THE CHINESE socio-political system differs from our own. From the perspective of the topic of this conference, here is the most salient distinction: the Chinese system has a telos. The Chinese party-state is fundamentally a set of goal-oriented institutions. This is not unique to China—it is in fact a distinguishing feature of all Leninist systems. I sometimes think of Leninist systems as a little…
THUS WE BOMB Iran. The administration does not give consistent reasons for the attack on Iran: some say we war to change the behavior of the Iranian regime; others say the aim of the war is to end that regime outright. Many officials, including the president himself, endorse both aims. How to make sense of this?
LAST MONTH American Affairs published my review of Alexander Karp’s The Technological Republic. While I had plenty critical to say about Karp’s book, the meat of my essay was a historical survey of the ascendant “Eastern Establishment” of the Gilded Age. This class of men dominated American industry and exerted outsized influence in American politics in the decades between 1860 and 1930. They…
ALEXANDER KARP AND NICHOLAS ZAMISKA'S The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West may not be the worst book I have read this year, but it is by far the most disappointing. Karp is the rare CEO more famous for his intellect than his entrepreneurship. The overlap between the students of Jürgen Habermas and captains of industry is small. Among the technology…
I WILL NOT ATTEMPT to eulogize the martyr. Others have done this already—and done so with such skill that anything I write would not measure up. I will do something else here: explain, in sober and measured language, the significance of Kirk's life to the American right. Like most great men, Charlie Kirk symbolized something far larger than himself. You will not understand why his murder feels so…
OVER THE LAST WEEK Christian Whiton’s essay “How Taiwan Lost Trump” has ricocheted its way through the Taiwanese media. Ever sensitive to foreign perceptions of Taiwan, the Taiwanese chattering classes have been especially sensitive in the fallout of two news items: Taiwan’s failure to reach a trade deal with the United States and the Trump administration’s cancellation of a planned New York…
NEITHER THE MALE AUTHORS NOR THE MALE READERS most preoccupied with middle age are inclined to face it cleanly. The male author depicts the mid-life crisis to escape his own. His novels and screenplays are an adolescent retort to the anxieties of ease. Thus the implausible sexscapades, couture bloodletting, and whiny retreats into solipsism that have defined so much of American literature over the…
LAST OCTOBER I published a short breakdown of four geopolitical ‘schools’ that might shape China strategy under Trump. That piece was a pre-election preview of a much larger report I was writing for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. I published the preview as security: Trump might not win. If so I had better publish something before election day while interest in Trumpworld was guaranteed.…
THERE ARE DECADES WHEN possibility is constrained in a narrow frame. The terrain has been surveyed, boundaries have been laid, and rules have been established. In such an age there is still room for high drama: The decisive round of a boxing match draws the eye despite the fact—or perhaps because—the boxers play an antique game. In such times and climes, victory means mastery of existing modes,…
In November 2024, I traveled to India as part of a delegation hosted by the India Foundation. The foundation is a part of the new nationalist establishment steering Indian society. As they see things, India’s relationship with America has been mediated by hostile parties for too long. On the Indian side you have Congress-sympathizing functionaries; on the American side, a set of intellectuals and…