"My home policy: I wage war; my foreign policy: I wage war. All the time I wage war"
About this Quote
Clemenceau turns governance into a drumbeat: not a platform, a posture. The blunt repetition is the point. By collapsing “home” and “foreign” policy into the same hard noun, he strips away the comforting fiction that politics is a menu of discrete choices. For France in the First World War, everything was downstream of survival: parliament, labor unrest, food shortages, morale, diplomacy. War wasn’t one agenda item; it was the atmosphere.
The line also performs authority. Clemenceau, “The Tiger,” came to power in 1917 when the French state was wobbling under mutiny, exhaustion, and fear that the front would crack. Saying “I wage war” three times is less a description than an act of consolidation. It tells rivals and wavering allies that there will be no soft lanes, no domestic carve-outs, no negotiation-by-fatigue. He’s signaling to Germans that France won’t bargain, to the British and Americans that he won’t dilute aims, and to French citizens that dissent will be treated as a strategic liability.
Subtextually, it’s a rebuke to normal politics. The phrase “home policy” usually implies compromise, reform, the patient work of social balance. Clemenceau rejects that grammar. War becomes an organizing principle that justifies centralization, censorship, and a harsh moral sorting: useful or obstructive. The rhetorical power is its grim honesty. It doesn’t pretend war can be managed neatly; it admits the terrible clarity of total war, where every institution is conscripted and every day is judged by one metric: whether you are winning.
The line also performs authority. Clemenceau, “The Tiger,” came to power in 1917 when the French state was wobbling under mutiny, exhaustion, and fear that the front would crack. Saying “I wage war” three times is less a description than an act of consolidation. It tells rivals and wavering allies that there will be no soft lanes, no domestic carve-outs, no negotiation-by-fatigue. He’s signaling to Germans that France won’t bargain, to the British and Americans that he won’t dilute aims, and to French citizens that dissent will be treated as a strategic liability.
Subtextually, it’s a rebuke to normal politics. The phrase “home policy” usually implies compromise, reform, the patient work of social balance. Clemenceau rejects that grammar. War becomes an organizing principle that justifies centralization, censorship, and a harsh moral sorting: useful or obstructive. The rhetorical power is its grim honesty. It doesn’t pretend war can be managed neatly; it admits the terrible clarity of total war, where every institution is conscripted and every day is judged by one metric: whether you are winning.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|---|
| Source | Georges Clemenceau — attributed quote. French wording on Wikiquote: "Ma politique intérieure ? C'est de faire la guerre. Ma politique extérieure ? C'est de faire la guerre. Toujours je fais la guerre.", |
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