Word: pompidou
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There was an almost novelistic quality to the timing of Pompidou's demise. It came two days before the 25th anniversary of NATO, which Pompidou, like Charles de Gaulle before him, had used as both a military shield and a political foil. His death came shortly before the anniversary of U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's grandiose call for a Year of Europe; that the year proved to be something less than what the Nixon Administration expected could be counted as a triumph for Gaullist foreign policy. There was no little irony in the fact that when...
...Pompidou's death will plunge Europe into a lengthy period of paralysis. The tragic news from the Elysee reached a meeting of Common Market foreign ministers in Luxembourg just one day after British Foreign Secretary James Callaghan had finished making the new Labor government's case for a "fundamental renegotiation" of the terms of Britain's EEC membership-meaning its determination to work out a better economic deal. Callaghan had reckoned that the negotiations might be strung out for a year, leaving the Labor government ample time before it must pay off on its most controversial campaign...
...added, will happen, at least for a while. The informal gathering of EEC foreign ministers, scheduled for next month in Bonn, where Callaghan was to spell out in detail Britain's aims, has now become meaningless because of France's uncertain political situation. At the same time, Pompidou's death scuttled plans for a late May or early June summit of EEC chiefs to consider the British proposals...
Faltering Miracle. Few observers anywhere expect dramatic changes in French foreign policy, even if a non-Gaullist is elected. (French domestic policy is another matter entirely, especially if a leftist candidate wins.) Despite the resurgence of strident Gaullist rhetoric in recent months, Georges Pompidou was first and foremost a realist. At home the tragedy of his presidency was that he had to work almost in stealth on developing the "modern" France that he envisioned, lest he upset the orthodox Gaullist constituency to which he was chained. It was a project that he could not hope to finish. Even...
...Pompidou's successor, whoever he is, may find it hard to restore the exuberant French self-confidence that was one of the great Gaullist legacies. Unless next month's elections deliver a resounding vote of confidence in Gaullism, the operative fact in European affairs is not likely to be France's willful independence but its weakness...