Kennedy, de Gaulle, and Western Europe. By Erin R. Mahan. (New York: Palgrave, 2002. viii, 229 pp. $65.00, ISBN 0-333-98457-9.)

Abstract

At a time when U.S.-European relations are at a low ebb, it is helpful to be reminded just how many previous crises the Western alliance has weathered. From early debates about the occupation of Germany through crises over the Suez Canal, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (nato), economic problems, and nuclear strategy right up to the more recent alliance debates over Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq, the alliance has since its inception in 1949 always been in a state of semi-crisis. Yet no one person proved so nettlesome an ally for the United States as the French president Charles de Gaulle, who from 1958 until his resignation in 1969 seemed to take particular pleasure in irritating his American partners. Many American government officials deeply resented him for doing so, but Erin R. Mahan shows us in this short monograph that de Gaulle's policies were not the result of Gallic pique or an ill temper, but were calculated choices designed to enhance French power and take advantage of American vulnerabilities within the alliance.