Sublime

I outlined three enormous challenges for the Digital Age: rising inequality, massive environmental degradation, and the risks arising from major geopolitical change. These daunting challenges could overload our political institutions and provoke a devastating conflict. Such has been the pattern of the past. Surely the prime task of our age is to re

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Sovereign states and their governments are not the only pieces on the chessboard in the international system. There are also corporations, nongovernmental organizations such as Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and Greenpeace, foundations, members of the media, religious authorities, governors and mayors, and regional and global organ

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By the mid-20th century, foundations had reached the height of their power and influence, triggering a congressional investigation into whether foundations were manipulating public opinion and thought. The lawyer Rene Wormser, who wrote the final report, described foundations as a “cartel” that threatened to direct our entire intellectual and cultu... See more

In 1973, only 45 of the world’s 151 countries were counted as “free” by Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization that produces quantitative measures of civil and political rights for countries around the world.1 That year, Spain, Portugal, and Greece were dictatorships; the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites looked like strong an... See more

President Wilson’s belief that founding the League of Nations would be the best guarantee against future aggression by Germany—or anyone else—was not universally shared. In particular, France, led by Georges Clemenceau, the host of the Paris Peace Conference that was to bring a formal end to World War I, was preoccupied with ensuring that Germany w

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