Atlantis Lost: The American Experience with De Gaulle, 1958-1969, by Sebastian Reyn

Abstract

The historiography on United States–French relations during the de Gaulle era is a crowded field. But Sebastian Reyn, a Dutch defence official as well as an impressive scholar, has produced an extremely important book. Rather than the exhaustively-mined French angle, he focuses on the less excavated theme of US perceptions and policies. In contrast to most other works on the American side, he also covers the whole of the de Gaulle presidency from 1958 to 1969, having undertaken research into four different administrations: those of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. And, above all, he explores the US response in impressive detail, adding layers of complexity and nuance to a range of familiar issues and crises. The book comprises six chronologically organised chapters. Reyn begins with Eisenhower’s and Kennedy’s reactions to de Gaulle’s ‘Tripartite’ Memorandum proposal between 1958 and 1962. He emphasises how seriously both US administrations took de Gaulle’s challenge; but he also stresses that neither president was prepared to countenance de Gaulle’s push for a major NATO overhaul, partly because both men thought it would undermine the alliance at a particularly dangerous point in the Cold War and partly because de Gaulle’s tactics seemed to suggest that he was not really serious. Reyn then devotes two chapters solely to the Kennedy years. The first simply explores Kennedy’s Atlanticist vision; but the second is crucial, for Reyn emphasises how important de Gaulle’s rejection of this vision was to the unfolding of the attitudes of the United States towards Western Europe—undermining the idea that the two ‘were part of a budding Atlantic community in which political and institutional ties were to become ever tighter’ (p. 374). Chapter Four then explores Johnson’s key role in the demise of the Multilateral Force, especially his acute awareness of the political costs of this initiative at a time when the Vietnam crisis had become his central preoccupation. But the end of the ‘last Atlantic project’ was by no means the end of the United States’ problems with de Gaulle. In Chapter Five, Reyn looks at the most visible crisis of the relationship: de Gaulle’s 1966 decision to end French military participation in NATO. The final chapter then explores the rapidly changing context of the relationship, as the US position in Vietnam deteriorated and Nixon came to office with a desire not only to pursue détente but also to listen to a French leader whose style, wisdom, and political philosophy he admired.