De Gaulle, the Nation-State and Foreign Policy

Abstract

Valery has written that “A great man is one who leaves others after him in a state of embarrassment.” Certainly, the eighteen-month-old era of aprés de Gaulle has been characterized by an unexpected sense of confidence, not the oft-predicted chaos. But embarrassment persists. The enigma of de Gaulle himself remains. We have many and varied chronicles of his long political career. We have his speeches, his early books, his war memoirs and the first volume of his new Mémoires d'Espoir. But we have only begun the long process of sifting and reconciling the varied and contradictory facts at hand. The final analysis, as with so many other political leaders who left an ambiguous mark upon their contemporaries, will be left to the judgment of history—So subjective, yet so precious to de Gaulle himself.