The Russian invasion of Ukraine is only the most recent and violent violation of its sovereignty. The deeper roots of the crisis lie in Ukrainian elites’ failure to represent their whole nation and to uphold its sovereignty, aided and abetted …
Populists are losing this war
Back in February, we had a pretty good idea what was going on. Video and satellite imagery had shown the steady increase and massing of Russian troops, tanks, and military supplies around Ukraine’s borders. Vladimir Putin had started wars before …
Putin can’t win a Cold War
When Harry S. Truman rose to his feet before a Joint Session of Congress to deliver the speech that won the Cold War, exactly 75 years ago today, some of his listeners might have been forgiven for wondering what on …
The Russia we have lost
There were a lot of us in Moscow, back then. Silly, millennial Euro-Brits, trying to be journalists, floating through a boozy world of “hackpack” drinks and Russian liberals. We were there on cooked visas — fixed in Kyiv — dreamers …
The problem with anti-woke liberals
In the summer of 2005, hundreds of recent college graduates gathered in a giant auditorium in Houston for a lesson in “diversity, community and leadership”. At 20 years old, I was the youngest of the bunch. The organisation Teach for …
The liberal order is already dead
In the summer of 1990, I stood where the wall had been and wondered at what had happened to Europe. I wasn’t alone: the rest of the city, the rest of the continent, was wondering too.
I was 18 years …
Witchcraft isn’t subversive
Once the bankers have gone home for the night, the City of London becomes a mysterious place. It evinces secrecy and subversion; you can feel the presence of something arcane beneath the day-to-day custom and commerce of the City.
It …
We’ve forgotten how to die
Why do some people take a peep at the last few pages of a novel first? Yes, we know it’s cheating. But forget whether a cheeky glance at the ending constitutes a great crime against reading — why do many …
The importance of Bronze Age Pervert
The radical Right in the United States is discussed far more than it is understood. Anyone to the Right of the Republican Party is generally assumed to be a skinhead, redneck, or Nazi Germany-revivalist. To those who have studied the …