International

A Failure of Imagination

The French left has not only abandoned its traditional constituents, it has also been unable to defend a positive vision of the multicultural society that France has become.

April 21, 2022 issue

Fintan O’Toole

The Last of Her Kind

Angela Merkel emerged from the ruins of the Eastern bloc as a spectacular example of the way the collapse of an old regime might create a much more benign sense of opportunity.

April 7, 2022 issue

Fred Kaplan

‘A Bridge Too Far’

Even the most ardent advocates of NATO expansion after the implosion of the USSR realized that it had limits—and one of those limits was Ukraine.

April 7, 2022 issue

Odd Arne Westad

The Long Shadow of Nuclear War

Putin has issued a stark reminder that the architecture of the atomic arms race was never dismantled. But his cold-war superpower gambit won’t win the war in Ukraine.

March 18, 2022

Howard W. French

Slavery, Empire, Memory

For nearly two centuries Britain has attempted to minimize the importance of slavery to its economic prosperity.

April 7, 2022 issue

Benjamin Nathans

Bureaucrat’s Honor

Three memoirs by Trump administration officials reveal the integrity and moral discipline of the so-called deep state in the face of corruption and philistinism.

April 21, 2022 issue

Antonia Hitchens

Among Ukraine’s Foreign Fighters

The spectacle of popular resistance to the Russian invasion has drawn thousands of volunteers to the international legion. But who are they, and what motivates them?

March 26, 2022

Olesya Khromeychuk and Sonya Bilocerkowycz

The Nation Ukraine Has Become

The reason resistance to the Russian invasion is so strong is that the country’s people already chose a new, decisively democratic identity.

March 25, 2022

On Ukraine

Timothy Snyder

Putin’s Philosopher of Russian Fascism

Ivan Ilyin provided a metaphysical and moral justification for political totalitarianism, which he expressed in practical outlines for a fascist state. Today, his ideas have been revived and celebrated by Vladimir Putin.

March 16, 2018

Tim Judah

Holding On in Irpin

For the moment, the Ukrainians are winning by simply not losing.

April 7, 2022 issue

Fintan O’Toole

The Last of Her Kind

Angela Merkel emerged from the ruins of the Eastern bloc as a spectacular example of the way the collapse of an old regime might create a much more benign sense of opportunity.

April 7, 2022 issue

Fred Kaplan

‘A Bridge Too Far’

Even the most ardent advocates of NATO expansion after the implosion of the USSR realized that it had limits—and one of those limits was Ukraine.

April 7, 2022 issue

Jacob Heilbrunn

The Hawks Ascending

Russia’s war on Ukraine has opened up a new front in Washington’s foreign policy elite, mobilizing veterans of the cold war and Iraq. Especially on the right, a fierce fight is in prospect.

March 14, 2022

Tim Judah

Ukraine on the Brink

It is quite normal to refuse to believe that you are about to be engulfed by a cataclysm.

March 24, 2022 issue

Antonia Hitchens

Among Ukraine’s Foreign Fighters

The spectacle of popular resistance to the Russian invasion has drawn thousands of volunteers to the international legion. But who are they, and what motivates them?

March 26, 2022

Olesya Khromeychuk and Sonya Bilocerkowycz

The Nation Ukraine Has Become

The reason resistance to the Russian invasion is so strong is that the country’s people already chose a new, decisively democratic identity.

March 25, 2022

The Latest

Nawal Arjini

Democracy in Concrete

An exhibition of postcolonial architecture in South Asia looks back with nostalgia at modernism’s promise of social progress.

June 26, 2022

Madeleine Schwartz

Generation Mélenchon

A new alliance is attempting to revive the French left by bringing candidates from a range of parties under a single banner.

June 18, 2022

Rahmane Idrissa

Potent Policies of Empire

The contest in Mali between the West and Russia is not a front in a new cold war but rather part of a scramble for Africa’s resources.

May 25, 2022

Yuri Slezkine

‘He Loved Handing Out Decorations’

The admiring biographer of Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Union’s most memorably inconspicuous leader, finds him an affable heartthrob who longed for peace “with every fibre of his body.”

June 9, 2022 issue

Anne Enright

A Cruel Vote

Can you imagine what it is like to put your mark on a paper ballot that asks you to tease out the issue of a raped child’s inconvenient ability to end her own life?

May 8, 2022

Clair Wills

A Lesson from Ireland

Decades of forced birth and coerced adoption convinced the Irish people to lift a state ban on abortion. Will Americans learn the hard way, too?

May 6, 2022

Helen Epstein

The Iron Grip of the CFA Franc

The colonial-era currency limits the economic freedom of the African countries that use it and subjects them to continued French authority.

May 26, 2022 issue

E. Tammy Kim

A Permanent Battle

A new history draws on recently declassified archives to illustrate how the Korean War was an intimate civil conflict, not just a proxy battle between superpowers.

May 26, 2022 issue

Fintan O’Toole

Our Hypocrisy on War Crimes

The US’s history of moral evasiveness around wartime atrocities undermines the very institution that might eventually bring Putin and his subordinates to justice: the International Criminal Court.

May 26, 2022 issue