In his fascinating book
Diplomacy is not a gala dinner
, the former ambassador Claude Martin, a distinguished Sinist, tells how he landed in the French diplomatic world in the wake of General de Gaulle's shattering decision to recognize the People's Republic of China, in the midst of the Cold War, in 1964. France was then the first country in the Western camp to dare such an iconoclastic gesture.
The decision sparked an avalanche of tensions between allies, and the fury of Washington.
Only Chirac's refusal to vote for the war in Iraq can be compared by its deflagrating effect to this decision.
See also
Submarine crisis: a "major breach of trust" with Washington
It was only the first burst of Gaullist fireworks that would lead to De Gaulle's trip to Moscow in 1966, to the speech in Phnom Penh, to
"Free Quebec"
and to the exit of the integrated military organization of NATO.
In the sparse camp of the “Gaullists” of the Quai d'Orsay, we retain a great nostalgia for it, and the desire to rediscover a little of this
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