In 1949, France had signed the Atlantic Alliance setting up NATO despite a strong neutralist current in French opinion which argued that France should remain free of both the western and the Soviet blocs. This argument might have appealed to de Gaulle, but he was persuaded by Aron that the Communist threat made such a position untenable. De Gaulle was not entirely happy with the way NATO was structured, but his position was that an imperfect pact was better than none. He was at this time a committed Atlanticist. But as Cold War tensions subsided, he began to warn against the danger of French
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