Word: westerns
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Increased Flexibility. At the time, Nixon's tour seemed to be little more than a welcome gesture of reconciliation with Western European leaders who felt neglected by the Johnson Administration's preoccupation with Asia. The new U.S. President had no way of knowing that De Gaulle's political demise was imminent but, as it turned out, Nixon's timing was lucky. With De Gaulle's departure, Europe's statesmen must reappraise their direction. Nixon's meetings with the British, the Germans, the Belgians and the Italians, which seemed perfunctory at the time...
...Gaulle may have led the opposition to excessive American influence on Western Europe, but he was not alone among Europeans in his objections. Given the enormous Western European advances in prosperity and stability since he came to power in 1958, there is no prospect that Europe will now revert to a position of dependence on and subservience to the U.S. such as prevailed 15 and 20 years ago. Georges Pompidou, De Gaulle's likely successor and a seasoned Gaullist (see THE WORLD), may bring a more flexible approach to the government of France but will not soon alter...
...British membership, as have France's five Common Market partners; Pompidou has already indicated that he thinks British entry is not forever out of the question. If the French now help to make Britain more firmly a part of Europe, what may finally come about is a unified Western Europe strong enough to be independent of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union...
While that cannot happen overnight, Western Europe may finally be able to cooperate in taking over much of its own defense-thus shouldering more of the huge military burden that the U.S. has carried since the cold war began. "The shape of Europe's future is essentially the business of the Europeans," Richard Nixon has observed. If De Gaulle's return to Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises clears the way for a new Western European consensus outside his outsized shadow, the U.S. may finally see what it set out to achieve after World War II: a Continent once more...
...Britain, which he had twice imperiously barred from the Common Market. It mattered to tiny secessionist Biafra, which he had kept alive with arms shipments against federal Nigerian forces for the, past nine months. It weighed heavily in the Middle East, where he was virtually the only partisan Western friend that the Arabs had. It certainly mattered to Washington, which had felt his sting almost ceaselessly for the past six years...