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The Straussian Moment
gwern.netPopulism gives life to Michel Foucault’s celebrated reversal of the Clausewitz dictum: Politics is the pursuit of war by other means.
Neil Howe • The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End
People who assure you that you can only gain security at the price of liberty usually want to deny you both.
Timothy Snyder • On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Thus it is not clear whether the absence of wars involving the great powers is an enduring trend or something of an aberration. Some judge this trend as likely to last, arguing wars between countries have become less common because actual or potential costs have gone up, especially in those instances in which nuclear weapons could be introduced. Ot
... See moreRichard Haass • The World
President Wilson’s belief that founding the League of Nations would be the best guarantee against future aggression by Germany—or anyone else—was not universally shared. In particular, France, led by Georges Clemenceau, the host of the Paris Peace Conference that was to bring a formal end to World War I, was preoccupied with ensuring that Germany w
... See moreRichard Haass • The World
Because I seek patterns across time, space, and scale,2 I’ve felt free to suspend such constraints for comparative, even conversational purposes: St. Augustine and Machiavelli will occasionally talk with one another, as will Clausewitz and Tolstoy.