When US President Donald Trump reopened the possibility that the USA might seek to annexe Greenland, France’s President Emmanuel Macron was repeatedly urged to ‘find his inner De Gaulle’ — even by The Local’s columnist John Lichfield on a recent podcast.
It's far from an isolated example, French leaders over the decades have repeatedly been urged to, or praised for, 'channelling De Gaulle' when it comes to trans-Atlantic dealings.
Listen to the team at The Local discuss France's complicated military history with the USA in the latest episode of the Talking France podcast - download here or listen on the link below
But what does that actually mean? What did De Gaulle really do/say to the USA? And did the General have some sort of mysterious hold over America’s historic leaders?
De Gaulle I and II
There are, essentially, two parts to Charles de Gaulle's political career - beginning in 1940 with the fall of France.
Until then a general in the French army, unknown outside France and not very well known within it, De Gaulle fled to London and established himself the leader of the French resistance.
He spoke to his own people remotely, via the medium of clandestine radio broadcasts, but had direct in-person dealings with other Allied leaders, including British prime minister Winston Churchill and the American presidents Franklin D Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
Once WWII was over and the government fully re-established in France, De Gaulle retired from politics, only to return as French president in 1959. He remained in power until 1969, navigating France through the tricky early years of the Cold War.
Relations with American presidents
His two-part career meant that De Gaulle had direct dealings with six American presidents, and his success rate with them was decided mixed; Franklin D Roosevelt did not trust him; Harry Truman tolerated him; relationships with Dwight Eisenhower were cordial, even friendly; but they were strained with John F Kennedy; Lyndon Johnson hated him because he refused to toe the line on Vietnam; and he got on fine with Richard Nixon.
But his relationship with the list of presidents he had dealings with prompted one historian to write a book called Charles de Gaulle: A Thorn in the Side of Six American Presidents — the title alone should give a pretty strong indication of his relationships with the heads of the US executive branch.
It's fair to say that it's not only Americans that De Gaulle had problems with - a notoriously prickly character, he was prone to falling out with colleagues and allies and had endless bust-ups with Churchill and other British politicians during his time in London.
He was also thin-skinned - De Gaulle never forgave Roosevelt for favouring other French wartime leaders over him and then for largely excluding him from post-war planning with Churchill and Stalin — including not being invited to key summit meetings at Tehran, Yalta or Potsdam — and for being ignored by the US State Department at the time.
Post-war years
Franco-American relations waxed and waned over time during de Gaulle's presidency. They were generally good with Eisenhower, due to their shared past and views on the prospect of the Soviet threat.
But De Gaulle’s insistence on rebuilding post-war France as a global power when he became President under the then-new Fifth Republic in 1958 consistently set him at odds with US leaders.
In November 1959, De Gaulle insisted that "the defence of France must be French".
The last American troops left French soil in 1968 and to this day France does not have an American military presence on its soil, in contrast to the US's defeated former foe Germany and wartime ally the UK.
De Gaulle's policy also meant a French-controlled nuclear deterrent, rather than US ones on French soil. He would later cite the Cuban missile crisis as evidence that concentrating the world’s nuclear arsenal in too few hands was dangerous.
De Gaulle doubled down on his nuclear ambition in April 1965, telling the French people in a national address that, “from a security point of view, our independence requires, in the atomic age in which we live, that we have the means to deter a possible aggressor ourselves, without prejudice to our alliances but without our allies holding our destiny in their hands.”
These days France is generally described as being Europe's only fully unilateral nuclear power, since the UK's nuclear arsenal is heavily inter-connected with America.
Separate spheres
But it's perhaps less what he did and more what he said that cemented De Gaulle's reputation as 'the thorn in American's side'.
It's worth noting that he forever insisted: “I am not anti-American because I do not currently always support the Americans.”
Disagreements with the US continued deep into the 1960s, mostly over the future of Europe and the shape of the post-war world.
In 1962, De Gaulle called for Europe to work towards a future free, as much as possible, from US involvement.
Kennedy and his diplomats had been pushing for a trans-Atlantic partnership as part of a broader economic and political community. The French leader’s antipathy towards US-friendly Britain’s membership of what was then the EEC (later the EU) was very much linked to his wish for a mostly autonomous Europe.
In July 1964, he insisted: “Europe appears as an entity capable of living its own life because it is full of values and resources. Capable of living its own life. Not, of course, in opposition to the New World, but rather alongside it.”
Students of modern France will recognise that this sentiment remains strong in France - it's in everything from president Jacques Chirac's refusal to join the US-led invasion of Iraq to the endless (probably doomed) attempts to resist the creeping tide of anglicisms into French language.
Macron himself, although not a leader who is hostile to the US, has channelled this spirit with his repeated calls for European 'strategic autonomy' and desire to build Europe into a block capable of defending itself without depending on America.
The problem, of course, is that Macron isn’t De Gaulle, this isn’t the 1950s and 1960s, and Donald Trump isn’t Kennedy. Or Eisenhower. Or Roosevelt. Or Truman. Or Johnson. Or even Nixon.
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