These comments, almost every word of which seems to foretell the present crisis, resonate six decades on like an almost supernatural prophecy. It was November 10, 1959, at the Elysée Palace, during one of the press conferences that punctuated Charles de Gaulle's presidency, who had returned to office 18 months earlier.

Embroiled in the Algerian War, which had a disastrous impact on its international image, France was preparing its first atomic bomb tests in the Sahara. As for the American and Soviet superpowers, the mood was one of deescalation. So the French move seemed particularly ill-advised, and criticism rained down at the United Nations.

It was against this backdrop that the French president, when asked about the relevance of this policy of "going it alone," hazarded a thought: "No doubt the sort of balance that has been established between the atomic power of the two camps is, for the moment, a factor in world peace. But who can say what will happen tomorrow? (...) Who can say whether, in the future, (...) the two powers with a monopoly on nuclear weapons will not agree to divide the world between them?" In such an eventuality, according to de Gaulle, France's decision to equip itself with a means of deterrence would be nothing less than "a service to the balance of the world."

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