President [Ronald] Reagan told me he would negotiate and negotiate and negotiate with the Soviets, and I believed him.

What I do see, for instance, is that the French are not very happy with the ... I am happy but they are not and I understand why they are not happy. They still believe in some nuclear strategic formulas which they have inherited from General De Gaulle and they have started the process of rethinking, they haven't gone very far.

Population growth and the proliferation of mega-cities around the world redefines the entire global security agenda.

The Alliance and NATO is two different things. France is a member of the Alliance. NATO is an organization not mentioned in the North Atlantic Treaty, has been built up in the course of history, in the course of history France has left that organization. Normally the Alliance has been lead by consent, building up consensus on important issues of questions, in many instances over the last 30 years that I have followed events closely. In many, many cases was being done under the spiritual guidance of the American President, that is true, but sometimes also at the guidance of others.

The catch word is equilibrium again, informed the field what are conventional weapons or nuclear weapons of different qualities. You cannot make up for a actual or perceived disequilibrium in the conventional field by having more nuclear weapons.

President [Ronald] Reagan never has tried to become an expert on military matters. He never has endeavored to learn the most important details in that field, which lead to a situation in which his aides played a much greater roles than aides would have played under President Ford or let us say in the whole Nixon-Ford-Kissinger era.

[Ronald] Reagan seems to be a man of some basic convictions and on the other hand willing to let others do the ground homework, the detailed work.