ABSTRACT
The crisis continued with the controversy over the Multilateral Force and the European empty chair crisis, only to culminate in the French withdrawal from North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) military integration in 1966. During the 1965 empty chair crisis, President de Gaulle prevented the European Economic Community from moving to a system of majority voting on most issues. The Gaullist-Atlanticist crisis provided the social democratic party with an excellent opportunity to prove that it had become a reliable supporter of the Atlantic alliance. The NATO crisis also led to greater flexibility on the part of the most important congressional representative in the nuclear question, joint atomic energy committee Chairman Chet Holifield. A solution to the nuclear problem finally seemed in sight, although it would take another serious crisis in confidence between the US and Germany over non-proliferation and the matter of offset agreements and US troops in Germany before an agreement could be reached in 1967.
