Ed Luce: belief

Transcript context

…The regimes in Poland and Hungary ‑‑ do you see them as an outlier that will be contained, or something that’s the forerunner of more to come? That’s a very good question. I think if we’d had this situation with Hungary 20 years ago, or even 15 years ago, America’s involvement in Europe, under the radar, behind the scenes, in chivying Europe to take steps it needs to take would have been far earlier and far more effective. Today we are suffering, I think, from an absence of leadership of the liberal international order, and countries like Hungary and Poland are able to move extraordinarily, after having, really, craved to join the EU, to be European, to be Western, extraordinarily moving towards Putinism or some form of Putinism. I think America’s absence is really important, so I’m not particularly optimistic on that score, because I think America’s going to continue to be absent on these questions. I think we underestimate the degree to which America has been an exceptional power, and that this 70 years since 1945 has been what Bob Kagan calls an unnatural period in human history. It’s been a success, broadly, of an era of no mass wars and moving towards democracy, because there’s been a hegemon consciously pushing in that direction. That’s a role America is no longer playing. I hope it plays it again, but until it does, I fear you’re going to see Poland and Hungary moving further in the direction they’ve been moving. Next question.…

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