86 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
American policy. The earlier priority on both sides had been to build
up stockpiles of strategic weapons that could be fired at each other
across the Atlantic. As America and the USSR installed new inter-
mediate types of ballistic missile just hundreds of miles from the Iron
Curtain, there was discussion about the possibility of confining a
nuclear war to the European continent. West European leaders feared
that this could lead to a weakening of the American guarantee of
all-out retaliation in the event of a Soviet offensive – and Reagan’s
pas sionate espousal of his Strategic Defense Initiative served to
increase such an attitude.
France formed the core of West Europe’s awkward squad. Trouble
had occurred throughout the ten years from 1959 when Charles de
Gaulle was President. In 1966 he went so far as to withdraw France
from NATO’s integrated command structure; he also expelled NATO
from its headquarters at Fontainebleau. What lay behind his policy
was a determination to retain French freedom of action. De Gaulle
reasoned that his armed forces had their own nuclear weapons which
could independently deter a Soviet attack. With military sang froid, he
could see no national interest in defending West Germany against an
East German assault. His dislike of France’s subordination to any for-
eign power was shared by his successors regardless of party and
ideology. They devised a hybrid approach to the other Western powers.
They publicly emphasized French sovereignty while retaining mem-
bership of the alliance’s political bodies and contributing to their
deliberations. They also made overtures to the USSR independently
of American wishes. De Gaulle had a vision of a ‘Europe from the
Atlantic to the Urals’. Implicitly he seemed to aspire to a warming of
relations with the Soviet Union. But neither he nor any later French
President did this at the expense of a rupture of ties with Washington.
At root, Gaullism was more show than reality at acute moments of
East–West tension.
West Germany, whose eastern border was shared with a line of
communist states, never snubbed its nose at the Americans after the
French fashion. The post-war arrangements left NATO bases in a large
number of places, and it was obvious to most citizens that without
them, Bonn would be helpless against a Soviet-led invasion. The threat
of the SS-20s was bad enough. But there was also the danger repre-
sented by the huge size of Soviet and allied forces in Eastern Europe.
Every NATO power in Western Europe felt trepidation since the
Warsaw Pact held its forces in an essentially offensive disposition.