In the early 1960s, France announced its dissatisfaction with the international system. Having been chased from Indochina and Algeria, and having seen its invasion of Egypt squashed by Dwight Eisenhower, France was in no mood for accommodation. President Charles de Gaulle captured the moment perfectly, charting an aggressive course to restore France’s prestige (and authority over both economic and security issues) within Europe.
The Empty Chair Crisis, in which France effectively stopped all work in the European Economic Community in an effort to get the voting rules it wanted, is an emblematic example of vigorous political competition within an existing rule-set. Similarly, the very public French withdrawal from NATO military command (complemented by a very private set of arrangements that guaranteed French support of NATO in the case of actual conflict) was representative of de Gaulle’s push to the absolute limits of legitimate competition in the creation and management of the rules for Cold War European politics.
The comparison gets to the core of what it means to be a revisionist or a status quo state. France was deeply dissatisfied with its position. Yet, while it strained against many of the norms and institutions of the system, it avoided challenging the most important formal and informal rules for managing international politics in the Cold War era.
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