Pierre Journoud has produced a splendid account of the Vietnam policies of President Charles de Gaulle and of France more generally in the period 1945–1969. Although much has been made of the role that ideological considerations—la grandeur de la France and anti-Americanism—played in conditioning French foreign policy in the postwar era, Journoud maintains that under Le général at least, pragmatic, realist concerns dominated.
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, de Gaulle supported the resumption of French colonial authority in Indochina to contain Communist influence and protect French interests. He endorsed the resort to war in late 1946—by which time he had stepped down as head of France's provisional government—until his “virage” (p. 11), or about-face, of 1953, which was prompted by the “international détente resulting from Stalin's death” (p. 47). De Gaulle favored ending hostilities by negotiations thereafter, and he welcomed the Geneva accords of...