1. France has been marking the 50th anniversary of the death of Charles de Gaulle. Here for example is a good video by @jdomerchet on de Gaulle's foreign policies, which JDM judges a failure. I think French viewers would benefit from his reasoning. https://twitter.com/jdomerchet/status/1326208008578338816

2. Americans generally fail to understand de Gaulle, in part because of his tendency to be a pain in the ass for US policy makers starting with FDR, and his mid-to-late 1960s phase of trying to distance FR from the US, including partially leaving NATO (more symbolic than real)...

3. ...criticism of Vietnam, etc. His decision in 1967 to pander to Arabs after the 6-Day War while invoking the medieval trope of Jewish hubris, was not a high point. Which gives us cause to dislike him.

4. Though dislike him we might, it's impossible not to respect him. He was, as @jdomerchet put it, the most important figure in 20th century French history. He was a giant. What did he do?

5. His real accomplishment in WWII was to start with zero and badger his way to a seat at the table along with Churchill, even though FR was disgraced and weak (and other Frenchmen had a better claim to that seat).

6. For post-war France, that was profoundly important. He also gave France a useful myth, that they were all with the allies. This helped France move past its own disgrace and bridge its deep divisions. Plus he provided a non-Communist face to the Resistance.

7. After that, I'd argue that his most extraordinary action was deciding to take FR out of Algeria, notwithstanding the fact that FR was, by most measures, winning the war. That took not just profound vision but serious courage and decisiveness.

8. It's hard to overstate how exceptional an act that was. Remember: it involved doing nothing less than stabbing his own beloved army in the back, and risking a coup. It meant causing great pain to large numbers of Frenchmen. Yet it was indisputably the right thing to do.

9. I see no world leaders today who show any sign of having it in them to do risk so much for the sake of doing the right thing.

10. He was also right to seek strategic autonomy. Perhaps this is a heresy, but European strength and American strength should not be viewed in terms of a zero-sum game. Our interests and (if I dare use the word) values have too much in common.