the state?’, ‘Where is the state?’, ‘Is there such thing as the state?’, often lack any substantial theoretical grounding from which to offer a reasonable response. Whichever way one approaches the study of IR I see no way of avoiding the ontological question of the state and while it would be unfair to expect scholarly consensus on this (not least because it has such a contested history and is caught up in so many ideological disputes) the genuine absence of discussion on this is quite astonishing. Indeed, ‘even with so much work in circulation’, writes Patrick T. Jackson, ‘IR largely remains a field marked by an absence of theorising about its basic object of analysis’.9 What makes this even more alarming is the genuine intellectual richness of this debate that marked much legal and political scholarship in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries but, and in the context of IR’s empty scientific assumptions, and as Skinner laments, ‘we have chosen to confront this complex intellectual heritage in such a way as to leave ourselves astonishingly little to say about it’.10 Of course, Wendt has formulated two concepts of the state in recent years that may be said to represent the two ends of the ontological spectrum (the state as a ‘super organism’ and a ‘quantum analysis’ whereby the state largely disappears or is, at least, ‘continuously popping in and out of existence’11) but the point remains that IR is marked by an intellectual drought of theoretical musings on the nature of the state. De Gaulle’s value, in relation to this problem, is not so much that he puts forward a particular model of the state per se, rather his views on the state lend support to specific models or certain ways of thinking that centre on the state in anthropomorphic and organic terms. Indeed, having spent time in de Gaulle’s company most came away with the impression that France, and all other states, were imbued with personhood, intentionality, and thus agency that was not merely the will of specific political elites. This is an important point to note as it implies that statesmen such as de Gaulle, and unlike so many IR scholars, do not proceed to act in the world in the absence of an ontological understanding of the state and hence the

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interconnectivity between the two is crucial to note here. To merely equate, that is, the state as being nothing more than the apparatus of government, and hence certain political institutions, may make things easier to comprehend (and certainly to teach!) but it detaches the importance of identity, meaning, and personhood from our thinking. In doing so it propels the state into the realm of metaphysical abstraction and detaches action from thought, intellect from intuition, and the ethno-symbolic forces that form the political expression of this. While intellectually insufficient it is also dangerous in that it contributes to erroneous ‘planning’ and contemporary efforts to affect the regime change we have witnessed in recent years; those that habitually ensnare Western states in foreign policy ‘adventures’ from which they so often struggle to extract themselves and this, in turn, may well be an expression of the ‘irresponsibility of intellect’ that de Gaulle often spoke of. This is not to say that de Gaulle was correct in his considerations on political concepts such as the nation and the state per se, but it is so say that he was thoroughly correct to afford so much weight to thinking about these as a precondition to taking action. To the FPA specialist this is a particularly salient point as although many scholars, such as myself, have scientific-based reservations regarding the existence of the state, any analyst must seek to understand what such political phenomena mean to specific human actors in the world if we are to better understand the nature of the international system and acts of foreign policy within this. One useful example of this is Maxime H. A. Larivé’s work on Western interventions post 9/11, and especially those rooted in the neoconservative logic that found political expression in the G.W. Bush Administration. Here Larivé argues that ‘Western European powerhouses and the United States have been committing the same error every time they have launched a military intervention since the end of the Cold War. Their decision is directly embedded into one wrong assumption: the state as primary holder of power.’12 The point Larivé makes is largely ontological in nature in that policy planners repeatedly assume that the Westphalian concept of the state is ubiquitous, and hence a sort of ‘constant’ throughout the international system, when this is hardly the case (which, at least to my mind, is an expression of ‘the availability heuristic’ whereby the human brain tends to rely on immediate and local examples when seeking to understand the world; often with problematic outcomes). Indeed, while in mature democracies ‘the state’ is understood to be the expression of numerous unifying factors that produce civic communities, in polities such as Syria, Libya, and Iraq, there merely exists what Larivé terms ‘the mirage of the state’, whereby there exists no historical basis for ‘the state’ to take hold. Rather each ‘state’ is largely illusory in that it is (or was) formed around an authoritarian figure who was, in essence, ‘the state’, and hence the focal point of power. With the removal of such figures, in the absence of a historically rooted demos, a formal civic community, and genuinely effective institutions, the ‘state’ has a propensity to disintegrate post-intervention, often with catastrophic consequences. Hence, and as de Gaulle repeatedly stressed, foreign policy

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must speak to political realities rather than abstract concepts, ideas, and ontological assumptions. In terms of secondary questions on the state de Gaulle is able to offer additional value. To be sure, although for constructivists and actor-focused FPA scholars the state is a ‘metaphysical abstraction’ this does not prevent those such as Alisher Faizullaev asking the question of how individuals in the world formally experience their respective states. Again, and working on the assumption that the state exists, this is important to consider and is crucial in terms of how we think about IR and FPA. Here we may think of how, at least for de Gaulle, the French ‘experienced’ the state whenever they caught sight of a public individual that embodied the character, history, and the will of the nation perhaps, in the same way that Hegel was able to experience the Enlightenment through Napoleon as the ‘world spirit’. It was to experience the state through idiosyncratic meaning, or ‘inner experience’ and is why the Head of State had to act in a certain way. He had to act, at least in aspirational terms, above political and democratic divides and, in every sense, above the cultural divisions that marked both contemporary and historical France. This, of course, carries certain monarchical undertones but explains the relationship between citizens and their projection of ‘the state’ and may well bring Hobbesian imagery to mind. For Faizullaev, we also experience the state in a range of other ways too numerous to discuss here in any depth, but of particular note is the importance he places on the distinctiveness of the state. ‘An individual experiencing the state’, he writes, ‘is experiencing the state’s distinctiveness. Self is primarily a social-psychological phenomenon. Self as “the totality of all characteristic attributes, conscious and unconscious, mental and psychical, of a person”, might also be the self of a state.’13 De Gaulle has much to say on this aspect of our experience of the political world but, and in the context of the importance he placed on the Other in international life, it is clear that he lends much support to this conception of our experiencing of the state. In that they were products of the historical, de Gaulle was eminently familiar with the distinctive nature of other nations and states in the international system and ‘experienced’ both France and other states through their idiosyncratic characteristics. Of course, all of us do so to some extent but there is a sense in which de Gaulle was hyper-sensitive to these features. This point is of particular use to the scholar of IR as it raises questions concerning how individuals experience the discipline’s central unit of analysis but also the importance of experiencing that which one wishes to theorise about. It may also warn us against putting faith in abstract theories that place no importance on the distinctiveness of the political embodiment of the national groups that de Gaulle was in constant dialogue with; a view that takes us back to Bergson and the need to engage with the world, at least in part, in an intuitive sense. Finally, it goes without saying that de Gaulle’s views on the nation-state lend support to certain models concerning the ontological nature of IR’s central unit of analysis. As argued in Chapter Three his musings on this are best understood through the ethno-symbolic approach to nations and nationalism, and

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while this exercise of framing his views is certainly useful, his broader belief that states were individuals and therefore possessed a ‘self’ reinforces the work of many scholars. These are too numerous to discuss here in any particular length but here we may think of models that centre on organic and anthropomorphic claims such as H. J. McCloskey’s ‘The State as an Organism, as a Person, and as an End in Itself ’ (1963), Andrew Vincent’s ‘Can Groups be Persons?’ (1989), and Wendt’s ‘The State as Person in International Theory’ (2004).14 Exploring de Gaulle as an individual is also useful to lend support to the idea that while states may or may not exist, it is the ‘dominant monads’ that should be the key unit of analysis in our study of international relations, thus enhancing the claims made by Wendt in his wonderfully complex ‘Flatland’ ontology. When we turn to the question of history, and the role that this plays in our considerations on IR, de Gaulle has much to offer our discipline, given the emphasis he placed on this when formulating his foreign policy. Indeed, given that de Gaulle’s sense of the Cold War world was pretty close to the mark (at least in my understanding of things), it implies that history and the cultures, values, and norms that are produced by this, should be accorded more weight in our considerations, writings, and teaching. It is in this sense that de Gaulle, as a thinker, implicitly questions some of the assumptions we make on IR regarding state action as being solely driven by the rationalism of self-interest. My intention is not, of course, to offer this as some ‘original’ claim in relation to the discipline of IR as such arguments have long been made. As Goldstein and Keohane wrote as far back as 1993, ‘For millennia philosophers and historians have wrestled with the issue of the role of ideas in social and political life, and for as long as social science has existed its practitioners have debated these questions.’15 George Lawson has also shown in more recent years that IR’s problem in relation to history may not be so much one of ignorance but methodological application.16 Nonetheless, there exists in contemporary IR a growing sense that our ‘default’ way of understanding state action through the basic assumptions of neorealism and neoliberalism is thoroughly incomplete and that the power of ideas, the role of history, the psychological make-up of individual leaders, as well as national resources and the impact of geography must play a far more prominent role in our thinking. It is in this sense that de Gaulle’s fixation on the historical certainly feeds into a broader intellectual discontent with the ‘grand theory’ approach to IR and its attempts to uncover ‘objective’ truths regarding state action. In stating this I do not intend to imply that we should, in a Gaullien way, move to consider nations to be ‘individuals’ per se or reach for weighty existential tomes such as Being and Nothingness when we seek to understand the ‘content’ of the international system and the nature of international relations. But it is to claim that the historical and the Bergsonian notion of temporal co-existence must play a greater role in our appreciation of things, without which our scholarship remains somewhat ‘hollow’. Whether this is Russia’s actions in

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the post-Soviet space, the expression of historically imbued domestic values in American foreign policy, or the sense of historical grievances and injustices that drives sub-state actors like Islamic State and al-Qaeda, the conclusions of this study must be to encourage students and scholars of IR to embrace the role that history plays in foreign policy in far stronger terms. While in general terms this may be difficult for systemic theorists to accept, it is especially so for American scholars given the prevailing intellectual traditions that condition their scholarship. As Richard Hofstadter once stressed, ‘American intellectuals have a lamentably thin sense of history’.17 By this I do not wish to imply any ill-will towards such scholars given the immeasurable contribution the United States has made to our discipline. Rather it is an acknowledgement of the degree of a-historicism that courses through much American scholarship which, and given IR’s predominant concern with the global position of the United States, has largely become a discipline that has ‘forgotten history since 1950.’18 That said, and in the time that Hofstadter made his claim it is also true that the Waltzian approach to IR has been constantly challenged by various critical approaches. Recent works by Kissinger, Fukuyama, and Kagan are also indicative of the historical being given more weight and consideration in the American mind-set and it is in this sense that the title of Kagan’s 2008 book, The Return of History and the End of Dreams, may signal the beginning of an important intellectual trend. Indeed, when Kagan declared that ‘the world has become normal again’, he was calling attention to the notion that, history, in the form of great power rivalry has returned to the world stage. In sensing the presence of the historical Kagan’s argument is that the present international system, its character and its nature, is beginning to resemble that of the pre-1939 world. Thus Kagan claims that in the ideological context of the Cold War, history took a forty-fiveyear vacation; a sort of prolonged sabbatical from its usual post of helping us to contextualise the international system. This is not to say that ideological contest and the Hegelian dialectic that Fukuyama spoke of in his End of History thesis is now defunct. Rather it shows that ‘the old competition between liberalism and autocracy has also re-emerged, with the world’s great powers increasingly lining up according to the nature of their regimes’.19 This is as true as it is insightful but is also a world that de Gaulle would recognise far better than that of the 1960s. His misfortune was to be in power when the world was at odds with his ontological and Bergsonian sense of the international system. Yet de Gaulle’s arguments and conclusions would probably have gone further than Kagan’s. Not only would he have seen ‘the presence of the past’ coursing through the veins of the modern world, he would assert that history never actually took its prolonged ‘break’. For de Gaulle, it was merely the case that the American fixation on the ideological, systematic, and the subsequent sense of the international system this engendered was also the American myopia to the existence of history within this. This must surely serve to remind us that individuals and political institutions are the products of national groups that have a character and nature that cannot be left out of the

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discourse on IR and foreign policy, and to my mind de Gaulle’s lesson on this point is certainly useful. Moving on, it is clear that certain aspects of de Gaulle’s views implicitly reinforce a number of key assumptions that are central to contemporary IR discourse and theory. Indeed, on the question of the anarchic basis of the international system, on the importance of the state as principle actor, on the question of ‘self-help’, and on the problems of national security, many of de Gaulle’s intellectual assertions imply that he was a realist of sorts. Of course ‘anarchy’, in terms of IR, does not imply an absence of order per se but that order, at any time, is largely a reflection of the will and values of the international system’s most powerful actors and it is clear that de Gaulle accepted this. This is why Kagan writes, ‘every international order in history has reflected the beliefs and interests of its strongest powers, and every international order has changed when power shifted to others with different beliefs and interests’.20 As such, and given his agreement that the nation-state is the only true reality on the world stage, and that illusory supranational entities lacked any form of collective consciousness in that they are only a product of the nation-states and lacked the essential preconditions to command allegiance to its policies, meant that international ‘order’, in the way that liberalist scholars envisage, was little more than a fanciful daydream. Nor was order to be found in any ideological bond between states. For de Gaulle, ideologies such as communism lacked the power and reality to bring states together in any meaningful sense. This is to say that if ideology was transient then any relationship based on this was also a fleeting moment in world history and no ‘order’ based on international Communism was really possible. Hence the ‘national reality’ was the only true authentic actor in terms of the international system and is why Lacouture was able to claim (of de Gaulle’s worldview) that ‘the only real forces confronting each other in the international arena are individual nations’.21 Lasting world order could not, therefore, be based on an alliance system, as alliances endured only as long as the specific circumstances that had given rise to them. To IR’s constructivists this is hardly the case as relations between states may develop through certain shared experiences, norms, and values, but for de Gaulle such associations were never afforded such sentiment or emotion. This is why he often claimed that ‘men can have friends but statesmen cannot’.22 On the question of ‘self-help’ in the international system de Gaulle also lends support to the basic assumptions of the realists. His wilful assertion, that is, that no other state, military alliance, or international organisation could or should be relied upon for the defence of France is a pure expression of the principle of ‘self-help’. Jackson captures this point well: He reinforced his case for nuclear independence by arguing that the end of America’s nuclear monopoly after the explosion of the first Russian bomb rendered it less likely that America – a late participant in two world wars, he often noted – would risk self-annihilation to protect Europe from

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Political science and pessimism Soviet invasion. Self-protection (national interest) would prevail over ideology (defence of the free world): in their entire history the Americans have never put their national existence in the balance of an engagement abroad. They have never sent more than expeditionary forces which only represented a small proportion of their capacities, even if they fought hard. More basically, whether the Americans could be relied on or not, de Gaulle felt it to be intolerable that a great state confide its destiny to the decision and action of another state, however friendly it may be.23

French national security, in short, had to be the product of self-help, not a state that was not itself. Of course, it was this logic that saw France extricate itself from NATO’s integrated command, it was this principle that led to the development of France’s independent nuclear deterrent, it was this vision that led de Gaulle to insist that all American soldiers be removed from France in 1966, thus souring his already strained relationship with Lyndon Johnson and the US in a wider sense. In the final analysis, and as a consequence of the argument developed in this work, de Gaulle’s greatest contribution to IR (in both an academic and practical sense) should probably be seen as his steadfast defence and advocacy of the Euro-centric Westphalian system that had conditioned the nature of international relations for three centuries. The Westphalian peace was a product of the truly devastating period that we call the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) which saw various warring sides resort to ‘total war’, population centres targeted, the death of medieval rules of engagement, and almost a quarter of Central Europe’s inhabitants perishing through combat, starvation, or disease. While the Westphalian peace was partly based on the acknowledgement that no state was strong enough to dominate all others, it was also an expression of a desire to avoid such conflicts in the future. It implied, as Kissinger writes, ‘a practical accommodation to reality, not a unique moral insight. It relied on a system of independent states refraining from interference in each other’s domestic affairs…each state was assigned the attribute of sovereign power over its territory’. To the extent that no universal truth could prevail in international affairs each state ‘would acknowledge the domestic structures and religious vocations of its fellow states as realities and refrain from challenging their existence’.24 When we turn to the nature of international relations during the midtwentieth century the General’s ethno-symbolism and existentialism imply that he was the foremost advocate of the Westphalian system. Indeed, in advocating independence and nationalism everywhere, in asserting the principle of national sovereignty, in speaking to nations and thereby states rather than ideologies, and in affirming that no universal truth could prevail on the world stage, de Gaulle was fundamentally championing Westphalian norms. While seeing de Gaulle as such is important in an academic sense, it was also important in more concrete terms when expressed through his foreign policy. This is so as many of de Gaulle’s contemporaries were busy deconstructing

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and thus undermining the principles and foundations upon which the Westphalian peace was dependent and hence the only tangible basis of order in the international system. Whether this was Russian domination and subjugation of fourteen fellow states in the guise of the Soviet Union, whether this was America’s hegemony and interference in numerous states, or whether it was Europe’s would-be federalists in Brussels, the basis of the Westphalian peace was under constant threat. De Gaulle’s foreign policy, in this sense, sought to counteract all attempts to undermine this. Whether this was intentional and thus by design, or whether this was merely a by-product of his potent sense of ethno-symbolic nationalism is open to debate. One may also question the impact and effectiveness of de Gaulle’s defence of Westphalia norms and values given France’s reduced post-war status. But for our purposes, and in seeking to explore the value of de Gaulle in relation to IR, it is fair to claim that his defence of the Westphalian system, his defence of state sovereignty, and his revulsion of international universalism is important to note and explore. However, while lending support to the basic assumptions of realism it still remains wrong to call de Gaulle a realist per se (at least in IR terms). To be sure, while the above notions are important to note and certainly have much academic value, placing de Gaulle within this school of thought reduces him to a label that removes the intellectual basis of his rationale as developed in this volume. Hence while it is correct to conclude that de Gaulle reinforces a number of neorealism’s key assumptions, the depth of his thought is not captured by this in any meaningful sense. De Gaulle’s Bergsonian sense of temporal co-existence, his tendency to see nations in an anthropomorphic sense, and the importance that existential example and authenticity played in his understanding of international relations is ill at ease with neorealism’s theoretical basis and, to my mind, prohibits his placement within this school of thought. Indeed, if we focus on the importance of ‘example’ in international society that de Gaulle was constantly concerned with, then his views have much to say to the Wendtian claim that ‘anarchy is what states make of it’. It is in this sense that the existentially imbued claim that states are legislatures for the nature of their own existence is supported by de Gaulle’s writings and foreign policy. But although the intellectual basis of his thought on foreign policy may carry realist, neorealist, constructivist, and English School undertones he is best understood through the paradigms employed here and hence as something akin to Debray’s original claim that ‘he was an existentialist of the nation’. Moving on, and with a nod in the direction of one of FPA’s most fertile areas of contemporary research, the application of cognitive psychology to actorspecific theory, de Gaulle makes an excellent case study and this additional analytical tool is able to illuminate certain aspects of his foreign policy. In broad terms, cognitive psychology explores the ways in which the human mind leads individuals to draw irrational conclusions from information, data, events, and phenomena, and the outcomes that are produced by this. This is not to say that humans act irrationally all of the time, rather individuals are susceptible to cognitive pitfalls that prevent consistent rational behaviour.

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This is as important in our everyday lives, as it is to the field of economics, and certainly the individual decision-makers that produce outcomes in the context of foreign policy. As such, and as noted in the introductory chapter, cognitive psychology challenges IR’s assumption on RCT and once placed alongside Wendt’s claims on the metaphysical nature of the state, IR grand theory is challenged at both the ontological and epistemological level. Cognitive psychologists identify three broad ways in which individuals form irrational opinions and thereby produce odd decisions. David McRaney identifies these as cognitive biases that ‘are predictable patterns of thought and behaviour that lead you to draw incorrect conclusions. You and everyone else come into the world preloaded with these pesky and completely wrong ways of seeing things, and you rarely notice them.’ Mental heuristics are ‘shortcuts you use to solve common problems’ that ‘speed up processing in the brain, but sometimes make you think so fast you miss what is important’. Finally, logical fallacies ‘are arguments in your mind where you reach a conclusion without all the facts because you don’t care to hear them or have no idea how limited your information is’.25 Many of these are products of our evolutionary inheritance and while they have been remarkably successful in helping the human gene to survive over the millennia they also have the tendency to lead us astray in modern and complex societies. As these cognitive biases (this label is generally used to represent all three groups) are present in the minds of all decision-makers it stands to reason that they should be studied when we seek to explain acts of foreign policy in the international system. This is especially so in the modern context given the growth of Applied Cognitive Psychology and the seemingly endless list of mental pitfalls that have been uncovered by scholars such as Amos Tversky and Danial Kahneman. Indeed, the application of cognitive psychology has been thoroughly illuminating in explaining how and why American bankers, economists, and Wall Street traders acted as they did in the lead up to the recent financial crisis and it is the same cognitive shortcomings that should be studied in relation to the world’s ‘dominant monads’. Of course, in the context of FPA’s actor-specific approach cognitive biases have long been employed to offer explanations of acts of foreign policy. One of the most celebrated examples of this is the use of ‘groupthink’ to explain how and why the presidential administration of JFK embarked upon a truly astonishing foreign policy blunder in the early 1960s. Presidential administrations, like all small assemblies, are close knit groups that, and as a product of our deep evolutionary past, require cohesion and harmony to be productive, yet this can, in turn, have profoundly negative consequences if some form of ‘red team thinking’ remains absent. McRaney writes: Psychologist Irving Janis mapped out this behaviour through research after reading about the US decision to invade southern Cuba – the Bay of Pigs. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy tried to overthrow Fidel Castro with a force of 1,400 exiles. They weren’t professional soldiers. There weren’t many of them. Cuba knew they were coming. They were slaughtered.

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This led to Cuba getting friendly with the USSR and almost led to nuclear apocalypse. John F. Kennedy and his advisors were brilliant people with all the data in front of them who had gotten together and planned something incredibly stupid. After it was over, they couldn’t explain why they did it. Janis wanted to get to the bottom of it, and his research led to the scientific categorization of groupthink.26 This psychological phenomenon was also present in the highly regulated and cohesive Bush Administration and certainly contributed to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Of course, groupthink is just one of the hundreds of cognitive biases that have been uncovered by psychologists in recent decades, thus making this approach to IR a rich and fertile area of research. But it is also, to my mind at least, a formal scientific approach to the study of IR; a claim that most approaches are unable to offer. Indeed, if social scientists continuously evoke and study metaphysical abstractions that have no physical basis (the state) and, furthermore, still persist in their assumptions regarding RCT despite the overwhelming evidence produced by cognitive psychology that this supposition is largely incorrect, the formal scientific basis of their work is highly suspect. If states do, that is, share the same ontological status as the tooth fairy and RCT cannot be assumed as a constant variable in relation to the state, then one wonders where the social scientists’ science actually is. In claiming this I fully acknowledge that I may be committing the ‘No True Scotsman Fallacy’ (the act of defining the boundaries or perimeters of something so as to exclude certain groups, individuals, and approaches) but it does seem to be the case that the formal scientific basis of IR’s dominant approaches, and the wider sub-disciplines of Social Science such as Comparative Politics, requires some intellectual attention to say the least. When we turn to the study of de Gaulle as individual decision maker, and as a brief example, the application of cognitive psychology proves to be an excellent analytical tool. There is scant space to discuss this in depth here (a number of articles on de Gaulle and cognitive biases will follow this volume) and the list of cognitive biases that have something to say about de Gaulle are plentiful, but perhaps the most illuminating is that of narrative bias. Narrative bias is one of the most fundamental and intuitive predispositions that we, as modern humans, carry with us but which inhibits our ability to process information in a logical fashion thus preventing purely rational thought and subsequent rational action. It is a sort of mental ‘factory setting’ that is hardwired into the brain which acts to turn the chaos of the real world into an ordered story thereby producing meaning in our lives. ‘You have a tendency to make sense of the world’, writes McRaney, ‘by unconsciously constructing a story and then repeating that story when you need to explain your thoughts, feelings, and actions, and everything else that needs an explanation when you stop and wonder who you are and how you came to be where you find yourself ’.27 Although an emerging field of research, much work by Melanie Green, David

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Eagleman, and Milton Rokeach demonstrates that this mental function is so powerful that, in cognitive terms, individuals are essentially transported into ‘narrative worlds’ and judge ‘reality’, their sense of self, and others through the story their brain is busy relentlessly producing. It is in this sense, and given that we lack the ability to ‘turn the story off’ as it were, it is impossible to absorb information without filtering it through a highly subjective and idiosyncratic narrative.28 As such, and when we seek to understand de Gaulle as an individual, politician, and statesman, and given the narrative he produced of France and her place in the world, this bias tells us much of his domestic success and the conduct of his foreign policy. In terms of his domestic success it is important to note that not only do we require our own narratives but are attracted to narratives and those who tell them well. This is true of books, TV shows, films, music, and art, but also of public figures who provide a broader ‘national’ story such as de Gaulle, Winston Churchill, and certainly Ronald Reagan. Such figures seemingly provide the answer to the collective question of ‘who are we?’ It is also something we intuitively know to be true. Of course, and as both Jackson and Hoffman have shown, the ‘hero narrative’ was central to de Gaulle’s political memoirs and in these he places both himself, the character of ‘de Gaulle’ and an anthropomorphic France at the heart of a great struggle which he sought to overcome. ‘De Gaulle’ becomes a ‘character from a fable’ charged with guiding the destiny of his country and France, caught up in a long historical tale with a past, present, and future, takes on the noble mantle of David in a world of Goliaths.29 In a sense this is the way we all see the world and it is this storyline that sits at the heart of almost every Hollywood ‘blockbuster’, but when one turns countries into characters and the international system into a world stage where France as the central actor takes on the mantel of a fallen champion, struggling to overcome both her internal weaknesses and maintain her independence and sovereignty, the narrative is central to the actor’s conduct. When such narratives are challenged the human mind rarely acts in a rational sense. Rather our minds are hardwired to seek out almost any information that reaffirms and ‘protects’ the story thus keeping things intact. This is why, and as McRaney concludes, ‘narratives that keep you bound together are nearly impervious to direct attack’.30 With this being so and with narrative being so pervasive in the context of de Gaulle’s life, his war diaries, his political memoirs, and his sense of France’s national existence, it is little wonder that his foreign policy took the course that it did and was so unyielding in the face of much international criticism. Thus if it is the case that the human mind is so thoroughly dependent upon such narratives and will cling to these however irrational they may seem to others, it may well be the case that the relationship between individual decision-makers and narrative bias requires more attention in the FPA and IR literature. In part this claim directs us to the operational code aspect of FPA, whereby the beliefs and values of specific leaders form the basis of study in order to gain a better understanding of their foreign policy and in

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doing so lends much support to this way of proceeding. But the employment of narrative bias in the context of de Gaulle’s foreign policy, and the wider discipline of FPA, adds something important to the operational code approach in that it tells us why, in scientifically grounded terms, the values and beliefs of individuals, and the stories that are formed around these, are quite so prevalent, powerful, and unrelenting, how they lead individuals to filter information about the world, and why they are quite so resistant to counter-argument, statistics, and ‘facts’. This suggests that thought is as much an emotional act as it is a rational one and that differences over foreign policy may, perhaps, never be approached in an objective sense. In the context of de Gaulle’s disagreements with his American counterparts we may also explore how biases such as the Halo Effect (the propensity to judge arguments based on pre-conceived notions of an individual) and the Ad Hominem Fallacy (the flawed assumption that an argument is bad due to the person who made it) influenced the ways in which he was perceived and, in turn, influenced caricatures of his intellectual rationale and the foreign policy that was produced by this (what essentially boils down to ‘strawman’ arguments). We may also explore how de Gaulle avoided the Sunk Cost Fallacy (the emotional attachment to specific phenomena even though the pursuit of this is no longer in one’s interests) in relation to Algeria and Indochina, we may look at how Perception Bias (the belief that others see you in the same way that you see yourself; and vice versa), the Just-World Fallacy (the will to believe that the world is a ‘fair’ place when this is hardly the case), and the Illusion of Control (the irrational belief that you are able to control your surroundings and environment; the international system in this case) led de Gaulle and various US administrations to see the nature of the international system differently. To my mind, an exploration of the Fundamental Attribution Error (the propensity to see people’s behaviour as a product of their character rather than the situational context in which they act) in relation to de Gaulle is also of great value. Indeed, to the extent that much of his foreign policy was explained by his American and French critics as being a product of his personality, character, and ego (what is sometimes referred to as the ‘salience of the actor’) rather than a reflection of the political environment and international circumstances in which he operated compels us to explore the cognitive and intellectual shortcomings of such an interpretation. This is a lesson that, in turn, compels the student of FPA to look to the situational environment in which individuals act in far greater detail and is especially pertinent in the context of American foreign policy where ‘undesirable’ world leaders such as Saddam Hussain, Bashar al-Assad, and Vladimir Putin are habitually explained as being ‘evil’ or ‘malevolent’. This is not, of course (!), to exonerate the actions of such individuals, but it is to warn against such simple analyses that contribute to ill-fated Western interventions. Although an individual such as Saddam Hussain went against the values to which the West subscribes, his tyrannical nature and subsequent executive actions were the product of a mind socialised in the fractious political

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environment of the Middle East; his sense of political order certainly echoed this. It is in this sense, and when we seek to understand his actions as ruler of Iraq, we would be wise to explain these not as a reflection of ‘evil’ per se but as a product of a mind struggling to keep a fragile polity intact. Of course while his methods were utterly deplorable they reflected, at least in part, the political reality with which he was confronted as leader of Iraq and to neglect this ‘environmental’ aspect of his rule had grim consequences for AngloAmerican post-war ‘planning’ in the years after 2003 and the tragic events that ensued. Indeed, once the label of ‘evil’ has been attached to an individual it is demonstrably unhelpful given that the mind is cognitively ‘primed’, it filters information through this prism, and lacks the capacity to work in a rational way. Nonetheless, cognitive psychology has much explanatory power in relation to Franco-American relations during the 1960s, and de Gaulle’s foreign policy in a wider sense, and in the same way that recent advances in the field have been thoroughly illuminating in explaining the decision making processes that led to the recent economic crisis, the application of the study of cognitive biases to FPA is to be encouraged and welcomed. Finally, and given the present study’s argument, it is rather obvious that de Gaulle has much value in relation to the fields of nationalism and existentialism. This is so as de Gaulle’s views on nations and nationalism, as an expression of his sensitivity towards historically imbued cultures, practices, and norms, and which are found throughout his written works and political speeches, certainly echo the arguments of Smith in Myths and Memories of the Nation and his more recent claims in Ethno-Symbolism and Nationalism: A Cultural Approach (2009). In a sense what we see here is a symbiotic relationship whereby de Gaulle’s views and actions, as ‘real world’ expressions of ethno-symbolic nationalism, reinforce Smith’s claims and thus lend support to his work. Given that Smith provides a formal framework that enables us to situate de Gaulle in a broader intellectual sense, we also have an appropriate scholarly platform through which to engage with the General’s rationale which may, in turn, enable us to treat his sense of the international system a little more seriously. We may move away, that is, from seeing de Gaulle as ‘a seven-year-old child’ or as an antiquated Bismarckian figure, and not use the term ‘nationalist’ to simply dismiss de Gaulle. Indeed, using such a label, where one simply assumes an understanding of de Gaulle’s rationale and whereby ‘nationalism’ takes on a default ‘negative’ association is akin to a ‘strawman argument’ and probably says more concerning the intellectual deficiencies of the observer than de Gaulle per se. When we turn to existentialism it is clear that de Gaulle has much value in this area too. The terms in which de Gaulle talks of nations is ethno-symbolic at its core, but the ways in which the General talks of these ethno-symbolic traits becoming manifest is heavily laden with existential undertones and language. This of course, leads directly to the question of ontology and hence to the work of Wendt, Ringmar, McCloskey, Vincent, and Kjellen as outlined above; but if it is the case that the international system’s central actors are

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‘persons’ then it forces us to ask, in an existential sense, how should such individuals act? Are there consequences in relation to such action? Can states will into existence a world in which they wish to live? Of course, these are not questions to answer here in any meaningful sense but this does imply that existentialism may have much to offer the discipline of IR and is hence a relatively ‘untapped’ source of political theory. Needless to say, Sartre would have probably objected to any association with de Gaulle and this is why he once claimed, ‘I do not believe in God, but if, in this election, I had to choose between Him and the current pretender, I would be inclined to vote for God: He is more modest’.31 Nonetheless, the point to take from this is that de Gaulle’s views, writings, and actions suggest that the existential writings of Sartre have a tangible application to Political Science which may offer exciting new avenues of study.

From ethno-symbolic existentialism to utopianism In the closing sections of the book, and to bring a sense of closure to the study, I wish to explore two questions that, to my mind at least, naturally arise as a consequence of the discussion regarding de Gaulle’s sensitivity to history, the endurance of national ethno-symbolic traits in the international system, and the importance of existential example and authenticity. First, with all things considered, I ask how we should seek to understand and conceptualise de Gaulle’s fundamental message regarding the international arena. Indeed, understanding his operational code as being something akin to ‘ethno-symbolic existentialism’ is useful and tells us much of his sense of the international system but in terms of a broader message, and once we stand back from this, I wonder if there remains a more established school of thought in which he may be situated. Second, and given the rich intellectual foundations of his views, ideas, and arguments, I wish to explore why de Gaulle was rarely listened to with any seriousness. As Debray has shown, de Gaulle was often mocked for his beliefs and arguments regarding international politics, but such a phenomenon strikes me as being somewhat curious. Of course the ‘militaristic’ image of de Gaulle gives us one explanation, as does his archaic language, his odd turn of phrase, his propensity to use the ‘outdated’ names of the world’s nations, and his prickly nature, character, and temperament. However, such a response strikes me as being rather shallow and I wonder just how much of de Gaulle’s rejection was a product of the ‘essence’ of his fundamental message regarding the nature of the international system and the world in a wider sense. By this, and in the context of modernity’s assumptions on ‘progress’ and ‘improvement’ as given fundamentals, I mean that de Gaulle’s historically rooted message was rather sombre, uninspiring, and banal, and in many ways the positions he adopted regarding the course of international events attacked the intellectual consensus of his time. The rationale he implicitly expressed through his speeches and actions as French president was inherently

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pessimistic in nature (at least in philosophical terms) and was thoroughly incompatible with the ‘spirit of the age’ in that it rejected historical progress in the ways envisaged by American and Soviet statesmen. It is in this sense that the student of FPA would be well-advised to not only explore de Gaulle as a thinker and leader, the ideas that formed the basis of his operational code, and the ways in which this conditioned his foreign policy, but he/she should also seek to understand why his views were unwelcome or, at the very least, derided by his contemporaries during the 1950s and 1960s. When we turn to answer the first of these questions, and thus that of the culmination of de Gaulle’s Bergsonian, ethno-symbolic, and existential-esque operational code, it strikes me that at the heart of his message on international relations was a treatise on our imprisonment by history, our inability to escape this, and a claim that the appearance and reality of nations did not always correlate. Thus even if the outward projection of a nation suggested one thing, de Gaulle felt he could offer a metaphysical distinction that would cut through this and, in large part, his argument was that the world was somewhat unchanging and remained as it had done for centuries. Although the contours and features of the international system changed from time to time, the essence of things and the national groups that formed this remained as permanent features and it was de Gaulle’s self-appointed task to continuously stress this point. Of course for the most part this message was directed toward his own countrymen and is why Malraux once claimed, ‘perhaps the French were acting like idiots at that moment, but what else had he done all his life but to compel them finally to acknowledge France?’32 The Soviet Union, Communism, world revolution or Russia, national identity and the presence of the past? The West or Europe and North America; the East or China, Russia and Vietnam? Gallic hyper-democracy or a modern French monarchy; this principle was present in his dealings with all states and international political phenomena. Thus in many ways the culmination of de Gaulle’s operational code was a claim regarding our future. He told us that it would differ little from our past. In many respects he told us that the past is our future. Hence in the same way that man, for Sartre, is the future of man, nations, for de Gaulle, were the future of nations. A simple and tedious message it may well be, but a seemingly accurate and existential one nonetheless. To capture the essence of this I feel it useful to offer a fabricated ‘quote’ that summarises the culmination of his operational code and within this, I argue, we are able to capture a glimpse of the utopian logic that was implicit in his view of the international system. Listen, my friends, my fellow men of all nations, I am no seer, I am no oracle, but I am to tell you of your past, your present, and your future. We men and women are all children of a nation or something akin to this. We all have an identity; a nation to which we belong. We have no choice in the matter for we are not masters of our fate. We became Frenchmen before we realised it. You became Russian before you understood what it

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was to be Russian. The source of this process is national history; the product is national character. Every nation has become what it is due to the force and weight of history, this is what endures. 1649, 1776, 1789, 1917, 1949; a revolution is a cloud. It exists only in a moment and merely changes a regime; nothing more. The English were English long before Charles went to the scaffold. Regicide changes nothing; they were no less English afterwards. The same Frenchmen who stormed the Bastille would go on to demand the Fifth Republic 150 years later. All the Bolsheviks did was to restore and reinvigorate Russia. Lenin gave her a new government, a new name, and in doing so showed Russia to the Russians. In this sense Lenin was more of a doctor than a revolutionary and it is in this sense I too was a man of medicine. I forced France to accept the treatment that would cure her of her crippling ailments and sought to cure the international stage of the ideologies that masked national realities. I sought to show, that is, that the essence of the Cold War was illusory. I sought to attack the rationale that conditioned us to see an East and a West when none of this was grounded in historical fact. Old books often come in new editions. They look modern; yet the text cannot change. In short, we may to the contrary believe that we can create a new society from an existing nation but someone must go and break the news to poor Robespierre; tell Saint Just the same; we cannot create any new place in this world for this would truly require the reformulation of national character and henceforth the death of history. ‘If history is our hell then we cannot turn away’; Camus is perhaps my only contemporary who understands this. A nation’s existence, like that of the human, precedes its essence. Yet each essence is only the product of the unshakable past. History is that which already exists; the future a mere reflection of this. It is in this sense that our future exists too and it is in this sense that I was both a man of the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries at the same time. Look backwards and you will see yourself and will see where we are to go. Acknowledge, or at least understand this, and you will see the world as I do. I do not expect you to agree with me. After all, I am a lunatic. Of course, I am not mad because of my insanity; I am mad because of my heresy, because I fundamentally disagree with the consensus of my time. Nonetheless, understand this, and you will understand de Gaulle; you will understand Gaullist France on the world stage. ‘Speaking’ for de Gaulle is, perhaps, an ill-advised exercise, but to my mind, and putting aside the complex language of Bergsonism, ethno-symbolism, and existentialism, this ‘quote’ captures the essence of his operational code well and while it may only be a concluding thought, I wonder if within this we are able to detect a strain of utopian logic. Often taken to be an idealistic place or civilisation, the term ‘Utopia’ leads one to imagine a society that, in breaking with the past and through a form of social engineering, is akin to Milton’s paradise. Indeed, at the mention of

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‘utopia’ the imagination runs away to a world of betterment such as the Elysian Fields of Homer’s Odyssey, Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627), and the futuristic society of ‘Utopia’ depicted in H.G. Wells’ Men Like Gods (1923). It is the idea of a perfected society that connects Plato’s Republic with Dante’s representation of Paradise in The Divine Comedy (1320), Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas (1759), and Aldous Huxley’s Island (1962) and thus ‘Utopia’, as Krishan Kumar highlights, ‘is a perennial philosophy, a basic habit of the mind or, even more, the heart which manifests itself at all times and in all places. George Orwell wrote of “the dream of a just society which seems to haunt the human imagination ineradicably and in all ages”’.33 With the advent of the Enlightenment-era, and its twin gifts of ‘reason’ and the ‘scientific method’, utopian thought remained with us but assumed the guise of ‘utopian theory’ which gave rise to the works of Henri Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, and Herbert Spencer, but perhaps above all, that of Karl Marx, and thus those who sought to develop society based on his ideas (or at least gross misinterpretations of these). However, to understand this in relation to de Gaulle we need to appreciate the literal meaning of the term ‘utopia’ and hence understand it in the context that Thomas More intended, as while the term is often used in common parlance to mean a ‘perfected society’, its formal meaning is certainly more nuanced. This is so as when More penned his 1516 work Utopia, on the favourable opportunities offered by the discovery of the ‘New World’ in 1492, his primary intention was to demonstrate the impossibility of engineering a new and idealistic society from that of the ‘Old World’. Originally written in Latin as two volumes, in which the first is largely an introduction to the characters and where the second principally revolves around a prolonged humanist speech by Raphael Hythloday, Utopia paints a blissful picture of a seemingly faultless island society discovered in the New World, ‘where everything’s under public ownership, no one has any fear of going short, as long as the public storehouses are full. Everyone gets a fair share, so there are never any poor men or beggars. Nobody owns anything, but everyone is rich.’34 Yet behind the meaning of ‘utopia’, and as we come to realise that Hythloday is perhaps not as intelligent as we are first led to believe, lies its literal translation of ‘No Place’ or ‘Nowhere’, and hence More’s claim, as a pun on the Greek ‘eutopos’ (‘good place’), is that this place, as a consequence of man’s eternal ills and faults, cannot and will not exist. Hence we come to understand that regardless of such wishes, utopia remains a wishful illusion as the ‘new’ would only ever be a reflection of the ‘old’. Wherever men go, that is, they carry their imperfections with them and it is in this sense that we come to understand that ‘Hythloday’, in Latin, comes to mean ‘a distributer of nonsense’ and hence the man who talks of utopia throughout the work is, in essence, the false prophet of the text. Therefore, ‘Utopia’, as Paul Turner stresses, ‘means “not place”, Anydrus (the name of a river) means “not water”, and Ademus (the title of a chief magistrate) means “not people”’. Turner continues:

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It is clear from an ironical passage in a letter to Peter Gilles that More expected the educated reader to understand these names; and to ensure that their significance was not overlooked…Accordingly, Hythlodaeus appears as Nonsenso, Anydrus as Nowater, and Ademus as Nopeople. Utopia, however, seems too well known to be changed, so this name is retained, along with its derivatives, Utopian and Utopos or Utopus; but its meaning (Noplace) should be borne in mind throughout.35 Thus it is in this sense that we need to understand the literal meaning of ‘utopia’ and in doing so we are able to see the strain of utopianism that emerges as a consequence of de Gaulle’s operational code. In More’s time, that which followed the wake of the great discovery of 1492, the ability to force the existence of a perfected society was somewhat limited. This was not so in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries (at least in the minds of some), and it is at this point, as Kumar stresses, that trying to engineer the realisation of utopia becomes a perilous and deadly endeavour; ‘with God dethroned and science and reason elevated in his place, millenarianism often took on secular form without giving up its basic constituents. Science and revolution were the new messiahs.’ Kumar continues: The eighteenth-century philosophers aspired to create a ‘heavenly city’ by the light of Newtonian science; the French Revolution seemed to many to be ushering in the millennial reign of reason. Nineteenth-century philosophers, too, often appeared to be merely rehearsing the scheme of the most influential millennial thinker, the twelfth-century Calabrian monk, Joachim of Fiore. Joachim’s doctrine of the Three Ages, culminating in the love, peace and freedom of the Age of the Holy Spirit, seemed to find a direct echo in the philosophies of history of Saint-Simon, Hegel and Marx. Saint-Simon’s scientific society, Hegel’s age of the actualized Spirit, and Marx’s society of full communism all carried strong millennial overtones. So too, in a grotesque parody of Three Ages philosophy, did Hitler’s Third Reich.36 In short, as Ruth Levitas bluntly puts it, ‘those utopians who seek to make their dreams come true are deemed to be hopelessly unrealistic, or worse, actively dangerous’.37 Of course, More’s Utopia lent its name to the study of utopias which, emerging at some point in the 1960s, has subsequently become the academic field of Utopianism. Despite the overwhelming consensus that Utopia can only remain a ‘non-place’, the study of this still has value. Indeed, in trying to orient us towards the impossible, the architectural utopian, as a social engineer, shows us a vision to aspire to and thus something to progress towards. When we turn to de Gaulle and consider his ethno-symbolic and existential understanding of the international system in the context of this it seems logical to conclude that the intellectual outcome of his rationale makes him a utopian thinker of sorts. Indeed, More, at heart, tells us that no perfect

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society can become a reality due to the faults and imperfections of man. ‘Dream your dream’, is More’s message, ‘but be wary of deluding yourself for any hope of actually realising this is a fool’s hope’. De Gaulle’s rationale, and while he is more concerned with the phenomenon of temporal co-existence than man’s corruptible qualities, gives us a broadly similar conclusion. Indeed, if Bergsonian-existential rationale dictates that our future is to become that which we already are, and hence the past is essentially inescapable, then applying this to national individuals logically means that nations and national societies may never ‘leap’ towards a utopian end through revolutionary means. Whether it was France’s desire to escape her past in 1789 or Lenin’s attempt to do the same in relation to Russia in 1917, existential rationale insists that they would only ever fail as national history would always reassert itself. In short, a national individual or society could never become without progressing through the slow process of becoming, but in doing so would carry the weight of its past at all times. Of course, this is not to say that post-revolutionary societies do not exist, but it is to claim, from de Gaulle’s perspective at least, that they fail to exist as their utopian engineers envisaged. Washington Irving’s literary character, ‘Rip van Winkle’, who saw little difference between pre-revolutionary and postrevolutionary America in the early 1800s stressed this point and de Gaulle certainly told us the same of the revolutionary societies of the West, of Eastern Europe, and of Asia. ‘Mr President, Iraq is sovereign’; one wonders if the contemporary dreams of democracy in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere are of the same folly and hence it may well be that another element of de Gaulle’s value in relation to IR is his implicit recognition that ‘social engineering’ and ‘nation building’, in the guise of Western intervention is a dangerous and fruitless business.38

Silence of the pessimists If it is the case that the essence of de Gaulle’s operational code was ethnosymbolic and existential at its core, and if this rationale, once turned upon international society, implies that a tacit streak of utopianism conditioned his understanding of the Cold War world, then I wish to explore, as the concluding question of the study, why this was rarely listened to by his international counterparts. As noted above, this is partly explained by his militaristic appearance, his odd language, and his mistrust of unfettered democracy. We must also consider that he often pursued seemingly contradictory aims meaning he left many confused when seeking to explain his actions. As Debray writes, de Gaulle, perhaps above all still remains a question mark: The sublime, it seems, appear in France only once a century. Just as well for most of us, because it is an intrusion that decimates or exhausts us. Or at least messes us about. Napoleon left two generations dead on the

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battlefield. De Gaulle was more sparing with other people’s blood; even so, he left us, as it were, stranded, alive, but dazed.39 Nonetheless, I wish to pursue this question in broader terms here. Indeed, when we turn to consider how de Gaulle’s Bergsonism, ethno-symbolism, existentialism, and utopian-esque conclusions conditioned his view of the international system and produced a foreign policy that reflected this, we come to see, at least in the modern sense of the term, the negativity that de Gaulle espoused and I wonder to what extent this conditioned us to reject his views even though they were often close to the mark. The view, that is, that a nation, as an idiosyncratic individual can only ever truly be that which it already is, and thusly an expression of its subjective specific history, is no message of optimistic progress. When we think about this negativity in somewhat broader intellectual terms it may be said that de Gaulle has good form as many have alluded to his penchant for gloominess. As Jackson writes: By this stage in his life (his twilight years) he had more or less come to identify grandeur with himself: by definition, to reject de Gaulle was to choose mediocrity. They will put up a huge cross of Lorraine on a hill higher than all the others. Everyone will be able to see it. But as there won’t be anyone there, no one will see it. It will incite the rabbits to resistance. De Gaulle often resorted to this semi-apocalyptic and bleak tone, and it seems to reveal, at the core of the man, a streak of nihilism.40 At times there was almost a complete negation of all values from the General, ‘Nietzsche’s “nothing is worth anything” (rien ne vaut rien) was a favourite phrase.’41 Debray also captures the essence of de Gaulle’s intellectual bleakness, although he sees this less as a disposition and more akin to a system of thought, ‘it has often been said that historical figures are married to disgrace. But they do not beget their children on it. They are obliging Cassandras. De Gaulle was a prophet of doom, but one that thought ahead and proposed a solution to every misfortune.’42 According to Malraux, de Gaulle’s attention often strayed into the melancholic aspects of life, ‘I was at the Gare de l’Est in 1914’, de Gaulle once remarked of Raymond Poincaré, ‘when he came to see off the first troop trains. No one cheered, but all civilians took off their hats. Death passing. There was something noble about it.’43 De Gaulle also liked to borrow one of Stalin’s favourite phrases, ‘In the end death is the only winner.’44 This ‘streak of nihilism’ was also revealed to Malraux in other ways, ‘did you know…that at the United Nations there is a black cat no one dares to drive away? Whenever these people discuss the future of the world, the cat walks through and puts things into their proper perspective…ask the cat.’45 Finally, Malraux records his final exchange with de Gaulle, ‘the General gave us his hand, and looked at the first stars, in a great hole of the sky, to the left of the clouds. He said “they confirm the insignificance of things.”’46

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It is interesting to wonder how much such views and beliefs contributed to his operational code, how much these views were the reflection of a man entering his twilight years, and to what extent they were a constant in his life. While it is true that we shall never know for sure, Patrick Girard has explored the question of how close this stoic man, who displayed certain ‘suicidal impulses’, came to taking his own life, especially during the early years of World War II.47 Thus de Gaulle’s suicide, for Girard, and other scholars such as Philippe Dechartre, and Jean-Rayond Tournoux, was a distinct possibility.48 Either way, with an appreciation for this side of de Gaulle’s personality we are, perhaps, better placed to understand the negativity that is implicit in his foreign policy and broader worldview. If we recognise that de Gaulle’s central message implies that nations are trapped by their history this leads us to understand that the world, at its core, is unchanging. This is not to say that nations and states do not change in terms of their actions, concerns, and relationships, but it is to claim that a nation’s essence, as a product of its past, can only will itself to be that which it already is. In short, it implies both a streak of negativity and political realism that casts serious doubt on the ability of man to establish progressive projects in the international system as these would always be subservient to the national entities that reflected a Bergsonian understanding of temporal co-existence. This, in the context of our modern assumptions on the inevitability of progress, is no sanguine communiqué, but it does, in turn, raise the question of how to best understand this negativity in intellectual terms as while de Gaulle has been labelled a ‘sceptic’, a ‘nihilist’, and a ‘pessimist’ by various scholars, and while these terms share certain intellectual assumptions, we should not see these as being interchangeable. Understanding this distinction, and understanding the historical nature of pessimism in particular, I argue, provides us with a fitting explanation of why we chose not to listen to de Gaulle with any degree of seriousness. Put in brutally simplistic terms ‘scepticism’, in its traditional (Greek) guise, implies that one cannot have knowledge of anything with any degree of certainty. Opinion is possible, degrees of possibility certainly exist, but formal knowledge per se is impossible. Beyond this, little else exists and it is in this sense that dogmatism is often seen to be the polar opposite of scepticism. Pessimism, that which is usually identified with Arthur Schopenhauer and Giacomo Leopardi is taken to be a disposition (rather than a system) that does little more than pour scorn on contemporary liberalism and the ‘progress’ this implies. Joshua Foa Deinstag captures the essence of this when he writes, Though it may not seem, on the surface, to be an especially political doctrine…pessimism attacks the roots of modern political orders by denying their sense of time. Pessimism is substitute for progress, but it is not a painless one. In suggesting that we look at time and history differently, it asks us to alter radically our opinions and what we can expect from politics. It does not simply tell us to expect less. It tells us, in fact, to expect nothing. This posture…while difficult, is not impossible and not

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suicidal either…it is a distinct account of the human condition that has developed in the shadow of progress – alongside it, as it were – with its own political stance.49 Finally, and when we turn to the nineteenth-century philosophical doctrine of nihilism that found intellectual expression through a range of thinkers such as Max Stirner (1806–1856), but that of Nietzsche in particular, and which may be considered as an extreme form of pessimism, we find that there are no objective values, no objective meaning, and no intrinsic purpose. Hence a nihilist, in the truest of senses, would assert that all such things are baseless and ungrounded and in many ways the centrality of Nietzsche’s thought revolved around this and around European society’s slow, collective march toward the ‘death of God’, the subsequent demise of Christian morality, and the implications this would have for future generations. Nonetheless, it is in this sense, and while nihilism, pessimism, and scepticism are certainly interconnected and share much common ground, one cannot be all three of these; at least not all these at the same time. To the obvious question then: How should we frame de Gaulle in relation to this? Although Duverger and Andrew Shennan have claimed that de Gaulle was a sceptic, in the strictest of senses, this is not the case as ‘knowledge’ in itself is not called into question.50 As a reader of history, as a student of Bergson, and as an ardent advocate of the ‘national reality’, de Gaulle’s belief system was heavily situated in a set of assumptions regarding the past and temporal co-existence, hence his dogmatic faith in this must surely exclude any serious intellectual charges of scepticism. Nor should we really refer to de Gaulle as a nihilist. Of course, some of his more negative remarks may allude to this and therefore contain certain nihilistic undertones, but there were certain values to which he subscribed. Indeed, although de Gaulle may, at times, ask why life needs a meaning or purpose, France, and making the French acknowledge his ‘idea’ of France, was his one true value. Encouraging his fellow world leaders of the Cold War-era to acknowledge national history rather than political ideology was certainly an extension of this and hence his wider worldview guards against any serious claims of nihilism. Thus if we exclude scepticism and nihilism, and as I argue here, it can only be the case that de Gaulle’s thought and operational code is ultimately marked by a distinct strand of political pessimism. This is not, it must be noted, pessimism in the tradition of Schopenhauer and hence in relation to human individuality and the ‘suffering of the world’. Rather it is pessimism in relation to the ability of man to reorder the essence of the international system, the nature of the nation-states that comprised this, and the establishment of a formal system of order within this that transcends realist doctrine (order as a reflection of the strong that is). It was a pessimistic stance that resisted a Hegelian sense of historical progress, a view that cast doubt on the American and Soviet capacity to change the nature of the world for the better, and was a view that led de Gaulle to question the functionality of supranational organisations such as the European Union and the United Nations.

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Of course, much of this, and given the argument pursued thus far, we already understand. The historically imbued nation-state for de Gaulle, that is, was the only reality of the international system and anything that existed outside of this was a fanciful and utopian dream. In the long sweep of history such a view is eminently reasonable and unremarkable but for us of the modern-era, it is fair to say, that we are intellectually conditioned to see this expression of pessimism in a negative light precisely because of our penchant for the idea of progress. This is especially true of the American mind-set that demands each drama, domestic or international, has a ‘happy ending’ and where the intellectual expression of ‘progressivism’ took hold in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, yet we must bear in mind the truly novel aspect of this attitude towards humanity.51 Either way, ‘a belief in progress’, wrote Sidney Pollard, ‘implies that things will in some sense get better in the future…thus a belief in progress implies the assumption that a pattern is known, that this consists of irreversible changes in one general direction only, and that this direction is towards improvement from a less to a more desirable state of affairs’.52 The historically focused mind, and that of de Gaulle in particular, must take issue with this and hence with the very idea of progress as a given fundamental. Pollard captures the essence of this well: The modern mind cannot really conceive of a world in which man is not at the centre of the stage, and his striving after improvement not the basis of the society around him. By the same token, the Mediterranean mind of the Hellenic and Judaic world…would have stood uncomprehendingly before our present worship of the idea of progress. Its victory and its dominion are modern phenomena. Why did it elude thinkers of antiquity? Basically, it was because it did not accord with their experience. The modern mind, extrapolating from the rapid development of its own environment, and with the benefit of telescopic sight of centuries long ago, has no difficulty in seeing the evolution of civilized society in one-way and irreversible, even if slow, changes of the millennia of the pre-Christian era.53 As Nietzsche boorishly put it, ‘mankind does not represent a development of the better or the stronger or the higher way that is believed today. “Progress” is merely a modern idea, that is to say a false idea. The European of today is of far less value than the European of the Renaissance.’54 For the Greeks Moria was the familiar notion that implied a sort of ‘fixed order’ to the universe but, if any change was to occur, this was usually in the context of degeneration. This order, as J. B. Bury concludes, ‘kept things in their places…speculative Greek minds never hit on the idea of progress’.55 Such is our modern penchant for ‘progress’ that it has become part of the consciousness of our times. There exists, in other words, a contemporary assumption that things, almost as an irrevocable act of nature, improve over time and there is much evidence to support this given the seemingly boundless

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list of advances in medicine, electronic devices, and greener energy sources through to contemporary political phenomena such as universal suffrage, the principle of self-determination, and free market economics. It is in this sense that our belief in progress is eminently understandable yet, and as Bury wrote long ago, Certain features of our “progress” may be urged as presumptions in its favour, but there are always offsets, and it has always been easy to make out a case that, from the point of view of increasing happiness, the tendencies of our progressive civilisation are far from desirable. In short, it cannot be proved that the unknown destination towards which man is advancing is desirable.56 Nonetheless, the idea that we are progressing towards the betterment of mankind persists. Within Western society this has become so ingrained within our modern minds that anyone who calls into question contemporary progressive projects is seen as a naysayer or outright cynic. This is certainly true of present discourse on the European Union (especially in the UK) but there is no reason why this should be the case as for most of human existence those who spoke of ‘progress’ would have been the outcasts. Of course, philosophers, writers, and film-makers may be permitted to ask such questions; as men of thought and the arts it is indeed their prerogative. The same is also true of the scientist who, in often bringing unwelcome analyses concerning phenomena such as global warming, is habitually taken seriously. Yet what of statesmen? What of he who is married to public life? What of General de Gaulle? ‘Yes we can!’ It is the great trend of contemporary politics that the individual who runs for elected office must always offer ‘change’ and a positive alteration to society. George W. Bush captured the essence of this in a 2008 exit-interview, ‘Remember, I was the guy in 2000 who campaigned for change. I campaigned for change when I ran for governor of Texas. The only time I really didn’t campaign for change is when I was running for reelection’.57 Of course, for Obama and the Democrats in 2008 it seemed to matter little what ‘change’ actually meant as long as ‘change’ was forthcoming, but it is interesting to note, in an anecdotal sense at least, that the expectations fostered by our obsession with ‘change’, as an expression of ‘progress’, are rarely satisfied as politicians infrequently deliver on such pledges. As Roger Scruton has claimed, the promise of progress has sat at the heart of some of the most repressive regimes mankind has witnessed in the post-Enlightenment period which should, at the very least, serve as a warning of its seductive power to turn dreams into nightmares and the ability of well-intended policy planners to unleash disaster on the world stage.58 That said, and when we turn to de Gaulle, it is fair to say that in terms of domestic affairs he was a progressive of sorts as although his clichéd image suggests otherwise, and in terms of the nuclear industry, transport infrastructure, modern computers, and the political system of the Fifth Republic de Gaulle was ‘the greatest modernizer of contemporary

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France’.59 Yet when we look to foreign affairs, de Gaulle’s conduct of international relations, and his conception of the international system this is hardly the case. Unlike the nation-state, the nature of the international system could not be ‘modernised’ and would, therefore, largely retain its antagonistic and unpredictable qualities. This is why he was wary of ‘permanent’ alliance systems, supranational institutions, and any other project that promised ‘progress’ in relation to the essence of the international system. If anything de Gaulle told us to act without hope, without grand expectations, and without a belief that things would irrevocably progress with time, and to this extent he was certainly wary of the promised salvation of American capitalism, unrestricted democracy, Marxism, the European project, and the United Nations. It is in this sense that de Gaulle’s operational code, and the foreign policy that reflected this was, at heart, an expression of political pessimism which gives us a fitting explanation as to why he was rarely taken seriously given our modern fixation on ‘progress’. Indeed, Dienstag writes: Since pessimism is perceived more as a disposition than as a theory, pessimists are seen primarily as dissenters from whatever the prevailing consensus of their time happens to be, rather than as constituting a continuous alternative. The result is that each seems disconnected from the mainstream of the history of political thought. They appear as voices in the wilderness, to put it politely – or to put it less politely, as cranks. While they are often admired for their style, or respected for the critiques they offer, their apparent lack of a “positive project” is made to appear as a badge of second-rank philosophical status. They interest us; but, it is believed, they cannot possibly orient us.60 If one were to write de Gaulle’s epitaph or give an overview of the man as a thinker, it is probable that one would write something not entirely dissimilar to this. This is so as de Gaulle was viewed as being detached from the political consensus of his time, he was seen as an eccentric and international ‘crank’, he was admired for his style, and he certainly lacked a ‘positive project’ in the eyes of many. Yet this is not to say that de Gaulle had little value or was negative per se, rather as Dienstag stresses, in the modern-era, where the philosophical tradition of pessimism has largely been rendered obsolete due to our ‘worship’ of progress, and where we are conditioned to prefer Hegel over Schopenhauer and Marx over Nietzsche, we lack the intellectual grounding through which to situate an individual such as de Gaulle. Thus, in the final analysis, we may well conclude that de Gaulle, as a thinker and statesman, ever disconnected from the prevailing consensus of his day, was ultimately repressed by the climate of his times and our wider inability to genuinely engage with his intellectual assertions. Not because they were complex, not because he was wrong, and certainly not because he failed to express himself. Rather de Gaulle, as a pessimistic statesman and ‘international naysayer’ of sorts, failed to speak to the prevailing trends of the

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twentieth century precisely because the rich tradition of philosophical pessimism has been written out of our collective intellectual consciousness. As a consequence, pessimism takes on the form of an individual’s temperament and character, de Gaulle’s in this case, rather than an expression of a broader theoretical tradition that has much to say regarding contemporary political events, themes, and trends. It is in this sense that such figures are so easily ridiculed and to my mind de Gaulle was very much a casualty of modernity’s intellectual conditioning. Given that this is the case, the term ‘pessimist’ has become little more than an ‘insult’ in contemporary parlance. This is troubling. Indeed, elements of Western philosophy have, for the past three centuries, stressed that things from a human perspective would gradually and naturally improve over time and most of us, at least in a tacit sense, seem to accept that this is the case. We see this in the ways in which we are encouraged to think about history, politics, society, and science as all imply a sense of temporally bound progress. But what if such assumptions are incorrect and that we have no right to think in these terms? Pessimism in this sense is of the utmost value in that its purpose is less to depress us in relation to the possibilities of historical progress in international politics, but to edify and fortify us regarding the relentless promises of a civilisation ‘drunk’ on optimism. Hence, and while Debray may call de Gaulle an ‘obliging Casandra’ and thus a sort of international prophet that no one would believe, his views on international relations have value precisely because they help to guard against that which Scruton has called ‘the promise of false hope’. In that they were grounded in a pessimistic doctrine that was, in turn, a product of his Bergsonism, ethnosymbolism, and existentialism, such views help to guard against our contemporary disappointment in relation to the endemic problems of the European Union, they help to guard against international ‘disbelief ’ in Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and they speak to the inability of the West to bring democratic salvation to Iraq, Syria, and Libya. Indeed, one may go as far to say that Anglo-American policy planners may benefit greatly from an acute dose of pessimism in terms of how they think about international relations and their actions within the international system. This is also true of the academic study of IR. To be sure, while the writings of Hobbes and Kant (for example) find philosophic expression in the various branches of realism and liberalism, and while constructivism may carry certain existential undertones (not least the claim that individuals are legislatures for the nature of their own existence and environment), our discipline lacks any serious intellectual influence from those of a pessimistic persuasion but would, to my mind, benefit greatly from the input of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer but also from Camus, Rousseau, and Ortega y Gasset. While broadening the discourse on international relations, and in helping to temper our contemporary penchant for progress, it would also enable the student of FPA to better understand individuals such as de Gaulle and to better engage with his foreign policy of the 1960s.

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Notes 1 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 60. 2 Ibid. 87. 3 Ibid. 42. 4 Camus, A. (1975). ‘The Minotaur or the Stop in Oran’, in The Myth of Sisyphus. London: Penguin. 141. 5 Quoted in, Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 94. 6 Kissinger, H. (2014). World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History. London: Penguin. 167. 7 Ringman, E. (1996). ‘On the Ontological Status of the State.’ European Journal of International Relations. 2:4. 443. 8 Skinner, Q. (2009). ‘A Genealogy of the Modern State.’ Proceedings of the British Academy (162). 355. 9 Jackson, P. T. (2004). ‘Forum Introduction: Is the State a Person? Why Should we Care?’ Review of International Studies. 30:2. 256. 10 Skinner, Q. (2009). ‘A Genealogy of the Modern State.’ Proceedings of the British Academy (162). 360–361. 11 Albert, M., Cederman, L. and Wendt, A. (2010). New Systems Theories of World Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 293. 12 Larivé, M. H. A. (2014). ‘The Mirage of the State: Why the West has Failed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali and Central African Republic?’ Jean Monnet/ Robert Schuman Paper Series. 14:15. 4. 13 Faizullaev, A. (2007). ‘Individual Experiencing of States.’ Review of International Studies. 33:3. 538. 14 McCloskey, H. J. (1963). ‘The State as an Organism, as a Person, and as an End in Itself.’ The Philosophical Review. 72: 3. 306–326; Vincent, A. (1989). ‘Can Groups Be Persons?’ The Review of Metaphysics. 42: 4. 687–715; Wendt, A. (2004). ‘The State as Person in International Theory.’ Review of International Studies. 30:2. 289–316. 15 Goldstein, J. and Keohane, R. (1993). Ideas and Foreign Policy. Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 3. 16 Lawson, G. (2012). ‘The Eternal Divide? History and International Relations.’ European Journal of International Relations. 18:2. 203–226. 17 Hofstadter, R. (1963). Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. New York: Vintage Books. 6. 18 Williams, A. (1998). Failed Imagination? New World Orders of the Twentieth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 14. 19 Kagan, R. (2008). The Return of History and the End of Dreams. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 4–5. 20 Kagan, R. (2012). The World America Made. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 5. 21 Lacouture, J. (1970). De Gaulle. London: Hutchinson. 181. 22 Quoted in Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 95. 23 Ibid. 96. 24 Kissinger, H. (2014). World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History. London: Penguin. 3. 25 McRaney, D. (2012). You Are Not So Smart. Why your memory is mostly fiction, why you have too many friends on Facebook, and 46 other ways you’re deluding yourself. Oxford. Oneworld Publications. xv–xvi. 26 Ibid. 128. 27 McRaney, D. (2013). You Can Beat Your Brain. How to Turn Your Enemies into Friends, How to Make Better Decisions, and Other Ways to Be Less Dumb. Oxford. Oneworld Publications. 44.

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28 See Green M. (2004). ‘Transportation Into Narrative Worlds: The Role of Prior Knowledge and Perceived Realism.’ Discourse Processes. 38.2. 246–266; Eagleman, D. (2011). Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. New York: Pantheon; Rokeach, M. (2011). The Three Christs of Ypsilanti. New York: New York Review Books. 29 Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 53. 30 McRaney, D. (2013). You Can Beat Your Brain. How to Turn Your Enemies into Friends, How to Make Better Decisions, and Other Ways to Be Less Dumb. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. 44. 31 Sartre, J. P. (2005). Colonialism and Neocolonialism. London: Routledge. 47. 32 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 19. 33 Kumar, K. (1991). Utopianism. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. 43. 34 Moore, T. (2003). Utopian. London: Penguin. 110. 35 Ibid. xii. 36 Kumar, K. (1991). Utopianism. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. 10–11. 37 Levitas, R. (1990). The Concept of Utopia. London: Philip Allan. 1. 38 ‘Mr President, Iraq is sovereign’ were Condoleezza Rice’s words to George Bush at a NATO summit in Istanbul, 2004. Rice wrote these on a small scrap of paper and passed it to the then President. He proceeded to write, ‘let freedom reign’ on it and passed it back. 39 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 13. 40 Quoted in Jackson, J. (2003). Charles de Gaulle. London: Haus Publishing. 142. 41 Quoted in Gough, H. and Horne, J. (editors). De Gaulle and Twentieth Century France. London: Edward Arnold. 136. 42 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 66. 43 Malraux, A. (1972). Felled Oaks: Conversation with De Gaulle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 89. 44 Ibid. 111. 45 Ibid. 40–41. 46 Ibid. 125. 47 Girard, P. (2010). De Gaulle, le mystère de Dakar. Paris: Calmann-Lévy. 48 Riché, P. (2010). ‘Le jour où le général de Gaulle a pensé au suicide.’ Rue89(http:// rue89.nouvelobs.com/2010/05/31/fiasco-de-dakar-le-jour-ou-de-gaulle-a-songe-a u-suicide-151806). 49 Dienstag, J .F. (2006). Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit. Woodstock: Princeton University Press. 5. 50 Duverger, M. in Macridis, R. (1966).De Gaulle: Implacable Ally. New York: Harper and Row. xx; Shennan A. (1993). De Gaulle. London: Longman. 158. 51 Cotkin, G. (2005). Existential America. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. 7. 52 Pollard, S. (1971). The Idea of Progress, History and Society. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. 9. 53 Ibid. 15. 54 Nietzsche, F. (1990) Twilight of the Idols. London: Penguin. 128. 55 Bury, J. B. (2008). The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into its Origin and Growth. New York: Cosimo. 18. 56 Ibid. 5. 57 (2008). ‘George Bush Exit Interview with Charles Gibson.’ ABC News. 1 December. See transcript at http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Politics/story?id=6356046 &page=1

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58 Scruton, R. (2010). The Uses of Pessimism and the Danger of False Hope. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 62 59 Debray, R. (1994). Charles de Gaulle: Futurist of the Nation. London: Verso Books. 79. 60 Dienstag, J. F. (2006). Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit. Woodstock: Princeton University Press. 3.

Index

9/11 23, 171 abandonment (existentialism) 15, 129, 134–138, 151, 156, 161 Acheson, Dean 83, 84 actor-specific theory 3, 11, 167, 169, 172, 178 ad hominem fallacy 50, 181 Adams, John Quincy 159 Adenauer, Konrad 43, 108 Afghanistan 6, 45, 150, 159, 160, 188 al-Qaeda 174 Algeria 32, 37, 85; conflict and independence 40, 41–42, 47, 111, 144, 168–169 alliances 175 American Civil War 155 American Exceptionalism 159 American Idol Effect 6 American Revolution 115, 137, 147, 188 AMGOT (Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories) 38 ‘anarchy’ 175, 177 ‘anchoring effect’ 8–9 Anderson, Benedict 57, 61, 63 anguish (existentialism) 15, 129, 134, 138–145, 151, 156, 161 Anthias, Floya 103 anthropomorphism 10, 14, 170, 173; and de Gaulle 10, 17, 58, 93, 94, 101, 102, 104, 114, 123, 129, 151, 154, 161, 170, 177, 180 anti-Gaullism 36 anti-Semitism 27 Appeal of June 18 (de Gaulle) 35 Appeal, The see War Memoirs: The Appeal, 1940–1942 (de Gaulle) Applied Cognitive Psychology 169, 179 Armstrong, John 61, 71

Army of the Future, The see Towards an Army of the Future (Vers une armée de métier) (de Gaulle) al-Assad, Bashar 181 Atlantic Alliance 45, 47, 84, 141–142 Attila the Hun 32 authenticity (existentialism) 93, 100, 107, 114, 123; of China 153,157–158,161; and de Gaulle 120–123; of France 10, 13, 153, 157, 161; of nations 129, 152, 153, 157, 158; of Russia 153, 158–159,161; see also bad faith (existentialism) availability heuristic 6, 171 Bacon, Francis 186 bad faith (existentialism) 15, 129, 134, 151–160, 161 ‘balance of power’ 10 Barlow, Julie 119 Barrett, William 96 bastards 152, 153 Battle of the Cataulaunian fields 32 Battle of Warsaw, 1920 29 Baudelaire, Charles 48 Bay of Pigs 178–179 becoming (existentialism) 93, 99, 107, 123, 167, 188; and de Gaulle 113–120 Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Ontological Phenomenology (L’Être et le néant: Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique) (Sartre) 94, 128, 131, 173 belief systems 3, 191; see also operational codes Bergson, Henri-Louis 13, 17, 18, 30, 33–34; and de Gaulle 3, 13–14, 23, 46–50, 51, 92, 113–114, 151, 184 Berlin, Isaiah 73, 74

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Index

Berstein, Serge 12, 24, 25, 39, 48–49 Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche) 95 ‘billiard ball’ model of IR 4 Bismarck, Otto von 5 ‘black boxing the state’ 4, 9 Bonaparte, Louis 41 Bonaparte, Napoleon 1, 30, 32, 46–47, 66, 69, 104, 105, 114, 119, 130, 172 boredom 45, 46 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne 48 Boulanger, Georges 119 Boyd, Douglas 12 Brennus 66 Britain see UK (United Kingdom) Broche, François 36 Brzezinski, Zbigniew 123 Bury, J. B. 192, 193 Bush, George H. W. 8, 75 Bush, George W. 18, 23, 171, 179, 193 Byzantium 111 Call to Honour, The see War Memoirs: The Call to Honour 1940–1942(de Gaulle) Cambodia 81 Camus, Albert 95, 97, 114, 115–116, 137, 146, 147, 149, 155, 161, 167, 185, 195 Capet, Hugh 48, 67, 110 Capital (Marx) 76, 148 capitalism 95, 148, 194 Carr, E. H. 6 Carter, Jimmy 6 Castro, Fidel 178–179 CCP (causal completeness of physics) 7, 10 Cerny, Philip 33 certain idea of France (certaine idée de la France) 46 Champion, Craige Brian 111–112 Chiang Kai-shek 153 change 193 Chapman, Herrick 38 Charlemagne 67 Charlot, Jean 25 Chêneboit, André 26 Cheney, Dick 23 China 45, 78, 81; authenticity 153, 157–158, 161; bad faith/self-deception 152, 153–154; and de Gaulle 81, 132, 133; and Russia 153–154, 157–158; sovereignty 158 Churchill, Winston 35, 153, 180 ‘Cinderella complex’ 73 Clemenceau, Georges 60, 114, 119

Clovis 48, 60, 69, 110, 116 cognitive biases 178–182 cognitive psychology 8, 16, 50, 168, 169, 177–179; and de Gaulle 179–182 Cohen-Sartre, Annie 19 Cold War period 7, 75, 122–123, 144–145, 167; bad/faith/authenticity in 152–160, 162–163; East-West split 6, 12, 44–45; UK 140–141, 149, 150 Combat (newspaper) 82–83 Committee of Public Safety 115 Common Agricultural Policy 43 communism 44–45, 78, 79–80, 81–82, 83, 105, 117–118, 123, 148–149, 158, 175 Comte, Auguste 186 confirmation bias 5–6, 41 Congo 85–86 Congress of Vienna 75 constructivism 96, 106, 161, 172, 175, 177, 195 Containment policy (US) 23, 50, 79 Cooper, David 94, 98 Corcos, Fernand 24 Corsica 40 Coty, René 40 cowards 152, 153 Crawley, Aidan 12, 33 Creative Evolution (L’Évolution créatrice) (Bergson) 34 Crimea 105, 150 Cross of Lorraine 35 ‘crossing of the desert’ period 39 Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 9, 178–179 ‘cultural components of ethnies’ (Smith) 64, 68–69 culture, and nationalism 67 Curie, Marie 48 Dante 186 Danton, Georges 114 Darlan, François 35 de Beauvoir, Simone 95, 102 De Gaulle (Crawley) 12 De Gaulle dans la République (Hamon) 49 de Gaulle, Charles: ‘crossing of the desert’ period 39; as a ‘mythical’ figure 1–2, 11, 18; ‘second life’ 18–19; anthropomorphism 10, 17, 58, 93, 94, 101, 102, 104, 114, 123, 129, 151, 154, 161, 170, 177, 180; and Bergson 3, 13–14, 23, 46–50, 51, 92, 113–114, 151, 184; biographical context 21,

Index 27–35, 50–51; biographies of 11–12; and China 81, 132, 133; and cognitive psychology 179–182; conception of France 59–60, 65–66, 68, 70, 101–123, 130, 170; and Eastern Europe 132, 133, 169; ethno-symbolism 3, 13, 14, 23, 57–58, 63, 82–83, 86, 92, 93, 100–106, 107, 109, 151, 171–172, 182, 184; European integration 73, 84–85, 169; existentialism 3, 10–11, 13, 14–15, 23, 92, 93, 98, 100, 106–123, 129, 130–131, 132–133, 135–138, 139–145, 148, 149–151, 152–153, 154, 157–159, 160–162, 182–183, 184; history/the past 32–34, 46, 48, 51, 59, 60, 62, 66, 67, 74, 108–109, 113–115, 121, 135, 167, 173; international dismissal of 168, 183–184, 188–189; and the international system 58, 74, 80–81, 82–84, 86–87, 136–138; language and writing style 26, 50; leadership of France, 1944–1946 38–39; literature on 11–12, 24–25; military career 28–31, 50; nationalism 12–13, 25, 46–47, 51, 57, 62–75, 76–77, 182; nations 10–11, 21, 44–45, 46, 47–50, 51, 57, 59–60, 64, 72, 77–87, 86, 87, 93, 100–106, 122–123, 130–131, 132–133, 171, 172–173, 182, 184; negative image of in AngloAmerican world 18–19; pessimism 184, 188–190, 191–192, 194–195; political career, 1940–1970 21, 35–46; political science 168–183; Presidency, 1958–1969 40–46; religious faith 28; and Russia/Soviet Union 73, 79–80, 81, 83, 86–87, 120, 130, 132, 143; suicidal impulses 190; translations of works 18–19; and the UK 66, 85, 142; and the US 12, 16–17, 24, 37–38, 44–45, 50–51, 78, 82, 83, 120, 142, 175–176, 181, 182; utopianism 185, 188; and the Westphalian system of nations 176–177; World War I service 28–29; see also Gaullism de Gaulle, Philip 27 De Gaulle: The Man Who Defied Six US Presidents (Boyd) 12 Debray, Régis 1, 3, 11, 15, 18, 25–26, 33, 39, 48, 59, 64, 78, 86, 93, 106, 120, 123, 131, 133, 166–167, 183, 188–189, 195 Debré, Michel 48 Dechartre, Philippe 190

201

Decision-Making as an Approach to the Study of International Politics (Snyder) 6 Deinstag, Joshua Foa 190–191 democracy 48, 49, 106, 111, 148, 188, 194; France 38, 41, 78, 184, 188; US 16, 155 Democracy in America (Tocqueville) 16 Descartes, R. 33, 146, 159 Desmoulins, Camille 114 Despair (existentialism) 15, 129, 134, 145–151, 156, 161 Dien Bien Phu 80 Dienstag, Joshua Foa 16, 194 distinctiveness of the state 172 Divine Comedy, The (Dante) 186 ‘dominant monads’ 8, 114, 178 ‘Domino Theory’ 80 Donnie Darko 95 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 95, 134 Dreyfus Affair (1894–1906) 27, 70, 131 Dumbrell, John 140, 155 Dunning-Kruger Effect 6 duration (Bergson) 3, 14, 60, 92, 113 Duverger, Maurice 25, 26, 144, 191 Eagleman, David 179–180 Earnshaw, Stephen 98 East-West split, Cold War era 6, 12, 44–45 Eastern Europe 82; and de Gaulle 132, 133, 169 Ecole Supérieure de Guerre 29 Eden, Robert 30 Edge of the Sword, The (Le Fil de l’épée) (de Gaulle) 30, 50, 70 EEC (European Economic Community) 12 Eisenhower, Dwight 18, 42, 43, 80 elected monarchy 117–119 elites 67 Elizabeth II 118 Elkaïm-Sartre, Arlette 128 Ellison, James 24 Empty Chair Crisis, 1965–1966 43 End of History thesis 148, 174 Enemy’s House Divided, The (de Gaulle) 15, 22, 29, 30, 105 English School 177 Enlightenment 13, 172 Enloe, Cynthia 103 Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (Bergson) see Time and Free Will (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience) (Bergson)

202

Index

‘ethnic basis of nations’ (Smith) 64, 66–68 ‘ethnic election’ 70 ‘ethnic myths and symbols’ (Smith) 64, 69–70 ethnie (ethnic group) 66–68, 71 ‘ethno-history’ (Smith) 0–71, 64 ethno-symbolism 57, 61–62; and de Gaulle 3, 13, 14, 23, 57–58, 63, 82–83, 86, 92, 93, 100–106, 107, 109, 151, 171–172, 182, 184; personification of 100–106; Smith’s eight-point analysis 64–72; value of 73–75 Ethno-Symbolism and Nationalism: A Cultural Approach (Smith) 182 EU (European Union) 136, 191, 193; UK decision to leave, 2016 18, 44, 85, 133, 160, 193 European Community: Common Agricultural Policy 43; French rejection of UK entry, 1963 43 European integration 73, 84–85, 169 Euthyphro (Plato) 96 Évian Accords 42 ‘Evil Empire’ 82 existence precedes essence (existentialism) 93, 97–98, 123, 128, 134; and de Gaulle 102–112 existential example of France 10, 13 existentialism 94–100, 167; and de Gaulle 3, 10–11, 13, 14–15, 23, 92, 93, 98, 100, 106–123, 129, 130–131, 132–133, 135–138, 139–145, 148, 149–151, 152–153, 154, 157–159, 160–162, 182–183, 184; negative perceptions of 128–129 Existentialism and Humanism (Sartre, trans. Mairet) 19 Existentialism is a Humanism (Sartre, trans. Macomber) 15, 19, 95, 128–129, 131, 134, 151, 152 Faizullaev, Alisher 172 Farage, Nigel 14 Fear and Trembling (Kierkegaard) 95 Felled Oaks, Conversations with De Gaulle (Les Chênes qu’on abat...) (Malraux) 22, 108, 111 Fenby, Johnathan 12 Fifth Republic 41–45, 118, 168 financial sector, cognitive psychology of 178 Flynn, Thomas 97–98, 99, 100 Foch, Ferdinand 114

force de frappe 12, 42–43, 157 ‘founding myths’ 135 Fourth Republic (1946–1958) 38, 39–40, 41, 118, 144, 153 FPA (foreign policy analysis) 3, 9, 16, 167 France: action of 12; anti-Semitism 27; authenticity 10, 13, 153, 157, 161; bad faith/self-deception 152, 154; de Gaulle’s conception of 59–60, 65–66, 68, 70, 101–123, 130, 170; democracy 38, 41, 78, 184, 188; elected monarchy 117–119; Fifth Republic 41–45, 118, 168; Fourth Republic (1946–1958) 38, 39–40, 41, 118, 144, 153; grandeur 12, 44, 46, 47, 69, 108, 114, 120, 130, 147, 189; independent nuclear deterrent 12, 42–43, 51, 157, 175–176; individuality of 10, 13, 122; Left Wing politics 25; May ’68 riots 46; military strategy 29–30, 34–35, 168; monarchy 114, 115, 116; national security 175–176; nationalism 24; and NATO 13, 45, 51, 84, 130, 142, 157, 176; Presidency 118–119; quietism 147; Right Wing politics 25; Roman occupation period 71, 108, 109, 110, 114, 130; soul of 103–106, 110, 111, 116; sovereignty 68–69, 106, 139–140, 141–142, 175–176; Third Republic (1870–1940) 38, 39, 118; US liberation 37–38; World War II occupation period 9, 22, 27, 34–36, 67, 69, 103–105, 117 France and Her Army (La France et son armée) (de Gaulle) 31, 32, 66, 68, 106 Franco-Prussian conflict 69 Free French 35, 36 Freeden, Michael 76 French Paradox, The (Willis) 24 French Revolution 61, 67, 105, 114–117, 120, 130, 137, 138, 146–147, 187 Front National, France 14 Fukuyama, Francis 148, 174 Fundamental Attribution Error 181 Gallo, Max 11–12 Gates, John A. 137 Gaul 108, 109, 111, 112; Roman occupation period 71, 108, 109, 110, 114, 130 Gaullism: fifth period (post–1969) 45–46; first period (1940-1944) 36–39, 41; founding of 35, 36; fourth period (1962–1969) 43–45; problem with

Index 21–26, 46; second period (1946–1958) 39–41; third period (1958–1962) 41–43 Gay Science, The (Nietzsche) 106 Geertz, Clifford 60 Gellner, Ernest 57, 61, 63 General, The: Charles de Gaulle and the France he Saved (Fenby) 12 Germany: 1918 defeat 29, 105; and Hitler 35–36; tank warfare 31 Gilles, Peter 187 Girard, Patrick 190 Giraud, Henri 35, 36, 37 God, death/non-existence of 134–135, 141, 191 Golden Dawn, Greece 14 Goldstein, J. 173 Gorbachev, Mikhail 8, 123 grandeur 79, 80–81; France 12, 44, 46, 47, 69, 108, 114, 120, 130, 147, 189 Greek philosophy 96, 192 Green, Melanie 179 Grinnell-Milne, Duncan 31 Grosser, Alfred 25, 48 groupthink 178–179 Guesclin, Bertrand de 48 Guichard, Olivier 13, 47, 121, 133 Guineau 85–86 Hallstein Commission, 1965 43 Halo Effect 181 Hamon, Léo 49 Hannibal 112 Harper, John Lamberton 83 Harris, Robin 45 Hartley, Anthony 33, 35 Hassner, Pierre 45 Hegel, G. W. F. 14, 131, 172, 187, 194 Heidegger, Martin 96, 100, 121, 134, 161 herd, the 97, 98, 100, 120, 122; see also individuality Herder, Johann Gottfried 74 ‘hero narrative’ 180 Himmler, Heinrich 37 Histoire de gaullisme (Berstein) 12 history: ‘presence of the past’ 32–33, 34, 66, 74, 135, 167, 174; de Gaulle’s sense of 32–34, 46, 48, 51, 59, 60, 62, 66, 67, 74, 108–109, 113–115, 121, 135, 167, 173; and existentialism 167; study of in IR 168, 169, 173–175 ‘history disease’ 32, 33, 46, 51, 60, 62, 74, 82–83, 86 Hitler, Adolf 8, 35–36, 105 Ho Chi Minh 81

203

Hobbes, Thomas 14, 195 Hobsbawm, Eric 61, 63, 75 Hoffman, Stanley 24, 33, 180 Hofstadter, Richard 69, 174 Homer 186 Hudson, Valerie 7 Hughes, H. Stuart 24 Human Dimension in International Relations, The (Klineberg) 6 Human Nature and the Enduring Peace (Murphy) 6 Hundred Years War 67, 69 Hungary 132 Huntington, Samuel 155 Hureaux, Roland 25, 33, 49, 63, 68 Hussain, Saddam 181–182 Husserl, Edmund 131 Huxley, Aldous 186 ideologies 75, 78–86, 175 Illusion of Control 181 individuality: and existentialism 97–100, 120, 121; of France 10, 13, 122 individuals, in IR (international relations) 2–7, 8, 46, 172 Indo-China 40, 80, 153; see also Vietnam intentionality 131 international system: ‘content’ of 58, 75–86, 87; ‘self-help’ in 175–176; de Gaulle’s perspectives on 58, 74, 80–81, 82–84, 86–87, 136–138 IR (international relations): ‘scientific’ method in 7, 179; American scholarship 173; ‘billiard ball’ model 4; human factor in 6; individuals in 2–7, 8, 46, 172; theories in 3, 5, 7, 9, 46, 161, 168, 169, 174, 175–177, 178 Iraq 8, 9, 45, 82, 171, 181–182, 188 Irving, Washington 188 Islamic State 174 Island (Huxley) 186 Israel 45, 85 Ivory Coast 85–86 J’accuse...! (Zola) 27 Jackson, Julian 28, 30–31, 32, 33, 40–41, 43, 65, 79, 175–176, 180, 189 Jackson, Patrick T. 170 Janis, Irving 178–179 Jaspers, Karl 95, 134 Joachim of Fiore 187 Joffre, Joseph 119 Johnson, D. 103, 105 Johnson, Lyndon 80, 176

204

Index

Johnson, Samuel 186 Joireman, Sandra Fullerton 60 Jospin, Lionel 60 Just-World Fallacy 181 Kagan, Robert 17, 82, 150, 159, 174 Kahneman, Danial 178 Kamber, Richard 97 Kandiyoti, Deniz 103 Kant, Immanuel 13, 14, 195 Kennan, George 22–23, 79 Kennedy, Ellen 33 Kennedy, John F. 80–81, 178–179 Keohane, R. 173 Kérillis, H. de 24 Kierkegaard, Søren 95, 106, 122, 134, 137 Kissinger, Henry 10, 81, 132, 167, 174, 176 Kjellen, R. 182 Klineberg, Otto 6 Kohn, Hans 57, 60, 63 Kristol, William 159 Kumar, Krishnan 186, 187 L’actualité de gaullisme (Hureaux) 49 L’Être et le néant: Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique (Sartre) see Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Ontological Phenomenology (L’Être et le néant: Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique) (Sartre) L’Évolution créatrice (Bergson) see Creative Evolution (L’Évolution créatrice) (Bergson) L’existentialisme est un humanisme (Sartre) 19 L’Homme révolté (Camus) see Rebel, The (L’Homme révolté) (Camus) La France et son armée (de Gaulle) see France and Her Army (La France et son armée) (de Gaulle) la longue durée (‘time dimension of many centuries’) (Smith) 64, 65–66 Lacouture, Jean 11–12, 15, 16, 26, 33, 66, 77, 78, 106, 175 Lacroix-Riz, Annie 37–38 Larivé, Maxime H. A. 171–172 Last Great Frenchman, The (Williams) 12 ‘law of silence’ 40 Lawson, George 173 Le Bihan, Adrien 26 Le Fil de l’épée (de Gaulle) see Edge of the Sword, The (Le Fil de l’épée) (de Gaulle)

leaders 8; ‘evil’ 181–182; personalities of 6 League of Nations 75 Leibniz, G. W. 8, 13, 114 Lenin, Vladimir 1, 105, 185 Leopardi, Giacomo 190 Les Chênes qu’on abat... (Malraux) see Felled Oaks, Conversations with De Gaulle (Les Chênes qu’on abat...) (Malraux) Les Droits en France (Rémond) 25 les Forces Françaises Libres 35 Lester, John 24 Levitas, Ruth 187 liberal nationalism 47 liberalism 79, 136, 161, 174, 190, 195 Libya 171 Lipset, Seymour Martin 154–155 logical fallacies 178; see also cognitive biases Long Telegram, The (Kennan) 22, 79 ‘longevity of nationalism’ (Smith) 64, 72 Louis XVI 114, 115, 116 MacMillan, Harold 141 Macomber, Carol 15, 19 Macridis, Roy C. 49, 153 MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) 122 Madagascar 40 Maginot Line 29, 34 Maillot family 27 Mairet, Philip 19 Maistre, Joseph de 115 Malraux, André 2, 21–22, 23–24, 25, 32–33, 46–47, 48, 60, 66, 67, 69, 74, 79, 103, 104, 106, 111, 115, 116, 133, 150, 184, 189 Man-Milieu Relationship Hypothesis in the Context of International Poltics (Sprout and Sprout) 6 Mangold, Peter 25 Manifest Destiny 159 Mao Tse-tung 153 Marcel, Gabriel 134 Martel, Charles 130 Marx, Karl 76, 186, 187, 194 Marxism 22–23, 148–149 Massu, Jacques 40 Matière et Mémoire (Bergson) see Matter and Memory (Matière et Mémoire) (Bergson) Matrix, The 95 Matter and Memory (Matière et Mémoire) (Bergson) 33–34

Index Mauretania 85–86 ‘mauvaise foi’ see bad faith (existentialism) May ’68 riots 46 Mayeur, Jean-Marie 28 McCarthyism 78 McCloskey, H. J. 173, 182 McRaney, David 178–179, 180 Mearsheimer, John 4–5, 136 Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavour (de Gaulle) 17, 40, 47–48, 59, 67, 70, 79, 84, 108, 109, 117, 120 Men Like Gods (Wells) 186 Mendès France, Pierre 41, 42 mental heuristics 178; see also cognitive biases Michelet, Jules 115, 146 military power 10, 122 Milton, John 185 ‘missionary election’ 69, 70 Mitterand, François 41, 45, 166 modernism 57, 61, 62, 63, 65 Monnet, Jean 85 Monroe Doctrine 159 moral suicide 22, 37, 69, 105 More, Thomas 186–188 Morgenthau, Hans 6 MRP (Mouvement Républicain Populaire) 38 Murphy, Gardener 6 ‘myth of ethnic descent’ (Smith) 69 myth-engines 71 mythical figures 1–2 Myths and Memories of the Nation (Smith) 10, 64–72, 182 Nadeau, Jean-Benoît 119 Nagel, Thomas 96 Napoléon III 119 Napoleonic Wars 69, 75 narrative bias 179–181 ‘nation-building’ 45, 188 ‘national existence’ 103 national moral suicide 22, 37, 69, 105 ‘National Past, Present and Future’ (Smith) 64, 66 National Security Through a Cockeyed Lens: How Cognitive Bias Impacts U.S. Foreign Policy (Yetiv) 6 nationalism 44, 45, 57–58, 72, 106, 131, 133; Anglo-American literature 58; and de Gaulle 12–13, 25, 46–47, 51, 57, 62–73, 62–75, 76–77, 182; and ethno-symbolism 57, 61–62, 63, 64–75;

205

and modernism 57, 61, 62, 63, 65; negative connotations 14; and perennialism 64; and primordialism 57, 60–61, 62, 63–64; Smith’s core nationalist doctrine 76–77 Nationalism and Modernism (Smith) 62 nations 14, 48; and de Gaulle 10–11, 21, 44–45, 46, 47–50, 51, 57, 59–60, 64, 72, 77–87, 86, 87, 93, 100–106, 122–123, 130–131, 132–133, 171, 172–173, 182, 184; gendering of 102–103; Westphalian 17, 175, 176–177 Nations and Nationalism (Gellner) 61 Nations Before Nationalism (Armstrong) 71 NATO 144; and France 13, 45, 51, 84, 130, 142, 157, 176 Nausea (Sartre) 95 negativity 189 neoconservatism 23 neoliberalism 3, 173 neorealism 3, 4–6, 8–9.10, 96, 136, 173, 177 New Atlantis (Bacon) 186 Nietzsche, Friedrich 15, 29, 95, 96, 97, 100, 106, 121, 122, 134, 148, 161, 189, 191, 192, 194, 195 Niger 85–86 nihilism 189, 191 Nixon Doctrine 81, 132, 169 ‘No True Scotsman’ Fallacy 179 nothingness (existentialism) 131–132 nuclear weapons: France 12, 42–43, 51, 157, 175–176; UK 149; US 175–176 NWO (New World Order) 75 OAS (Organisation of the Secret Army/ Organisation de l’armée secrete) 42 Obama, Barack 6, 160, 193 Odo the Great 67 Odyssey (Homer) 186 Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (Kagan) 17 ‘operational codes’ 3, 13, 167, 180–181; see also belief systems Ortega y Gasset, José 195 Orwell, George 186 Other, The (existentialism) 15, 129, 131–133, 151, 161, 172 Outsider, The (Camus) 95 Özkirimli, Umut 57, 60–62, 71

206

Index

Palestine 45, 85, 130 Paris Commune 67 Pascal, Blaise 48 PCF (Parti communiste français) 38, 78 Pedley, Alan 26 Pegida, Germany 14 Perception Bias 181 perennialism 64 pessimism 16, 184, 188–195, 190–191, 194–195 Pétain, Philippe 9, 22, 28, 29, 35, 36, 37, 40, 103, 104, 119 Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel) 131 philosophy 96, 97; Greek 96, 192; see also existentialism physics 7 Pickles, Dorothy 25 Pilsudski, J. 63 Plato 96, 186 Poincaré, Raymond 189 Poland 5, 29, 104 Polaris nuclear missile system 149 Politics Among Nations (Morgenthau) 6 Pollard, Sidney 192 Polybius 111, 112 polytheism 136 Ponge, Francis 139 post-revolutionary societies 188 Pouget, Jean 28–29 ‘presence of the past’ 32–33, 34, 66, 74, 135, 167, 174 Priest, Stephen 97 primordialism 57, 60–61, 62, 63–64 progress 183, 190, 192–193, 195 Provisional Government of France 38–39 Prussia 5 Putin, Vladimir 6, 105, 181 Qu-est-ce qu’une nation? (Renan) see What is a Nation? (Qu-est-ce qu’une nation?) (Renan) ‘quantum analysis’, state as 170 ‘quantum individualism’ 8 quietism 146–147 Rasselas (Johnson) 186 RCT (rational choice theory) 5–6, 178, 179 Reagan, Ronald 82, 123, 180 realism 136, 161, 177, 190, 195 Rebel, The (L’Homme révolté) (Camus) 115–116, 137 religion: of de Gaulle 28; death of 95, 96, 97, 106; and existentialism 95

Rémond, René 25 Renan, Ernest 58–59 Republic (Plato) 186 Return of History and the End of Dreams, The (Kagan) 174 revolutions 146–148; see also American Revolution; French Revolution; Russian Revolution Ringmar, Erik 169–170, 182 Rioux, Jean-Pierre 39, 41 Rivers, Mendel 12 Robespierre, Maximilien 114, 115, 116 Rokeach, Milton 180 Roman occupation of France 71, 108, 109, 110, 114, 130 Romania 132 Roosevelt, Franklin 1, 35, 37, 38, 79, 117, 149 ‘roots to nationhood’ (Smith) 64, 71–72 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 48, 195 RPF (le Rassemblement du Peuple Français) 39, 41 Rumsfeld, Donald 23 Russia 105, 173–174, 185; authenticity 153, 158–159, 161; bad faith/selfdeception 152, 154, 155–157; and China 153–154, 157–158; and de Gaulle 73, 79–80, 81, 83, 86–87, 120, 130, 132, 143; see also Soviet Union Russian Revolution 147, 156 Saint Just, Louis Antoine de 114, 115 Saint Louis 67 Saint-Cyr 28, 29 Saint-Simon, Henri 186, 187 ‘salience of the actor’ 181 Salvation (de Gaulle) see War Memoirs, Salvation, 1944–1946 (de Gaulle) Sarkozy, Nicholas 26 Sartre, Jean-Paul 10–11, 13, 15, 17, 78–79, 93, 94–95, 96, 97–98, 99–101, 121, 122, 123, 128–129, 131–132, 143, 160–161, 183, 184; and 145–146, 147–148, 149, 150; and abandonment 134–135; and anguish 138–139, 141; and bad faith 151–152, 153, 154, 155, 156–157, 159; translations of works 18, 19; see also existentialism scepticism 190 Schopenhauer, Arthur 190, 194, 195 Scruton, Roger 193 Second Punic War 112 ‘security dilemma’ 10

Index self-deception (existentialism) 151; see also bad faith (existentialism) self-determination 41, 44, 72, 77, 85, 156, 193; see also sovereignty self-help 175–176 Senegal 85–86 Serfaty, Simon 49 SFIO (Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière) 38 Shakespeare, William 143 Shennan, Andrew 191 Shils, Edward 57, 60, 63 Shinn, Roger L. 95 Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: What Makes the French so French (Nadeau and Barlow) 119 Skinner, Quintin 4, 170 Smith, Anthony 10, 17, 60; core nationalist doctrine 76–77; ethno-symbolism 14, 51, 57, 61–62, 64–72, 73–74, 93, 182 Snyder, Richard 6 soul, of France 103–106, 110, 111, 116 Sources of Soviet Conduct, The (‘X’) 22 sovereignty 10, 136; China 158; France 68–69, 106, 139–140, 141–142, 175–176; UK 153, 169; Westphalian system of nations 176–177 Soviet Union 105, 117–118, 177; Cold War period 144–145, 149–150; and Cuba 9, 179; disintegration of 75; foreign policy under Stalin 22–23; nuclear conflict with 42–43; see also Russia Sowerwine, Charles 38 Spencer, Herbert 186 Spinoza, B. 13 Sprout, Harold 6 Sprout, Margret 6 Stalin, Joseph 22–23, 79, 189 states: study of in IR 3, 4–6, 7–10, 168, 169–173; see also nations Stirner, Max 191 Stranger than Fiction 95 Strategic Defense Initiative 123 structural realism 3, 8, 9; see also neorealism; realism Sudan 85–86 suicide: de Gaulle’s suicidal impulses 190; national moral suicide 22, 37, 69, 105 Sunk Cost Fallacy 181 ‘super organism’, state as 170 Syria 171

207

Talmon, J. L. 119 Taming of the West 159 tank warfare 30–31, 168 Texas sharpshooter effect 6 Thatcher, Margaret 1 Theories of Nationalism (Özkirimli) 57 Theories of Nationalism (Smith) 76–77 Theory of International Politics (Waltz) 4 Third Republic (1870–1940) 38, 39, 118 Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) 75, 176; see also Westphalian system Thought and Change (Gellner) 61 Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche) 106 Tidd, Ursula 132 Time and Free Will (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience) (Bergson) 33–34 Time magazine 12 Tocqueville, Alexis de 16–17 Todd, Oliver 112 ‘totalitarian democracy’ 119 Touchard, Jean 25 Tournoux, Jean-Raymond 190 Towards an Army of the Future (Vers une armée de métier) (de Gaulle) 30–31, 32, 67, 70–71, 106–107 Tragedy of Great Power Politics, The (Mearsheimer) 4–5 Trail of Tears 159 translations 17–19 ‘Trojan horses’, of the US 43 Truman, Harry 18, 38, 80, 83 Turner, Paul 186–187 Tversky, Amos 178 Twenty Years’ Crisis, The (Carr) 6 Übermensch 15, 29 UK (United Kingdom): ‘Special Relationship’ with US 140–141, 149, 150, 153, 160; as an American ‘Trojan horse’ 43; bad faith/self-deception 152, 153, 154, 160; Cold War period 140–141, 149, 150; and de Gaulle 66, 85, 142; decision to leave EU 18, 44, 85, 133, 160, 193; quietism 149, 150; rejection of European Community entry, 1963 43; sovereignty 153, 169 UKIP, UK 14 United Nations 136, 137, 144, 189, 191 Unity see War Memoirs: Unity, 1942–1944 (de Gaulle) UNR (l’Union pour la nouvelle République) 41 Upper Volga 85–86

208

Index

US (United States of America) 6; and ‘evil’ world leaders 181–182; ‘Trojan horses’ 43; bad faith/self-deception 152, 153, 154–155, 159–160; Cold War period 23, 50, 79, 144–145, 149–150, 157; and de Gaulle 12, 16–17, 24, 37–38, 44–45, 50–51, 78, 82, 83, 120, 142, 175–176, 181, 182; democracy 16, 155; and Europe 83; Iraq War, 2003 8, 9, 82; nuclear weapons 175–176; political optimism 16–17, 192; post 9/11 interventions 171; UK’s ‘Special Relationship’ with 140–141, 149, 150, 153, 160 Utopia (More) 186–188 utopianism 184, 185–188 Vaïsse, Maurice 25 Vaughan, Michaela 25 Vercingétorix 48, 60, 109, 111, 116, 130, 135 Vers une armée de métier (de Gaulle) see Towards an Army of the Future (Vers une armée de métier) (de Gaulle) Vhalos, Michael 49–50 Viansson-Ponté, Pierre 45, 46 Vichy France see France, World War II occupation period Vietnam War 9, 45, 51, 80–81, 87, 169 Vincent, Andrew 173, 182 Virtuti Militari 29 Voltaire 48 Walby, Sylvia 103 Waltz, Kenneth 4, 136, 174

War Memoirs (de Gaulle) 39–40; The Appeal, 1940–1942 17; The Call to Honour 1940–1942 101, 102; Salvation, 1944–1946 17, 39, 59, 63, 67, 118; Unity, 1942–1944 17 Warsaw Pact 144 Wartenberg, Thomas E. 95, 98, 99–100, 113 Watson, Jonathan 25 Wells, H. G. 186 Wendt, Alexander 3, 7, 8, 46, 60–61, 114, 123, 169, 170, 173, 177, 178, 182 Werth, Alexander 3 West Germany: as an American ‘Trojan horse’ 43; see also Germany West, the: as a concept 49–50, 82, 84; ‘nation-building’ interventions 45, 188; post 9/11 interventions 171, 181–182 Westphalian system 17, 175, 176–177 What is a Nation? (Qu-est-ce qu’une nation?) (Renan) 58–59 Williams, Andrew 75 Williams, Charles 12, 33 Willis, F. Roy 24 Winthrop, John 154 Wolfowitz, Paul 23 World War I 75; de Gaulle’s service 28–29; German defeat 29, 105 Yetiv, Steven 6 Yuval-Davis, Nira 103 Zhenbao Island 158 Žižek, Slazoj 76 Zola, Émile 27, 48