Away and at home

摘要

Rather Like Britain, France has inherited the mindset of a world power with neither the reach nor the means of one. De Gaulle only partly succeeded in his life's ambition of restoring his country's lost glory. His intransigence ensured that France would be seen as a victor in the second world war and thus a rightful aspirant to a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. But his decisions as president in the 1960s to leave nato's military-command structure and to keep an independent nuclear deterrent at any price did little to help France's global pretensions.