Dear president @ZelenskyyUa I would like to assemble here for you the elements of an argument which IMHO ought to carry much historical & geopolitical weight with coincidentally all now francophone senior European leaders for convincing them to make you part of Europe ASAP…
Apologies @ZelenskyyUa , I got “a bit distracted” by those nukes #VladimirPutin is brandishing about recklessly … Luckily, even these do not scare you it seems!! So let me start spinning my tale again from where I left off. But, because I am sure you have zero time to waste….
I will give you the punchline or “take-home message” first. The keys IMHO is whispering into their ears & subliminally reminding their minds of just these few words: “L’Europe de l’Atlantique à l’Oural”. Should you not have heard these magic words before, here’s their history:
If you’re in rush you really only need to listen (with a translator should your French be as minimal as my Ukrainian…!) to the first 3 min of this podcast which defines "L'Europe de l'Atlantique à l'Oural" sur franceinter.fr/emissions/la-m…
Important points of start of podcast:
-Gen Charles de Gaulle coined this term (and that other one we discussed a night or two ago “l’intérêt supérieur de état”)
-he used it repeatedly as France President in the post war era but never actually defined it precisely geographically
-Gen Charles de Gaulle coined this term (and that other one we discussed a night or two ago “l’intérêt supérieur de état”)
-he used it repeatedly as France President in the post war era but never actually defined it precisely geographically
He used it especially at a crucial point: his trip to the USSR in 1966, a pendant to Kroutchev’s trip to France earlier that decade. As an aside my newly wed father & mother were both party to this trip, he as @Newsweek’s Paris bureau chief & she as part of 🇫🇷 foreign ministry…
He was an American Ashkenazy jew. She was French-born and very useful to the high ranking “Quai d’Orsay” = 🇫🇷Ministry of Foreign Affairs staff as a translator because she had just learnt fluent Russian (and English) and earned a Masters’ degree in “Soviet Affairs” from @Harvard.
Anyway, I digress. My main point of is that this trip was the result of de Gaulle’s difficulties with the establishment of @NATO. These difficulties were the result of the occupation of France by the Nazis under the Vichy regime.
To be continued.
These are pictures of my father and mother shortly after and before their wedding 
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