It's got nothing to do with being relevant, or having delusions of grandeur. It's just a matter of not having terms dictated by the US, Russia or nowadays China

It's got nothing to do with being relevant, or having delusions of grandeur. It's just a matter of not having terms dictated by the US, Russia or nowadays China within our effective perimeter. Back then acquiring nuclear power was essential to those aims, and building a European block was also the right answer for the foreseeable future. Stumbles aside, it seems to be fairly reasonable and workable to me. You can't just pretend everything's fine and be a good boy for the overlord of the day. In the 50s a number of people were acutely aware of the bullet we dodged in WW2 (we came quite close to being scraped apart into rump states).