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The Fifth Republic has historically represented the achievement of social and political consensus in post-WW2 France. It is this consensus that is destroyed with the end of cold war. To take back its central place in the European construction, France must change its own mode of functioning (political, economical and social) and redefine radically its vision of Europe’s future, that is to say also its relations with the American power.

Steven Philip Kramer is Professor at the National Security Studies Department, Industrial College of the Armed Forces (National Defense University, Washington, DC).