"The Treaty includes no provisions for the economic rehabilitation of Europe, nothing to make the defeated Central Empires into good neighbours, nothing to stabilise the new States of Europe." This damning critique of one of history's best-known peace treaties by a little-known UK Treasury official keeps shaping popular understandings of the accord's legacy. John Maynard Keynes published The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) during the Paris Peace Conference, painting its chief outcome, the Treaty of Versailles, as not just flawed, but a harbinger of yet more conflict. The Carthaginian peace terms imposed on Germany, Keynes argued, augured revenge.

But is this the full story? Were the treaty's consequences as dire as Keynes suggested, or has the economist's indictment, seemingly prophetic in retrospective terms, overshadowed key dynamics that played out during negotiations, but are now forgotten? To delve into this complex history, we are joined by two distinguished guests: historian Margaret MacMillan, the author of Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (2001), and veteran French diplomat and former guest on the podcast Gérard Araud, who is very familiar with the intricacies of such international negotiations and the author of Nous Étions Seuls (2023), a history of French diplomacy between both world wars.

The episode explores the treaty's immediate and longer-term consequences, how it aimed to reshape Europe, and why it remains one of the most misunderstood agreements in modern history. Did the treaty plant the seeds of World War II, or has its popular critique left out some important context?

As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on whatever platform you use, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by email at undecencypod@gmail.com. Consider supporting the show through Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod) to get access to the full episode, where we dive deeper into the intricate details of Versailles and its repercussions.

Bibliography:

• The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), by John Maynard Keynes.
• Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (2001), by Margaret MacMillan.
• Nous étions seuls: une histoire diplomatique de la France 1919-1939 (2023), by Gérard Araud.

What France has just lived through can only be described by the words of Vladimir Lenin: “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”.

In just a month, the country's political landscape was upended by Emmanuel Macron’s shock decision to dissolve the National Assembly after his party, Ensemble, trailed behind the right-populist Rassemblement National by seventeen points in elections to the European Parliament on June 9th.

In the week that followed, the left managed to unite once again, as in the 1930s Front Populaire, despite having spent the European race trading barbs. The Gaullist centre-right imploded, with Éric Ciotti, the leader of Les Républicains, calling on his party's candidates to either support or be supported by Le Pen's, while most of the bigwigs opposing him in-house attempted to remove him, usurp the Twitter account from his faction—and shut him off the party's headquarters.

In the midst of that chaos, Macron’s very own allies were gobsmacked by a decision that could have eradicated not just the government's ability to rule, but their own parliamentary standing. Yet while the campaign was marked by the possibility of a Rassemblement National government led by the 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, the party has been met by a barrage of tactical voting against its candidates in Sunday's runoff. Whereas it stunningly surpassed the one-third (33%) mark in the first round, its parliamentary group, after the biasing effect of local a non-proportional voting system, will be of 143 MPs, up from 89 but far lower than initially forecasted.

This legislative snap race leaves Parliament in an unruly state, with three roughly equal blocs: the left, the centrists and the nationalists—none of them especially keen to make compromises. So what happened, and where do we go from here? This week, we ask Mij Rahman (Eurasia Group) and François Hublet (Groupe d'Études Géopolitiques) to walk us through the French chaos.

As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on whatever platform you use, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod) to get access to the full episode, where we talk in further detail about the drivers of the ever-increasing Le Pen vote.

Welcome to another Decency Deep Dive. This week we tackle the forthcoming European Parliament (EP) elections on June 9, widely expected to deliver a significantly more right-wing supranational legislature. Russia’s ongoing efforts to intrude into the news cycle, public debate and imaginary of Western societies are on the agenda, too, as we address its recent efforts at disinformation and lobbying. Finally, as Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez ups the ante of its effort to smear the country's press, its judges and the entire opposition, we ponder where goes Spain next.

As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.