On May 15, 1960, Nikita Khrushchev met with French President Charles de Gaulle in Paris to discuss the fallout from recent incidents involving US reconnaissance aircraft violating Soviet airspace. Khrushchev emphasized the Soviet Union’s outrage over these acts, labeling them as aggression and a threat to sovereignty. He called for the US to acknowledge its violations, condemn the actions, hold those responsible accountable, and commit to ceasing such provocations. De Gaulle expressed regret over the incidents but maintained that espionage was an inevitable reality of modern geopolitics. He assured Khrushchev that he would convey the Soviet statement to US President Dwight Eisenhower but noted that France had not participated in planning the reconnaissance missions. The discussion also touched on broader themes of disarmament and international cooperation, with Khrushchev reiterating the USSR’s readiness to engage in the summit only if the US changed its course. De Gaulle stressed the necessity of dialogue to prevent future incidents and achieve détente. Both leaders reaffirmed their nations' desire for peace but left the resolution of the immediate crisis contingent on US actions.

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Nonproliferation talks entered their decisive phase after the submission of a joint U.S.-Soviet draft to the ENDC on February 21, 1967. One week later, High-Commissioner of the French Commissariat à l’énergie atomique, Francis Perrin, assessed France’s options. It was not “by accident,” he noted, the original five UN Security Council permanent members—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, and China—were in line for nuclear-club membership: “…they are the same profound reasons, of a geographical, demographic or other nature, which led to the choice [in 1945] … of the countries with special responsibilities in the maintenance of world peace.” After noting how advances in “India, Israel, Japan, Sweden, and also West Germany” portended the further spread of nuclear weapons—and acknowledging France had itself sought help with its weapon program—Perrin pondered whether proliferation might hasten nuclear disarmament by convincing the superpowers of its merits. In the end, however, fear of a “large and hostile” nuclear-armed PRC made him pessimistic. While he did not advise signing the NPT, it would be “very important” for France to affirm publicly, if unilaterally, “its constant policy since 1958 … not to cede any atomic weapon or any atomic explosive device to a country which does not possess it, and not to help any such country to manufacture them.” He dismissed internal opposition toward the NPT as defensive—"an a posteriori justification of the French decision to constitute an atomic armament." More significant was the likelihood West Germany would gain its own atomic arsenal, jeopardizing France’s “dominant political position among the Europe of the Six” members of the European Communities and reviving Cold War tensions in Europe. He finished with an eye-opening analysis of how the Kosygin proposal for nuclear-weapon states to extend negative security guarantees to non-nuclear-weapon states’ signatory to the NPT would not impede the use of French nuclear armaments against a West German blitzkrieg backed by the United States.