When I asked him about the Communist Chinese, he said he had “no illusions about their ideology,” but urged that the United States should not “leave them isolated in their rage.” He had expressed the same view to me in 1963, and his thinking paralleled my own. I told him that in pursuing talks with the Russians I might also want “to keep an anchor to windward with respect to China.” I added, “In ten years, when China has made significant nuclear progress, we will have no choice. It is vital that we have more communications with them than we have today.” De Gaulle agreed and put a clever rhetorical twist on it. “It would be better,” he said, “for you to recognize China before you are obliged to do so by the growth of China.”
De Gaulle had little use for the United Nations, which he once contemptuously described to me as “le machin,” Churchill’s attitude toward the U.N. was very similar to de Gaulle’s. The British leader once told me, “No great nation can allow an issue involving its very survival to be decided by other nations.” De Gaulle once told Eisenhower, “You are very much for the United Nations because you still control it, but with this ‘flowering of independences,’ which you and the Soviet Union are pushing for entirely different reasons, soon you will no longer control it.” He went on to say that the Soviets supported anticolonial movements to create and exploit vacuums of power and the United States did likewise because it lived “under the illusion that George Washington was an Indian chief who drove out the British landlords.”
With the world’s two most powerful countries pressing for an end to colonial rule, he predicted to Eisenhower, “You will lose control of the United Nations to the developing countries and the city-states, who will inevitably be easily manipulated by the Soviet Union, but by that time you will have made such a golden calf out of the U.N. that, when the day comes that they order you to do something which is contrary to common sense and the interests of the United States, you will have no choice but to obey.” Though an overstatement with regard to America’s willingness to bow to the U.N., it was a prophetic analysis of the problems that would develop within the United Nations.
We spent a great deal of time discussing Vietnam in 1967 and 1969. In 1967 he advised me that as a presidential candidate I should advocate an early end to the war on the best possible terms. Unlike Adenauer, de Gaulle believed that the Soviet Union wanted to end the war in Indochina. He told me that in a meeting Kosygin had lamented the problems the war caused the Soviet Union. He said the Soviet leader smashed his fist into the palm of his other hand and said, “You don’t know how much trouble this war in Southeast Asia causes in the Russian budget.”
I believe that de Gaulle’s usually keen judgment was faulty on this issue. He believed that one of the greatest responsibilities of a leader is to keep the economy sound, keep inflation down, and retain a sound currency; he seemed to think that the Soviet leaders would look at their problems in a similar way. I did not believe that was the case then, and I do not believe that is the case now. Budget problems do concern the leaders of the Soviet Union. But the pursuit of their expansionist goals takes precedence over domestic economic problems, for they can simply turn a deaf ear to the grumbling of their populace.
In my meetings with de Gaulle in 1969, he urged that the United States withdraw from Vietnam, but not precipitously—not “en catastrophe,” as he put it. He recognized the political difficulties withdrawal would present for me. He contended that his “cruel” decision to withdraw from Algeria—“a part of France”—had been even more difficult, but added that it had been the only course open to him.
He believed the United States had to disencumber itself of Vietnam in order to negotiate successfully with the Soviets. To an extent de Gaulle was right: Our relations with the Soviets would have been much less complicated without the war in Vietnam. But whether a simple pullout would have improved the negotiating climate is another question. Shortly before the first Moscow summit in 1972, North Vietnam launched a massive assault in the south. Most experts advised that any strong American countermove would torpedo the summit. I rejected this advice and ordered the bombing of Hanoi and the mining of Haiphong Harbor. This was language the Russians understood, and far from torpedoing the summit, I am convinced that it increased their eagerness to go forward.
While I did not always agree with de Gaulle, I was always deeply impressed by him. During those three days of meetings, he spoke without a note in front of him and without advisers beside him. No leader I met could surpass his remarkable ability to discuss any subject or any part of the world with such competence, intelligence, and at times profound insight.
After our meeting in Paris in February 1969, I saw de Gaulle again a month later when he flew across the Atlantic to join in a last tribute to his friend and wartime ally Eisenhower, who had died on March 28. We met for an hour in the White House and discussed recent international developments.
De Gaulle again urged that I take steps to put an end to the Vietnam War as quickly as possible. On the other hand, he recognized that our withdrawal from Vietnam should not be precipitous, but rather should be orderly and planned. He was convinced that the power and prestige of the United States could be greatly increased and confidence in it throughout the world would be renewed once we brought the war to an end.
I told him of our plans to initiate a withdrawal program and said that we were already in secret contact with the North Vietnamese. I added that we believed that negotiations would succeed only if they were private. He said that the North Vietnamese had given the French an indication that they might be amenable to private negotiations to try to end the war. In retrospect I believe this meeting laid the groundwork for Kissinger’s secret trips to Paris, which resulted four years later in the Paris Peace Agreement and the end of American involvement in Vietnam. Without the assistance of President Pompidou, de Gaulle’s successor, and the French government, the negotiations could not have been carried to a successful conclusion.
De Gaulle was greatly concerned about a British-German agreement to produce enriched uranium by the ultracentrifuge process. I told him that I felt that Franco-German reconciliation was one of the greatest achievements of his presidency; many people had believed that it could not be done, but he had made it a reality.
He appreciated the compliment, but spoke with pragmatic candor about his decision to proceed with rapprochement and cooperation with Adenauer, despite the misgivings he had about the Germans generally. While he recognized the “tremendous vitality, drive, and capacity of the Germans” and that they had a certain “bonhomie,” he had proceeded with the reconciliation cautiously because he felt that deep down the Germans had a driving ambition, which, when not constantly checked, had led to bitter experiences for France and other nations. For this reason the French were determined that the Germans should never possess their own nuclear weapons. He said he was concerned about the Anglo-German agreement because, when you “have enriched uranium and you are Germany, with all of its technical capacity, it is not a far step to the production of nuclear weapons.” This the French could never accept, he added.
In light of developments today—thirteen years later—his views with regard to Soviet-American relations were particularly interesting. I expressed concern about the Soviet Union’s tremendous ability to increase its military forces, especially its missile capacity and its naval strength. Yet we had received indications that the Soviets would have liked to lessen East-West tensions.
I told him that I was not personally acquainted with the rulers of the Kremlin and would appreciate his evaluation of them, particularly his view about reports that there might be a potential split between doves and hawks. He expressed the opinion that while the Soviet Union had “tremendous ambitions,” the Kremlin leaders were not bent on conquest in the classical sense but instead wanted to make the Soviet Union unassailable and not inferior to any other nation, particularly the United States.
Podgorny, he said, was an “old man without the drive and ardor” of Brezhn
ev, who was in de Gaulle’s view the undisputed master of the Kremlin. Kosygin, he said, was a skillful, hardworking man who had made a career in government and was more flexible than Brezhnev and who, according to information the French had received, had been much more temperate than his colleagues on the question of invading Czechoslovakia after the popular uprising in 1968.
He said that while the leaders might differ on issues like Czechoslovakia, which they considered a small matter, they were united on the big issues and particularly on building up the strength of the Soviet Union. He had found in his talks with them that they seemed to answer forthrightly and frankly and even with sincerity, but he realized that this was largely dissimulation. He concluded by saying that the “whole world is waiting for the U.S. President to make contact with them or for them to make contact with the U.S.” When I asked him whether he thought such direct contacts could be useful, his reply was categorical: “Most assuredly so.”
As I escorted him to his car after our meeting, he asked me to express his sympathy and respect to Mrs. Eisenhower. De Gaulle did not often display his emotions, but I could sense in the way he talked that his affection and respect for Eisenhower were deep and his sorrow over Eisenhower’s death profound.
• • •
Our meeting on the occasion of Eisenhower’s funeral was the last time that I was to see him. We had already begun preliminary plans for his state visit to Washington when he suddenly resigned the presidency on April 29, 1969, and went into retirement. He did not leave office because of a great issue, but because of what appeared to be a minor one: the defeat of his plebiscite involving senate and regional reforms. Malraux later asked him why he had resigned over such an “absurd” issue. His reply was what one would expect from General de Gaulle: “Because it was absurd.”
De Gaulle, like Churchill and Adenauer, found it difficult to prepare and build up a successor. Churchill put down Eden; Adenauer put down Erhard; de Gaulle put down Pompidou. I rate Pompidou as one of the abler world leaders I have met. To follow one of the true greats is enormously difficult. Truman, at least in historical perspective, was not able to fill Roosevelt’s shoes, but he made his mark in history in his own way. No one could fill de Gaulle’s shoes, but Pompidou, one of the world’s premier economic experts, was a worthy successor. What particularly impressed me about him was that in our discussions of foreign policy he always thought globally rather than parochially.
When de Gaulle resigned, I sent him a handwritten note in which I repeated my invitation for him to come to Washington and told him that “scores of our cities and states would be honored if you could include them on your schedule.” I concluded by writing, “Putting it in blunt terms—in this age of mediocre leaders in most of the world—America’s spirit needs your presence.” Vernon Walters delivered my letter to de Gaulle at Colombey. De Gaulle read it and said, “He is a true comrade.” He sat down at his desk and penned a handwritten reply that same day:
Dear Mr. President:
Your gracious official message and your very warm personal letter touched me deeply. Not only because you occupy the high office of President of the United States, but also because they are from you, Richard Nixon, and I have for you—with good reason—esteem, confidence, and friendship as great and as sincere as it is possible to have.
Perhaps one day I will have the occasion and the honor to see you again; in the meantime, I send you from the bottom of my heart all my best wishes for the successful accomplishment of your immense national and international task.
Would you please give Mrs. Nixon my most respectful regards, to which my wife adds her warm wishes. For you, my dear Mr. President, the assurance of my feeling of faithful and devoted friendship.
Charles de Gaulle
This letter was the last time I heard from de Gaulle. On November 9, 1970, he died, and I joined leaders throughout the world in flying to Paris to pay our final tribute.
• • •
During his lifetime Charles de Gaulle physically towered over those around him, but the strength he projected was an inner strength. The bulbous nose, the slight pudginess, the soft, slender hands, neither enhanced nor detracted from it. It was a strength that went beyond the physical—a discipline that extended itself beyond the man, a presence that commanded silence and invited deference.
De Gaulle spoke not of doubts but of certainties. He could sometimes be wrong, but even his mistakes became a force in history.
He wanted to renew the virtues of France’s past, not enshrine them. He was, in Malraux’s words, “a man of the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow.”
He was a modern-day cathedral builder. The cathedral he built was a concept, a perception—real and yet unreal, visible yet invisible, tangible yet intangible. It was France: not merely France in a geographical or political sense, but France in a spiritual sense. De Gaulle held out to Frenchmen a vision of France as it might become, and by telling them that this was France, he helped France to become more nearly the likeness of that vision.
Just as the ancient Chinese viewed China as the “Middle Kingdom”—the center of the world, beyond which all was merely peripheral—so de Gaulle saw France as a sort of middle kingdom. The rest of the world had meaning only as it affected France. He could be cold-eyed and farsighted in analyzing the affairs of the world, but his policies were solely those designed to advance or protect the interests of France.
He was France’s interpreter, protector, prophet, conscience, goad, inspiration. In a certain sense, he was France. It was not a union. It was more a oneness. He embodied France; he represented the French not only to the world, but also to themselves.
De Gaulle did not particularly like Americans, as a people; for that matter, neither was he particularly fond of Frenchmen. But this was irrelevant. He loved his family and France, and what mattered in his relations with other nations was not whether he liked their people, but what they could do for or to France. He was a statesman, not a humanist.
Throughout his life de Gaulle was embroiled in often bitter controversy. But these conclusions are clear: Without de Gaulle, France might not have survived the tragedy of defeat in World War II. Without de Gaulle, France might not have recovered from the devastation of World War II. Without de Gaulle, the Franco-German rapprochement might not have been achieved. Without de Gaulle, France would not have adopted the constitution of the Fifth Republic and might have sunk into chaos politically, economically, and socially. And without de Gaulle, the spirit of France—which for centuries has inspired the world with its vibrancy, its élan, its radiance, its unique combination of distinctiveness and universality—might have died instead of being as vital and strong as it is today.
• • •
One of my most vivid memories of de Gaulle and his era was the scene in Notre-Dame as his memorial service drew to a close. The dignitaries from all over the world began filing out. Many came up to me to express their appreciation for my having come to the service as the representative of the American people. Then, just before I reached the exit, the cathedral’s great organ began booming out the stirring strains of “The Marseillaise.” I stopped, and turned back toward the altar with my hand over my heart. Just then another foreign guest, oblivious of the music, reached out to grab my hand in greeting, and what might have been a supremely dramatic moment was abruptly lost. I have often thought that nothing would more fittingly have captured the spirit of Charles de Gaulle than to have had that entire assemblage of leaders from all over the world turn together toward the altar and, as the organ played “The Marseillaise,” fill the ancient cathedral with their voices, singing in unison the national anthem of France.
DOUGLAS
MacARTHUR
AND
SHIGERU
YOSHIDA
East Meets West
ON A SUNNY spring afternoon in 1951, a seventy-year-old Japanese gentleman was hosting his first flower-viewing party of the season. During the party, he was given the news th
at had just reached Tokyo from America: President Truman had fired General Douglas MacArthur from all of his posts, including his battle command in Korea and his position as Supreme Commander of the Allied Occupation in Japan. The host looked stricken and excused himself from the receiving line. He was so upset that it took him half an hour to pull himself together.
The gentleman—Shigeru Yoshida, Japan’s hard-as-nails Prime Minister—knew this was no time for sentimentality. He had brought the hammer down on enough of his own opponents to realize that politics was a rough business. MacArthur and Truman had been locked in a titanic political struggle, and MacArthur had lost. Regardless of whether Truman was right or wrong, Japanese-American relations would continue to develop without the popular general. Yoshida had to be careful not to offend the President and thus cloud the prospects for the U.S.-Japan peace treaty, which he had sought since 1946.
Yet the statement Yoshida made in a broadcast to his nation was undiplomatically profuse in its praise for his departing friend. It also resonated with emotion, which was even more unlike Yoshida. “The accomplishments of General MacArthur in the interest of our country are one of the marvels of history,” he said. “No wonder he is looked upon by all our people with the profoundest veneration and affection. I have no words to convey the regret of our nation to see him leave.”
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