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Title details for The Folly of Realism by Alexander Vindman - Wait list

The Folly of Realism

How the West Deceived Itself About Russia and Betrayed Ukraine

by Alexander Vindman
Jacques Roy
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A bestselling national security expert delivers a chilling analysis of how Western indecision and apathy made possible the return of brutal Russian expansionism – with catastrophic consequences.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, six US presidential administrations of both parties pursued policies for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia that emboldened Russia, playing into its imperialist, centuries-long mythos of regional hegemony. The result: military aggression and full-scale invasion. It was all too foreseeable.

In The Folly of Realism, leading national security expert and bestselling author Alexander Vindman argues that America's mistakes in Eastern Europe result from policymakers' fixation on immediate, short-term problem-solving and misplaced hopes and fears. He proposes a new long-term, values-based approach that insists on the fundamentals of liberal democracy and a rules-based world order.

Enlivened by firsthand accounts and behind-the-scenes interviews with leading Washington and international policymakers and culminating in the shocking brutality of Putin's invasions of Ukraine, the book exposes the follies of western foreign policymaking, sources of the dangerous return of Russian imperialism, and proscribes how it can be contained.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 25, 2025

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781668647578
      • File size: 221354 KB
      • Duration: 07:41:08

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Jacques Roy's narration sounds like a political science lecture as Alexander Vindman's analysis of Russia's invasion of Ukraine delves into the history behind the conflict. He covers the Chernobyl disaster, denuclearization efforts, Ukraine's role in the fall of the Soviet Union, and relations between Russia and the region dating back to the seventeenth century. It's packed with enough detail to bring listeners up to speed on the conflict today. There's brief excitement as Roy recounts Vindman's own observation mission at Ukraine's border in his diplomatic work for the U.S. Roy injects passion into Vindman's criticism of President Trump and calls for neo-idealism, a foreign policy based on U.S. values that would help Ukraine and other nations maintain self-rule in a world of aggressive powers. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine
    • Kirkus

      April 15, 2025
      European affairs expert Vindman recounts the many ways in which American foreign policy has gone astray. "Realism's impulse to avert crisis at virtually any cost doesn't even avert crisis," declares the author, deprecating the long-standing doctrine, courtesy of Henry Kissinger and company, that indexes foreign policy decisions to American interests. Instead, Vindman advocates a rising doctrine called neo-idealism, which "demands using a more nuanced and coherent understanding of interest, viewed through our values, along with other important inputs, to determine a compass heading for a US foreign-policy approach." In the instance of his native Ukraine, Vindman argues, U.S. foreign policy has been driven by Moscow's narrative, a holdover of a long-ago empire and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in which Ukraine is seen as an integral part of Russia. "Without Ukraine, Russia cannot sustain an imperialist, revanchist narrative of the so-called unity of the ethnic-Russian and Russian-speaking peoples," he writes. Vladimir Putin's use of this narrative includes the view that the U.S. has continued to wage the Cold War all along, using "hybrid warfare" that includes--deep irony here--American interference in Russian elections. In a carefully laid-out case, Vindman urges that the U.S. take stronger steps to protect Ukraine as a democratic nation with Western values whose very existence repudiates Putin's Russia "and Putinism itself." Neo-idealism also demands that the U.S. take greater interest in protecting democratic nations that realism would consider insignificant and, with that, "strengthening South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan" against China. Regrettably, he concludes, all that's unlikely to happen under his b�te noire, Trump, with the result that the "next administration will inherit not just a fractured global order but also allies wary of America's reliability"--a situation reparable by means of neo-idealism. A persuasive case for rethinking America's guiding foreign policy doctrine in the face of global chaos.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

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  • English

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