Introducing Edouard Husson

I am very pleased to announce the latest addition to our stable of columnists: Edouard Husson is Maître de Conférences at the Sorbonne, a historian specializing in the history of Germany and Europe in the 20th century. He is author of “Nous pouvons vivre sans les juifs” (2005) and Heydrich et la solution finale (2008), and others.

He was my host at the recent conference I attended at Bernardins College, the newly-establish Catholic university set up in what was once a 16th century monastery. And what a host he was – I was quite thrilled by the experience, and by the wonderful French hospitality epitomized in my host and his staff. From my vantage point in the middle of the Latin Quarter, high up over the rooftops of Paris, I got to experience the best that France has to offer – and that was true intellectually, as well. The conference on the prospects for peace in the twenty-first century had an amazing array of speakers, and a fascinating cross-pollination took place, with speakers from a wide variety of perspectives, and Prof. Husson was an engaging and challenging moderator.

His first column for Antiwar.com is, I think, a good indication of his general views on foreign policy: his “France first” perspective, which envisions a multi-polar future in which Paris charts an independent foreign policy course, recalls the old Gaullist vision of a “third force.” In any case, here is his first “Letter from Paris,” the first of many dispatches from one of France’s new thinkers — an intellectual innovator who nevertheless makes his appeal to the traditional French sense of uniqueness and zest for independent action.