France and the crisis of détente in the Mediterranean world-space, 1976–1979

The Mediterranean was at the centre of the deterioration of East-West relations in the second half of the 1970s. While the USSR deployed its SS-20 missiles on the shores of the Black Sea and increased its arms supplies to the Arab countries, Jimmy Carter’s United States opted for a strategy of head-on opposition that ignored peripheral theatres of operation. After the Franco-American honeymoon of the middle of the decade, French leaders, diplomats and military personnel had the impression of finding themselves alone in facing the renewal of the Soviet threat in the Mediterranean. This situation led them to develop a very advanced expertise in East-West and North-South geopolitics, and to gradually opt for a cold warrior attitude towards the Kremlin.