In defending its legitimacy, a major claim of the liberal international order is that liberal democracies virtually never go to war against each other. In reality, the mechanisms of this peace have little to do with anything inherent in liberalism.

Narratives about the Vietnam War view it as as either unwinnable, or undermined by American domestic opposition. In fact, there was nothing to be won. America had already sacrificed its only potential allies as incompatible with international liberalism.

Advocates of decentralized government view charter cities as a way to route around slow, legacy governments, and usher in political and market liberalism. Reality tells a different story.

The rhetoric of a new Cold War with China is popular across the political spectrum. But China is not the USSR and these differences make for a very different geopolitical game.

Eastern Europe has clashed with Brussels about the continent’s ideological foundations. Now it is building the political and economic momentum to shape its future.

Jair Bolsonaro is known as Brazil’s controversial right-populist. But he also reveals deep class divisions in the country’s politics and how it remembers military rule.