Tag: point of view
The Power of a Failed Revolt
When we write history, it tends to be tidy and led by great men. In real time, it’s messy but still astonishing. Last weekend, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who leads a private army called the Wagner Group, attempted what many have called a coup against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Technically, it failed. He landed in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, pledged to march to Moscow, and then turned around. Nothing about this series of events suggests expert planning or high competence. Prigozhin
A Russian Defeat in Ukraine Could Save Taiwan
Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, told me at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday that he worries China may be learning the wrong lessons from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Many people assume that China, observing Russia’s inability to conquer Ukraine, might be newly hesitant to invade Taiwan: “Hey, maybe we should completely rethink this” is the thought that Sullivan hopes enters Chinese minds. “But the thinking could also be How do we do it
The ‘Meta-emptiness’ of Emily in Paris
When the first season of Netflix’s Emily in Paris debuted in October 2020, it was met with both delight and ridicule: delight at its escapism into sunny France and from away the election and pandemic, but also ridicule at Lily Collins’s bubbly American abroad blithely Instagramming her croissants by the Seine. (“The whole city looks like Ratatouille!”)
These reactions are not mutually exclusive though, as Emily in Paris’s many conflicted fans can attest. So with the arrival of … Read more