France, Europe, and ‘The Design of the World’ 1974–7

Abstract

'He that seeketh to be eminent amongst able men/ Bacon said, 'hath great risk; but that is ever good for the public.' It is surprising how often the proof of this proposition seems obscure at the time. The intent is clear, and the public apparently favourable. But circumstances are dubious, and the verdict is uncertain. In the case of Vatery Giscard d'Estaing it all began in a mood of hopefulness. Soon after walking down the street into the Elys£e as third president of the Fifth Republic, he spoke of hoping to change, if only imperceptibly, 'the design of the world/ Yet already, by the date of Georges Pompidou's death in April 1974, the economic and financial disorder provoked by the American war in Southeast Asia, the Yom Kippur war, and the energy crisis precipitated by the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries and the Seven Sisters had reached Europe. Giscard's ambition, even so cautiously phrased, seemed less likely to be realized than it might have half a dozen years earlier. And even then, if it was Charles de Gaulle's accomplishment to have insisted successfully on the pluralism of the international system, it is questionable what larger prospects his actions had opened up to France. The General manoeuvred against the Soviet-American 'hegemony' to the end. To this purpose he was planning a visit to China. But in the events of 1968 his domestic support faded away, and he took his exit the next year. So it was Richard Nixon who landed in Peking, on 21 February 1972, to propose, with characteristic inappropriateness, 'a long march together/ The Americans stole the show. Pompidou's China visit the following year was anti-