President de Gaulle and the Mésentente Cordiale

Gaullist thinking about international relations takes place within a framework of geopolitical determinism and historical fatalism: but its substance is the product of certain basic beliefs about the nation-state that rests mainly on personal experience. In respect, as in others, de Gaulle contrives to endow his personal beliefs and policies with an appearance of universal validity and eternal truth. To analyse his attitudes towards Britain it is more than usually necessary to distinguish between the context and the content of his thought. His Memoires de guerre are full of examples of how the two constantly interacted. In the anxious interlude between Dunkirk and the battle of Britain he and Churchill would debate the chances of the United States entering the war. They agreed in deducing from the events of 1940 this commonplace but positive conclusion: when all is said and done, Britain is an island; France the cape of a continent; America another world. The occasion for conclusion was an argument about whether Churchill had been right or wrong to refuse to send more fighter aircraft across the Channel in the later stages of the battle of France. His refusal, followed by the tragic naval action at Mers el Kebir, first taught de Gaulle that Britain's defence needs as an island would always win top priority.1 Likewise, in his comments on the entry of the Soviet Union and the United States, he saw allies presented to Britain and France by the follies of the enemy, not powers whose geographic or historic interests had drawn them together as natural allies. Whereas the Moscow radio had not ceased, up to the very moment when German tanks crossed the Russian frontier, to pour out invective against the 'English imperialists' and 'their

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