Like most observers, the French President reasonably and correctly assumed that Great Britain would strive to maintain its position halfway between Europe and America—and that, if forced to chose, London would opt for its Atlantic ally over its European neighbors. This was brought home very forcibly in December 1962, when the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan met President Kennedy at Nassau, in the Bahamas, and accepted an arrangement whereby the US would furnish Britain with Polaris submarine-based nuclear missiles (as part of a multilateral force that effectively subsumed Britain’s
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