Genesis, growth, breakdown, and disintegration: such is the life cycle of a civilization proposed by Arnold Toynbee in his sweeping Study of History (1934) as the British Empire was gradually coming to terms with its waning geopolitical predominance. The idea has deeply impressed itself upon Western and non-Western minds alike. “In life and in the...
On February 22, 1946, George Kennan, a then-relatively unknown diplomat in the American Embassy in Moscow, sent his now famous “Long Telegram” to Washington. Kennan posited that the Soviet Union “learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power;” consequently, in combination with Marxist dogma, Moscow’s ambitions were...
