Carolyne Davidson

Ms. Davidson will be researching the strategy behind France s withdrawal from NATO s integrated military command in 1966 and the American reaction and response. Given the role NATO is generally ascribed as a Cold War success story, there has been remarkably little research into France s withdrawal; an event that could have threatened the stability of the organization as a whole. Ms. Davidson hopes to challenge the common caricatures of Charles de Gaulle and Lyndon Baines Johnson and chronicle the withdrawal from both an American and European perspective. She asks vital questions about NATO s ability to survive France s rejection in 1966 and contrasts LBJ's approach towards France with that of Donald Rumsfeld more recently.