French President Charles de Gaulle (1958-1969) has consistently fascinated contemporaries and historians. His vision_conceived out of national interest_of uniting Europe under French leadership and overcoming the Cold War still remains relevant and appealing. De Gaulle's towering personality and his challenge to US hegemony in the Cold War have inspired a vast number of political biographies and analyses of the foreign policies of the Fifth Republic mostly from French or US angle. In contrast, this book serves to rediscover de Gaulle's global policies how they changed the Cold War. Offering truly global perspectives on France's approach to the world during de Gaulle's presidency, the 13 well-matched essays by leading experts in the field tap into newly available sources drawn from US, European, Asian, African and Latin American archives. Together, the contributions integrate previously neglected regions, actors and topics with more familiar and newly approached phenomena into a global picture of the General's international policy-making. The volume at hand is an example of how cutting-edge research benefits from multipolar and multi-archival approaches and from attention to big, middle and smaller powers as well as institutions.

Christian Nuenlist is a lecturer in contemporary history at the University of Zurich and a foreign desk editor at the Swiss daily 'Aargauer Zeitung.' He is the author of Kennedys rechte Hand (CSS, 1999), and the co-editor of Origins of the European Security System (Routledge, 2008). Anna Locher is a senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich. She co-edited Transforming NATO in the Cold War (Routledge, 2007) and Aspects of NATO History, 1957-75 (CSS, 2006). Garret Martin is editor at large with the European Institute, based in Washington, DC.

Chapter 1 Introduction: What's New?Part 2 PART I: EuropeChapter 3 Chapter 1: De Gaulle, French Diplomacy, and Franco-Soviet Relations as Seen from MoscowChapter 4 Chapter 2: A "Cordial Potentiality?" De Gaulle and the Franco-German PartnershipChapter 5 Chapter 3: From Words to Action: Reinterpreting de Gaulle's European PolicyPart 6 PART II: TransatlantiaChapter 7 Chapter 4: NATO Strategies toward de Gaulle's France: Learning to CopeChapter 8 Chapter 5: Dealing with de Gaulle: The United States and FranceChapter 9 Chapter 6: Britain, de Gaulle's NATO Policies, and Anglo-French Rivalry, 1963-1967Part 10 PART III: ASIAChapter 11 Chapter 7: The U.S. Escalation in Vietnam and de Gaulle's Secret Search for Peace, 1964-1966Chapter 12 Chapter 8: Seeking a Multipolar World: China and de Gaulle's FranceChapter 13 Chapter 9: A Hot Summer: France, Israel, and the Middle East Crisis in 1958Part 14 PART IV: Africa and Latin AmericaChapter 15 Chapter 10: "Je ne vous ai pas compris": De Gaulle's Decade of Negotiation with the Algerian FLNChapter 16 Chapter 11: De Gaulle and Sub-Saharan Africa: From Decolonization to French Development Policy, 1958-63Chapter 17 Chapter 12: The Hero on the Latin American SceneChapter 18 Conclusion: A Gaullist Grant Strategy?