October 14, 2008

Reviewed by Elizabeth Edwards Spalding

(Professor Spalding teaches government and politics at George Mason University.)

Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech Fifty Years Later, edited by James W. Muller.University of Missouri Press, 1999, published at $27.50, member price $23.

    When ranking the major speeches of the twentieth century–from Woodrow Wilson’s 1917 “peace without victory” address to Ronald Reagan’s 1982 remarks before the British Parliament–a convincing argument can be made that Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech of 5 March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, should come first. Unlike Wilson or Reagan, Churchill, although greatly respected for his intrepid statesmanship in the Second World War, was not in office when he made his memorable remarks at Fulton. With the assistance of The Churchill Center, editor James Muller has put together a collection of essays on Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech that describe, analyze and explain Churchill’s best known, and arguably most important, political statement.

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    Most academics now tend to dismiss the role of rhetoric in politics and often refer to speeches as merely rhetorical. If such scholars do give public words any weight, they typically see them as declarations that justify actions and policies or politicians themselves. But if rhetoric is understood as the practical art dealing with the way we argue persuasively about human or political affairs, then the connection between rhetoric and politics becomes clear. Statesmen–who are also usually dismissed or devalued as mere leaders by modern academics–use rhetoric to express their regime’s principles and to advance arguments for policies that best reflect and apply those principles. Through constant reference to their first principles, rhetoric and discussion, a self governing people is able to make the best and most effective political choices and pursue concomitant policies.

    Churchill was not confused about the link between politics and rhetoric. His statesmanship and rhetoric were united in his general understanding and practice of politics. In a nicely crafted preface, Muller presents a volume in which the authors strive to understand Churchill’s own teaching: “At the summit true politics and strategy are one.” Muller describes the care that Churchill took in putting together his speeches and points out, as do others in the book, that the Fulton address reflected nearly a half century of Churchill’s thought and experience. The prologue is Churchill’s speech as given at Fulton and, despite the impressive credentials of the other contributors, is the strongest selection in the book. The interpreters of the speech go on to ask and answer questions about whether Churchill’s remarks, insights, and policy advice are time bound, timeless, or both.

    Most of the chapters were written for a conference held in Fulton to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the speech. Although generally scholarly, the volume is also an American tribute to Churchill, the half-brother from across the Atlantic. Aside from Lady Thatcher, who offers a Churchillian analysis of the post-Cold War world in the epilogue, only one contributor is British and the rest are American. But this is appropriate, one thinks Churchill himself would say, since his purpose at Fulton was to impel the United States to accept its global responsibilities after World War II and meet the challenge of the Cold War. Only by this course, according to Churchill, would the “Sinews of Peace”–from a special relationship between Great Britain and the United States to the establishment of conditions of freedom and democracy in all countries–shield mankind from the “two gaunt marauders, war and tyranny.”

    The body of the book is six essays, which can be read as pairs in juxtaposition. In their respective chapters, historians John Ramsden and Paul Rahe give detailed background about the speech, including the role of President Harry Truman and his relationship with Churchill, and examine the various reactions, especially in the United States and Great Britain, to the Fulton address. Political scientists Daniel Mahoney and Spencer Warren each aim to define and plumb Churchill’s philosophy of politics generally and of international politics specifically through a close treatment of the Fulton text and with reference to major philosophical influences on Churchill. And in their essays, political scientists Larry Arnn and Patrick Powers stress Churchill’s political understanding of prudence for his own time and circumstances, and argue for the higher prudence of his statesmanship for all time.

    Astute judgments come from all the contributors, but two essays speak well for the whole. Through his textual analysis of the “Iron Curtain” speech, Spencer Warren shows how its themes elucidate Churchill’s general political philosophy of international relations. Although he is too quick to portray Churchill as a practitioner of power politics–on this point, Mahoney’s chapter provides a necessary corrective–Warren underscores how Churchill sought peace through the strength of both political principles and strategic superiority.

    Larry Arnn, meanwhile, explores the depth of Churchill’s understanding of America and its bedrock principles, and indicates that the Truman administration’s main policies of containment followed naturally from the call at Fulton. More explicitly than the other writers, Arnn is concerned about the current applicability of Churchill’s counsel and proposals in the “Iron Curtain” speech, and he says that Americans risk both marring their experiment in self-government and misunderstanding their responsibilities in world leadership if they do not learn from Churchill’s message.

    There are weaknesses in some of the essays, including excessive dependence on Fraser Harbutt’s The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America, and the Origins of the Cold War in one or two cases and underdevelopment of themes in another. But as a group the chapters, and their authors, provide a nearly full analysis of the “Iron Curtain” speech and argue persuasively that the substance and presentation of Churchill’s remarks were essential in 1946 and still have much to teach us over fifty years later.

    No other book has appeared on the “Iron Curtain” speech in the wake of its fiftieth anniversary. Many scholars and even some politicians maintain that we are in a post-Cold War world in which Churchill’s words have little or no meaning. The contributors to Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech Fifty Years Later prove them wrong. Winston Churchill was not named person of the twentieth century–Time bestowed that honor on Albert Einstein–but according to Patrick Powers and implied by his fellow writers, the British statesman deserves to be remembered as the greatest man of a century marked by world wars, Cold War, unparalleled tyrannies,and unmatched freedoms.