Statesmanship and Geopolitics

Abstract

Will Morrisey’s Churchill and de Gaulle: The Geopolitics of Liberty zeroes in on war, politics, and diplomacy in the twentieth century. Morrisey aims to lay out what he calls “the geopolitics of liberty”--how necessities, including geography, frame choices we make to protect our liberty and govern ourselves. His first two chapters make a comparative historical study of the evolution of the British and French regimes and states. His next two chapters contrast the geopolitics of Great Britain and France. The remaining three pairs of chapters focus on Churchill and de Gaulle in turn and how they understood the geopolitics of two successive world wars and the Cold War. This book, with its sober, probing exposition of what Churchill and de Gaulle can teach us about securing liberty, offers its reader the beginnings of an education in practical politics and diplomacy.