ABSTRACT
The attempt by the President of Fifth French Republic, General Charles de Gaulle, to achieve for his country the leadership of a European Europe free from American influence, to force the reform of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and to secure the leading voice in European détente, reached its height from 1965 to 1967.1 To the United States government of President Lyndon B. Johnson, these actions amounted to a full challenge to American leadership of the West and American tutelage over Western Europe’s future relationship with Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In rising to de Gaulle’s challenge, and ultimately directing its defeat, Johnson invigorated America’s European policies. On 7 October 1966 in the key speech of his presidency on US policy towards the Atlantic Alliance and Europe, he called for movement ‘ahead on three fronts: [f]irst, to modernise NATO and strengthen other Atlantic alliances; [s]econd, to further the integration of the Western European community; [t]hird, to quicken progress in East-West relations.’2 In this speech, Johnson did not simply uphold the formula of Atlantic partnership and European integration which had been the basis of US policies from the 1950s; he also adapted it to incorporate a new emphasis on détente with the East. Furthermore, during 1966 and 1967 his government presided over the evolution of NATO from an institution dedicated to defence of the West to one which was also dedicated to détente with the East. Johnson did not utter the words détente, entente, coopération, but to all intents and purposes he had appropriated them from de Gaulle.
