In 1964, when recognising “red” China was still career-death for a US president, Charles de Gaulle did just that. He later took France out of Nato’s integrated military command. On an epic, almost Homeric tour of Latin America, he pledged to that region his solidarity against an unnamed but not hard-to-guess hegemon. If never quite equidistant between the US and the USSR, he liked to draw a spurious equivalence between their overbearing power.
1964年,承認「紅色」中國對一位美國總統來說仍然無異於終結自己的政治生涯,時任法國總統夏爾•戴高樂(Charles de Gaulle)卻偏偏做了這件事。後來,他還讓法國退出北約(NATO)的統一軍事指揮架構。在一次史詩般的、近乎荷馬式的拉美之旅中,他向該地區承諾,他將與他們團結一致,反對一個他沒有點名、但不難猜測是誰的霸權。即便從未聲稱法國與美國和蘇聯保持等距,但他喜歡在美蘇的霸道力量之間畫一個虛假的等號。