Word: gaullist
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...first six months following Chirac's election were a lovefest. When France's leader touched off a worldwide furor with his decision to resume nuclear testing, Clinton refused to make an issue of it. The two Presidents cooperated to break the military and diplomatic logjam in Bosnia. Then the Gaullist Chirac gave NATO a welcome surprise by declaring he would bring France back into the military structures from which his political idol, Charles de Gaulle, had so haughtily withdrawn in 1966. But then the second part of Chirac's prediction kicked...
...network of ex-prisoners in 1943. After the liberation, he was elected to the National Assembly, and between 1947 and 1957 he held 11 Cabinet positions. But with Charles de Gaulle's ascension to the leadership of France, Mitterrand began a quarter-century in the opposition. Flanked by the Gaullists and the Communists, he forged the French Socialist Party from the motley fragments of the non-Communist left. In 1981 he finally captured the presidency with the promise of an economic renaissance for the recession-bound country. In power for the first time since 1936, the Socialists launched a veritable...
Chirac also feels comfortable on both sides of the Atlantic, having spent time in the States as a student and a tourist. "He appreciates our culture, and one of his very close friends is Gregory Peck," says Sancton. "While his politics are decidedly Gaullist, he is the most American of all French Presidents in terms of style. Like Bill Clinton, he's down-to-earth, convivial--and he loves fast food...
That analysis was based largely on the technical recommendations of French nuclear experts for whom Gaullist symbolism counts far less than the behavior of sub-atomic particles. For them, the challenge is to keep France's nuclear force credible beyond the year 2015 or so, when the present generation of warheads will have aged into obsolescence. In addition, say French officials, the objective is to gather the data necessary to perfect the simulation and computer-modeling techniques that will permit French nuclear scientists to forgo live tests in the future and sign the CTBT...
Many analysts, however, took a more cynical view of Chirac's motivations. Recalling that it was Charles de Gaulle who had first engendered France's force de frappe in the '60s, they accused Chirac of trying to prove his Gaullist credentials and burnish his presidential stature by reaffirming France's status as a nuclear power. "He thought he could prove to the French and the world that because of his decision France was back, and he was an authentic President," wrote Serge July, influential editor of the left-leaning daily Liberation. "Instead the world and the French have witnessed...