Subtitiled "Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age" Published in 2017
Kirchick looks at a number of European issues through the lens of specific countries and their problems. Some of the problems he discusses include neutrality as a stance and how it encourages Russian aggression and meddling, the rise of antisemitism and the failure to integrate Muslim immigrants into the European system of values (also seen as a failure to manage immigration as an issue in general), the desire for European wealth without European values and fiscal discipline, the failure to stand firm on state borders and state protection (again in the face of Russian aggression), the pursuit of self-interested economic gains at the expense of other EU states. Basically the failure to act as a mutually supportive group, and to blame others for the problems of one's own political culture and economy.
For me, the most troubling tendency is the rise of apologists for Russian aggression and interference. This shows a singular stupidity in relation to even recent history, especially when you see such tendencies in former East Bloc countries. True, the US has looked after its interests in helping develop the European project, but the net effect has been mutual benefit (unlike some other places where the US has been active...). People have also forgotten that Europeans have twice in the past century called on the US to help them clean up a mess of their own making, at the price of many American lives. This gives them the right to participation. The Russia project, on the other hand, has never been about mutual benefit for the larger population of other countries, something the corrupt elites in many European countries seem to have grasped. Their Russian apologist stance is based on narrow self-interest or crony interest. The Russian project has no ideological cover now - oligarchy, corruption, power.
Also the ability to suppress core social values when face with cultural relativism.
Two things that bothered me at first are the usual problems with many US political thinkers. First, they are blind to the US' use of many practices that they criticize in relation to Russia. Second, they are blindly pro-Israel and pro-Zionist, and are blind to the many machinations that Israel and Zionist groups in other countries use to stifle criticism and discussion.
While these issues are technically outside the focus of this book, they need to be acknowledged to give the criticisms levies some legitimacy. Especially true considering the current (as of publication) US president embodies many of the same issues and uses many of the same disinformation techniques discussed in the book.
Worth reading, especially alongside the recently read discussion of major US failings, Time to Start Thinking, by Edward Luce.
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