Originally Posted by JAD_333

An argument can be made that France under de Gaulle was not so much interested in political power as in national security. He didn't want France to be comitted to act militarily by joint agreement with an ally, such as what happened at the outset of WWII. France and Britain were committed to go to war together against Germany if Germany rearmed and threatened its neighbors in violation of the Versailles Treaty ending WWI.

Prior to the time they finally declared war on Germany, both nations were unprepared, though for her part France thought its Maginot line was impregnable, and left to her own devices she might have hunkered down to fend off a German attack rather than venture forth as part of an expeditionary force. Who knows? For her part, Britain had neglected her military for so long, she was, in a way, an unreliable ally.

de Gaulle didn't want France to ever be in that position again. In the late 1950s when he came into power, the USSR was the biggest threat to Europe. But he didn't think that France's security ought to depend on the US and NATO. He initiated France's force de frappe , nuke force, for that reason. Did his policies give France more political power? I think it did in the ME with his policy favoring the Arabs over Israel, but in the west it probably gave him less.