Moisés Naím is a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an internationally syndicated columnist. He served as editor in chief of Foreign Policy, as Venezuela's trade minister, and as executive director of the World Bank. He is the author of The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why... Continue Reading →
Become a Patron! Putin's Revenge of Power As Vladimir Putin rampages his army through Ukraine, observers do not sense the cold calculation of strategic analysis. Instead, it’s impossible to interpret his behavior as anything less than revenge. He wants revenge from the West for the breakup of the Soviet Union. He wants revenge from Ukraine... Continue Reading →
Timothy Frye joins the podcast to discuss Russia's personalist autocracy. Tim is a Professor of Post-Soviet Foreign Policy at Columbia University and a research director at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. His new book is Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin's Russia. Putin in the past could claim to have won... Continue Reading →
Recently the Democracy Paradox featured three episodes about the Global Ascendance of China on its podcast. David Shambaugh's China Goes Global offers an early examination of this topic. So much has happened since its publication in 2013, but it remains a highly influential work to the study of China. The discussion below represent the thoughts and... Continue Reading →
Early in my life I was drawn to power to impose my ideas onto the world. It was only natural to believe leaders were able to change organizations, businesses or even geopolitics to their whim. But I found my implicit sense of power was entirely wrong. There is a tradeoff between authority and influence. Leadership... Continue Reading →
American exceptionalism was never simply about the culture of the American people. It places a fundamental focus on American institutions and a faith in the American political process. Indeed, Tocqueville recognized in the nineteenth century the importance of the political system in shaping a peculiar and unique American culture. It is not culture which defines... Continue Reading →
