Corrupter of the World The depth and breadth of corruption in countries, leaders, and peoples has gained more and more public attention in recent years, another torment to add to those already disturbing the peace of the socially aware. It is tormenting because—like the warming of the globe, the advance of authoritarianism, and John Lloyd 29 Mar 2022 · 14 min read
Monkey with a Grenade “Not even a pig shits where it eats.” So said Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev when attacking Nobel Laureate Boris Pasternak for publishing his masterpiece Dr. Zhivago abroad while still living in Russia. Mao railed against the “running dogs” of capitalism. Stalinist propaganda posters vilified priests as sly geese, while Stalinist Robert Ginzburg 20 Mar 2022 · 4 min read
The Pathologies of Imperialism An earlier version of this article appeared in the German language newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on March 4th, 2022. February 24th, 2022, constituted a shock to the European psyche. The invasion of Ukraine, without any plausible casus belli, the massive use of military force against civilians, the attempted hunting down Harold James 11 Mar 2022 · 10 min read
The New Great Game Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine will be remembered as one of the great crimes of the 21st century. The ensuing humanitarian crisis has already caused more than two million refugees [https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-number-of-refugees-reaches-2-million-un-says/a-61048556] to flee their homeland. With the imposition of sanctions, policymakers will have Joel Kotkin and Hügo Krüger 9 Mar 2022 · 9 min read
An Englishman in Russia Bids His Daughter Farewell I am an Englishman in Southern Russia. For nearly four years I’ve lived here, helping my Russian ex-partner bring up our (now) eight-year-old daughter. At 9 o’clock last night I saw both of them onto a sleeper-train to Moscow. From there they will fly to Italy and the Robert Ginzburg 28 Feb 2022 · 5 min read
The Olympics Debacle and the Illusions of Nationalism The marquee event of the Winter Olympics, the women’s figure-skating championship, ended in a fiasco this year—a fitting climax to a games overshadowed by the oppressive climate [https://www.discoursemagazine.com/culture-and-society/2022/02/08/how-to-save-the-olympics-from-the-tyrants/] in its host country and the growing threat of war from Russia. Robert Tracinski 23 Feb 2022 · 5 min read
The New Eurasian Century The current crises in eastern Europe reflect more than just Kremlin mischief-making—they reflect the first fruits of an emerging world order that spans the vastness from Beijing to Berlin. Unlike the longstanding liberal status quo, with its roots in classical civilization and the Enlightenment, this emerging alternative draws upon Joel Kotkin 15 Feb 2022 · 8 min read
Ukraine in the Balance As I write this, Vladimir Putin has moved more than 100,000 troops to Russia’s Ukrainian border, and has strongly implied [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ukraine-war-news-putin-retaliatory-military-technical-measures/] that he will invade absent an ironclad guarantee that Ukraine will never be permitted to join NATO. Although the Biden administration has Brian Stewart 14 Feb 2022 · 9 min read
What Putin Really Wants On Russian President Vladimir Putin’s desk sits a bronze statue of Peter the Great, the tsar who spent his four decades in power waging war on neighbors to establish his country as a great power in Europe. Peter would have understood the nature of the current conflict in Eastern Christopher Miller 14 Feb 2022 · 7 min read
This Is About More Than Ukraine In the early days of World War Two, George Orwell published a marvelous essay [https://orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_eye] entitled “England Your England.” With the Luftwaffe in the skies above London laying waste to the city, Orwell observed a peculiarly contemptible trait of the English intelligentsia. Brian Stewart 28 Jan 2022 · 6 min read
Taiwan, Ukraine, and Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations Revisited Putin believes that the current crisis puts principled opposition to authoritarian empire-building at odds with the imperatives of faith and history, as well as the pragmatic imperative of keeping Germans supplied with energy. John Lloyd 24 Dec 2021 · 8 min read
Stopped Cold: Remembering Russia's Catastrophic 1939 Campaign Against Finland Many Finnish soldiers felt pity for their opponents, prodded into battle by merciless commissars. Sean McMeekin 20 Apr 2021 · 12 min read
I Was Invited to Testify on Energy Policy. Then Democrats Didn't Let Me Speak What, exactly, had I said that was so dangerous as to lead Democrats to engage in character assassination and undermine liberal democratic norms? Nothing I hadn’t already said last January when I testified before Congress about climate change and energy. Michael Shellenberger 29 Jul 2020 · 6 min read
The Restart of History and the Russia Question There should be no misunderstanding that Russia is an adversarial great power. Sumantra Maitra 10 Nov 2016 · 9 min read
