A. W. DePorte

François Mitterrand, halfway through his term of office, is pursuing a French foreign policy that is more than a footnote to the career of Charles de Gaulle. Making full use of the presidential authority set up by de Gaulle, Mitterrand has been neither inspired nor bound by the Gaullist conception of France's place in the world. Fifteen years after leaving office, de Gaulle still casts a long shadow over France, and even more over perceptions of France. But Mitterrand's responses to the international problems France faces in the 1980s are very different from those of de Gaulle in the 1960s. They reflect a very different idea of what France is in the world and what it can claim to be.