NATO (OTAN) was founded to defend its members against the Soviet Union--before the Warsaw Pact (le Pacte de Varsovie) existed. The French preference is for appeasement and doing nothing, like they did when Hitler invaded Poland and the French went through the motions of declaring war and then did nothing for more than half a year, until Hitler attacked them.
The later kings of the Merovingian dynasty were known as the "do-nothing kings." The Fifth Republic seems to have entered its Merovingian stage.