Section: The American Interest (USA)
“Such a System is Chemically Incompatible with Democracy”
Boris Akunin is the pen name of Grigori Chkhartishvili, Russia’s best-known writer of detective and historical fiction. Akunin is an expert on Japanese literature (he’s editor-in-chief of the 20-volume Anthology of Japanese Literature). He is also a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Akunin spoke out in 2014 against the...
There’s Something About Putin
Editor’s Note: This is the second essay in a multi-author series on “Getting Russia Right.” Read the first installment by Karina Orlova here.After two years of “Putin’s Master Plan” and “New Cold War?” chyrons, it’s not surprising to see some pushback. Unlike President Trump’s “Russia hoax” denials, these revisions are...
What If Trump Had Lost In 2016?
“Never had a Presidential campaign flamed out so spectacularly as that of Donald J. Trump in 2016,” wrote Mark Halperin in Game Over: The Shock Cruz Victory. “The object of media fascination in Iowa and a surprise winner in New Hampshire, the ludicrous political dreams of the host of the Apprentice were toast, sunk by the Access Hollywood Tape...
The Fight for the Poorest Country in Europe
It’s not often that the United States and Russia find common ground in Eastern Europe, and it’s even rarer that one of Europe’s poorest countries inspires cautious optimism. Yet that is just what has happened in tiny, landlocked Moldova last month, as popular unrest against oligarchic rule and the outside mediation of American,...
Focus on Eurasia, Invest in Allies, Rethink Globalization
For 20 years now the United States seems to have been caught in a state of strategic inertia, with the regnant ideology of globalization and open-ended small wars having all but overpowered our ability to redefine our national security priorities. It’s as though victory in the Cold War—and the subsequent commingling of the heady liberal...
Putin, Unclassified
We Need to Talk About Putin: How the West Gets Him WrongMark Galeotti Ebury Press, 2019, $19.95, 160 pp. Editor’s Note: This is the first essay in a multi-author series on “Getting Russia Right”. Coming next week: Carla Anne Robbins.Mark Galeotti’s new book, We Need to Talk About Putin—subtitled “How the West Gets Him Wrong”—is a...
A New Birth of Freedom
“We must be staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a lucky few, but the inalienable and universal right of all human beings.” —Ronald Reagan, Address to the British Parliament, June 8, 1982Thirty-seven years ago, in one of his most visionary and enduringly influential speeches, President Ronald Reagan declared...
Facing Russia, Close and Personal
Sauli Niinistö is stoic, wily, and seems almost wired to be anti-Russian. But that’s not the way he describes the state of play. Finland’s President, responsible for national defense and security, insisted to me during a recent conversation at his residence in Helsinki that his approach toward Russia is one marked by pure...
Facing East, from the West: A Conversation with Estonia’s President
Jeffrey Gedmin for TAI: The first question I want to ask you is about Estonian politics and the cohesion and stability of our democracies today. Across the West, including in the United States, mainstream establishment parties are having problems. This creates space for other parties, both of the far Left and the far Right. What does Estonia look...
Facing East, from the West: A Conversation with Finland’s President
Jeffrey Gedmin for TAI: In many Western countries, voter ties to mainstream establishment parties are loosening, and those parties are in trouble. Is that happening in Finland and what does it look like? And second, you’ve been effective as a politician who is popular but not populist. How do you manage that?Sauli Niinisto: To your first...
