Post-World War II France was to disappoint the hopes of such American statesmen as Dean Acheson and George Kennan, who looked to it to take the lead in Western Europe in the face of a growing Soviet threat.

Dogged by the humiliation of the wartime occupation, obsessed by fear of a resurgent Germany, jealous of the British ascendancy gained during the war, and dominated by an intellectual class almost wholly given over to the prevailing antifascism (and, therefore, philo-sovietism) of the postwar, France would take 20 years to live up to its promise as the "motor" of Western Europe. Though it was perhaps inevitable that France, falling on the western divide of the Iron Curtain, would join the U.S. camp, it did so with a loss of sovereignty, symbolized in NATO's integrated command. This was a situation that Charles de Gaulle, after his return to power in 1958, would seek to undo.

His successors have continued this quest to this day. This is a major examination of contemporary international relations and Western European defense policy for scholars and researchers alike.