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Электронное приложение к журналу «
Международная жизнь
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Author : E. Osipov
Senior research associate, Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Candidate of
Science (History)
IN FEBRUARY 2016, Foreign Minister of France Lau-
rent Fabius left his post after nearly four years in office;
this rekindled the discussion about France's foreign pol-
icy and its steadily declining international significance.
Gaullism proved to be a universal doctrine that defied
the course of time: Till the end of the Cold War, all
French presidents followed his course, Socialist François
Mitterrand being no exception. In fact, his presidency
gave rise to the term the Gaullist-Mitterrand tradition
as a confirmation of the continuity of France's foreign policy.
There is no agreement among the experts in contemporary history of France over the practi-
cality of de Gaulle's concept. Its successes are obvious: France that occupied a compromise po-
sition between the Soviet Union and the United States initiated the détente; it was instrumental
in signing the Four Power Agreement on Berlin, the Final Helsinki Act2 and started other
processes in world politics.
THE FIFTH AND SIXTH EXPANSIONS of the European Union that spread to five states
of the former socialist bloc and the Baltic countries can be described as the key events of Eu-
ropean history of the last decades. The talks about possible expansion had begun earlier, during
the perestroika years in the Soviet Union, the deepening crisis made this possibility highly prob-
able while the European grandees began to look at expansion as the main factor of European
policies.
Washington's rapidly rising influence in Eastern Europe and the gradual integration of East
European countries in NATO created a threat of Americanization of the EU.
Chirac accepted the EU expansion of 2004-2007 for geopolitical, rather than economic reasons.
His decision proved to be erroneus: Washington increased its impact on decision-making in the
European Union while the prospects of signing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Part-
nership Agreement between the EU and the U.S. made the trend even more obvious.
The recent resignation of Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius fanned discussions of the results of
his four years as the head of France's foreign policy.
Historians repeated time and again that Russia and France are natural allies. In his time, General
de Gaulle summed this up as: "Russia for France is an interlocutor, the mutual understanding
and cooperation with which were and remain absolutely natural. This is political and human re-
ality; it is as old as our countries and goes back to their history and geography. In fact, there
have never been serious contradictions between us, even at the time of the War and Peace or
the epoch of Sevastopol."
Foreign Policy of France: Moving Away From Gaullism