Georges-Étienne Bonnet (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ etjɛn bɔnɛ]; 23 July 1889 – 18 June 1973) was a French politician who served as foreign minister in 1938 and 1939 and was a leading figure in the Radical Party.

Bonnet was born in Bassillac, Dordogne, the son of a lawyer. Bonnet's father worked at the Cour de cassation and used his wealth to give his son the best education that money could buy in France. Bonnet was educated the elite Lycée Henri IV, École supérieure des hautes études and École des sciences politiques. Bonnet studied law and political science at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques and University of Paris.

Bonnet began his career as an auditeur at the Conseil d'État. In 1911, he launched his political career after he married Odette Pelletan, the granddaughter of Eugène Pelletan. Bonnet's wife, often known as Madame Soutien-Georges, ran a salon and had great ambitions for her husband. One contemporary reported that Madame Bonnet was "so wildly ambitious for her husband that when a new ministry was being formed he was afraid to go home at night unless he had captured a post for himself." Many privately mocked Bonnet for the way in which his wife dominated him. Bonnet's wife's nickname was a French pun on the word for brassiere (soutien-gorge) and was both a reference to Madame Bonnet and to the size of her breasts.

In 1914, Bonnet joined the French Army. During his service during the First World War, Bonnet was a much-decorated soldier who won the Croix de guerre medal for bravery under fire. in 1918 he served as director of demobilization. Bonnet served as the editor on Alfred de Tarde's book L'âme du soldat (The Soul of a Soldier). Bonnet highlighted the passage by de Tarde in which he wrote: "The France of 1914-1917 is more sincerely democratic than it has ever been, and she is in love with command". As an upper-class man, Bonnet was in some awe of the camaraderie and fighting spirit of the mostly lower-class poilus and saw it as his duty to record their experiences. Bonnet seemed to have been jealous of the toughness of the ordinary French soldiers, who lived under conditions that he could never accept. Bonnet often recounted the story of a poilu, named Lauteau, a happily married man with two children, who was killed while displaying a reckless disregard for his own life while he was repairing a telephone wire that had been severed by German artillery. Bonnet used the story of Lauteau as an example of the Union sacrée in action, as he argued in his 1919 book Lettres à un bourgeois de 1914 that it was love of la patrie that had inspired the poilus to resist.

In 1919, Bonnet served as a secretary to the French delegation at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and wrote a book, Lettres à un bourgeois de 1914, that called for widespread social reforms. The British historian Anthony Adamthwaite noted that Lettres à un bourgeois de 1914 was the last serious interest that Bonnet was to display in social reform.

Bonnet served in the Chamber of Deputies from 1924 to 1928 and again from 1929 to 1940. He was appointed undersecretary of state in 1925, the first in a series of high ministerial positions throughout the 1920s and the 1930s. During his time as in the Chamber, Bonnet was regarded as a leading expert in financial and economic matters. As a minister, Bonnet had a reputation for working hard, being always well prepared in parliamentary debates and excelling at political intrigue. In 1931, in response to an appeal for help from China, the League of Nations sent a group of educational experts to suggest improvements to the Chinese educational system. The experts were Carl Heinrich Becker, the former education minister of Prussia; the Christian Socialist British historian R. H. Tawney who was the only member of the group who had been to China before and who could speak some Mandarin; Marian Falski, a senior bureaucrat with the Polish Ministry of Education in charge of all primary schools in Poland; and the scientist Paul Langevin of the Collège de France. Bonnet joined the group, as he was serving as the director of the Paris-based Institution of Intellectual Co-Operation, and the League wanted someone outside of the educational system to serve as the chairman of the group.

On 30 August 1931, the group left for China and saw first-hand the furious protests that erupted all over China in response to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, which had started on 19 September 1931. Although most of the university and high school students in China were protesting the loss of Manchuria, the group was able to have cordial talks with Chinese educational officials about possible reforms and in 1932 released the book The Reorganisation of Education in China. In 1932, Bonnet headed the French delegation at the Lausanne Conference, where he first met Franz von Papen, who was serving as the German chancellor. During the Lausanne Conference, British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, commenting on Bonnet's abilities, asked: "Why isn't he in the Cabinet?"

In 1933, Bonnet was a prominent member of the French delegation to the London Conference and was a leading critic of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's actions during the conference. In 1936, Bonnet emerged as the leader of 18 Radical deputies who objected to their party's participation in the Popular Front. Bonnet was regarded as the leader of the right wing of the Radical Socialist party, which, despite its name, was neither radical nor socialist. As a result, the French Premier Léon Blum, a socialist, effectively exiled Bonnet in January 1937 by appointing him Ambassador to the United States even though Bonnet did not speak English.