John M. Owen IV is Taylor Professor of Politics, and a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and the Miller Center, at the University of Virginia. His most recent book is The Ecology of Nations: American Democracy in a Fragile World Order.
An argument that the formidable strength of right-populism in Eastern Europe since the fall of communism in 1989 is more a product of economics than of culture.
The case for defending democracy abroad needs to be made anew.
If Russia did not exist, we would have to invent it.
Cosmopolitan liberalism has reshaped international institutions and practices.
Today the threat against liberalism is one of atrophy rather than violent death.
According to the realists, power is real, and all else is illusion.
“In very broad terms, we have a vision of the kind of world we want, but we’ve never had a national conversation about it.”
Kissinger the scholar studied power. Kissinger the statesman acquired power, guarded it, and wielded it.
The war has ruined any chance of Russo-Western cooperation any time soon; whatever hope the Biden administration has had of peeling Russia away from China lies in tatters.