The West’s biggest vulnerability is internal
It’s time for wartime leadership in America and its democratic allies.
JULY 9, 2024 4:01 AM CET
BY ANDREW A. MICHTA
Andrew A. Michta is senior fellow and director of the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative at the Atlantic Council of the United States. Views expressed here are his own.
In the unyielding realm of the Darwinian ecosystem we call international relations, there are rare moments when history abruptly accelerates and decisions set the world on a new course.
This happened when U.S. President Ronald Reagan uttered the famous “we win, they lose” guidance for his administration. Or when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev launched his perestroika reforms in a desperate effort to compete with the newly assertive U.S. — an ill-considered policy that ultimately collapsed the Soviet empire. Or more recently, when Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine for the second time in 2022, and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared Beijing’s “no-limits friendship” with Moscow.
Today, the U.S. and its allies face a similar moment where strategic choices will set the course of history for a generation. But to devise the right strategy, Washington’s political leadership needs to coldly and accurately diagnose what is sickening the world around them — and its allies must do the same. If not, we risk falling into an all-out global conflict.
https://www.politico.eu/article/international-relations-america-washington-politics-western-society-democracy-war/
