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France and the Leadership of the West in the 1950s: A Story of Disenchantment

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Securing Peace in Europe, 1945–62

Part of the book series: St Antony’s/Macmillan Series ((STANTS))

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Abstract

During the 1950s successive French governments made great efforts to develop French foreign policy and to project world-wide an image of French dynamism. Yet while in the late Fourth Republic French efforts were aimed at trying to give France power, influence and status by working within NATO and through European integration, French security policy in the Gaullist era was marked by France developing her independent deterrent and withdrawing from the NATO integration. This change of policies can be understood much better if it is explained as a change of means: in the 1950s France had sought power and status within international organisations and more often than not, had failed to find it.

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Notes

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© 1992 Macmillan Academic and Professional Ltd

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Bossuat, G. (1992). France and the Leadership of the West in the 1950s: A Story of Disenchantment. In: Heuser, B., O’Neill, R. (eds) Securing Peace in Europe, 1945–62. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21810-3_6

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