After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made

by Ben Rhodes

Whereas Hungary represents how capitalism without meaning or restraint opened the door for a return to an older nationalism, Russia represents the disruptive force that nationalism can be in the world when hitched to a belligerent approach to national security, the worldview that domestic and international laws are always to be subjugated to the raw will to power. The corruption that seeped into Hungarian political life is but a drop in the ocean of graft upon which Russia runs. The authoritarian playbook pursued by Viktor Orban was modeled on steps that Putin had taken over the previous decade. The nostalgia for the past and ceaseless Us versus Them politics was similarly a reflection of Putin’s political project, one in which greatness is defined by what you can destroy, not what you can build. And what Putin set out to destroy, above all, was the idea that was so prevalent after the Berlin Wall came down: that a new world order of democratic values and agreed-upon rules and norms was here to stay.