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"On February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin launched a massive invasion of Ukraine, setting in motion changes that have been felt around the globe. Collision is the story of this war's origins. It begins in 2008, when Barack Obama came to power in the United States and Dmitry Medvedev came to power in Russia, a period of optimism and new beginnings. It then traces a steady parting of the ways between the United States and Russia, from the return of a newly aggressive Putin to the Kremlin in 2012 to the outbreak of a revolution in Ukraine--and the subsequent Russian annexation of Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine"--
This definitive portrait of American diplomacy reveals how the concept of the West drove twentieth-century foreign policy, how it fell from favor, and why it is worth saving. Throughout the twentieth century, many Americans saw themselves as part of Western civilization, and Western ideals of liberty and self-government guided American diplomacy. But today, other ideas fill this role: on one side, a technocratic "liberal international order," and on the other, the illiberal nationalism of "America First." In The Abandonment of the West, historian Michael Kimmage shows how the West became the dominant idea in US foreign policy in the first half of the twentieth century -- and how that consensus has unraveled. We must revive the West, he argues, to counter authoritarian challenges from Russia and China. This is an urgent portrait of modern America's complicated origins, its emergence as a superpower, and the crossroads at which it now stands.
Kimmage focuses on the relationship between Lionel Trilling and Whittaker Chambers to explore the birth of neoconservatism.
Highlights the changes and continuities in world politics that emerged from the end of the Cold War.
In History's Grip concentrates on the literature of Philip Roth, one of America's greatest writers, and in particular on American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, and The Human Stain. Each of these novels from the 1990s uses Newark, New Jersey, to explore American history and character. Each features a protagonist who grows up in and then leaves Newark, after which he is undone by a historically generated crisis. The city's twentieth-century decline from immigrant metropolis to postindustrial disaster completes the motif of history and its terrifying power over individual destiny. In History's Grip is the first critical study to foreground the city of Newark as the source of Roth's inspiration, and to scrutinize a subject Roth was accused of avoiding as a younger writer—history. In so doing, the book brings together the two halves of Roth's decades-long career: the first featuring characters who live outside of history's grip; the second, characters entrapped in historical patterns beyond their ken and control.
Amerikafahrt by Wolfgang Koeppen is a masterpiece of observation, analysis, and writing, based on his 1958 trip to the United States. A major twentieth-century German writer, Koeppen presents a vivid and fascinating portrait of the US in the late 1950s: its major cities, its literary culture, its troubled race relations, its multi-culturalism and its vast loneliness, a motif drawn, in part, from Kafka’s Amerika. A modernist travelogue, the text employs symbol, myth, and image, as if Koeppen sought to answer de Tocqueville’s questions in the manner of Joyce and Kafka. Journey through America is also a meditation on America, intended for a German audience and mindful of the destiny of postwar Europe under many Americanizing influences.
Taking into account how Russian domestic politics under Vladimir Putin influence its foreign policy, Stoner explains how Russia has battled its way back to international prominence
This book contributes to the debate about a new German power in Europe with an analysis of Germany’s role in European Russia policy. It provides an up-to-date account of Germany’s “Ostpolitik” and how Germany has influenced EU-Russia relations since the Eastern enlargement in 2004 - partly along, partly against the interests and preferences of new member states. The volume combines a rich empirical analysis of Russia policy with a theory-based perspective on Germany’s power and influence in the EU. The findings demonstrate that despite Germany’s central role, exercising power within the EU is dependent on legitimacy and acceptance by other member states.
A revelatory, behind-the-scenes account of Russian-American relations, from a former US ambassador and 'Obama's top White House advisor on Russia policy' (The New York Times) In 2008, when Michael McFaul was asked to leave his perch at Stanford and join President-elect Barack Obama's national security team, he had no idea that he would find himself at the beating heart of one of today's most contentious international relationships. McFaul had been studying and visiting Russia for decades, becoming one of America's preeminent scholars on the country during the first Putin era. During President Obama's first term, McFaul helped craft the policy known as "Reset," which fostered unprecedented co...
In this penetrating exploration of contemporary Russia, Joshua Yaffa meets a variety of Russians - from politicians and entrepreneurs to artists and historians - who have built their careers and constructed their identities in the shadow of the Putin system. Torn between their own ambitions and the omnipresent demands of the state, each has found that compromise is essential for survival and success. Some extract benefits and privileges through cunning and cynicism, others less adept at navigating the system are left broken and demoralized. With sensitivity and depth, Yaffa profiles Russians from institutions such as the Bolshoi and Channel 1, from the major cities, and from regions such as Chechnya, post-annexation Crimea, and the Urals, including an Orthodox priest at war with the church hierarchy and a Chechen humanitarian who turns a blind eye to persecutions. The result is an intimate and probing portrait of a nation much discussed but little understood. And by showing how citizens shape their lives around the demands of a capricious and repressive state, Yaffa offers urgent lessons about the nature of modern authoritarianism.