Foreign policy of the François Mitterrand administration maintaining as many options as possible until forced to pursue a particular course. However, once he made a choice he kept his ministers on a tight leash. Defense Minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement lost his ministry over his opposition to French participation in the First Gulf War. Initially, Mitterrand, like British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was vary of German reunification, fearing that it would lead to Germany gaining too much power. He was reluctant to take action because Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev warned it would lead to a military coup d'état in the Soviet Union. Mitterrand did speak in favour of
Mitterrand and the far right to 1992. The practice stopped only after numerous protests from the Jewish community. According to Pierre Favier and Michel Martin-Roland, Mitterrand saw himself as following his predecessors when in 1984, when after shaking Kohl's hand, he laid a wreath on the tomb. They quote Mitterrand in the same book as saying that the wreath laying from 1987 onwards "n'était qu'une habitude prise par l'administration" ("was just a custom of (his) administration"). Mitterrand like other apologists for Pétain say they are simply honouring the memory of the hero of Verdun and not the head of state from Vichy. Laurent Fabius, one