A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle. Julian Jackson. Penguin.

When de Gaulle became famous, his aides would despair at what they called his ‘cyclothymic’ temperament: his volatile and unpredictable mood swings, his sudden descent into the blackest pessimism. Like Churchill’s ‘black dog’, these moments of despair became incorporated into his myth: the man of destiny surmounting the temptation to give up, bouncing back from adversity to save his country. (...)

Finest Hours. Adam Gopnick. The New Yorker

At that moment when all seemed lost, something was found, as Winston Churchill pronounced some of the most famous lines of the past century. “We shall go on to the end,” he said defiantly, in tones plummy and, on the surviving recordings, surprisingly thick-tongued. “We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” Churchill’s words did all that words can do in the world. They said what had to be done; they announced why it had to be done then; they inspired those who had to do it. (...)

Can You Forgive Her. James Wood. The New Yorker

I always found it hard to judge Mrs. Thatcher dispassionately, because she was so like my mother. They looked and sounded similar—shortish urgent women who moved with purpose. From large hair, their faces narrowed downward; they had receding chins that appeared weak and strong at once. Force of will made them courageously disagreeable. They were born two years apart (Thatcher in 1925, my mother in 1927), came from modest, fiercely principled Nonconformist religious backgrounds, and saw life as a ladder that everyone must climb, from evil to goodness, from error to correction, from the lower social classes to the higher ones. Estranged from their native accents, they spoke in their grander borrowed ones a little carefully—as if, having learned their elocution lessons, they were now giving them. Both women were complex feminists, of a kind, who didn’t use the term, preferred men to women, and coddled their sons over their daughters. And both powerful women married supportive men named Denis (...)

The Future of Transatlanticism Is China. Andrew A. Michta. The American Interest

It has become common lore in European capitals that the Trump Administration’s purported “transactionalism” when dealing with NATO allies has all but upended America’s relations with Europe, while the President’s “tweet diplomacy” and the alleged determination by the United States to “disengage” from our commitments has made it ever-harder for Europe to continue to rely on America for its security. As a senior European politician recently said while explaining why his country needs to think in terms of “strategic autonomy” and European defense: “Europe’s trust in the United States is gone.” (…)

The Jungle Grows Back. Robert Kagan. Knopf, 2018

The critics who insist that the last quarter century of American foreign policy has been a disaster evidently have short memories. Which quarter century over the last hundred years would they like better? The first quarter of the last century included World War I and the birth of communism and fascism. The second quarter century saw the rise of Hitler and Stalin, the Ukrainian famine, the Holocaust, World War II, and the invention and use of nuclear weapons. The third saw the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, McCarthyism, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Iranian Revolution. Even if the last twenty-five to thirty years have seen their share of failures, they have been characterized by great-power peace, a rising global GDP, and widespread democracy (...)

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