How the West Lost Peace
Helfried Carl in conversation with Philipp Ther
How the West Lost Peace
When the Berlin Wall was stormed and the Soviet Union collapsed, the West, and the United States in particular, looked like the sole victors of history. Three decades later, the spirit of triumph rings hollow. What went wrong?
In the sequel to his award-winning history of neoliberal Europe, renowned historian Philipp Ther seeks an answer to this question. He argues that global capitalism has produced many losers and prepared the ground for the rise of right-wing populists and nationalists. He shows how the promise of prosperity and freedom has not been sufficiently realised in Eastern Europe despite material progress, how the West lost Russia and alienated Turkey. Neoliberal capitalism also left the world ill-prepared to cope with Covid-19, and the pandemic further weakened post-1989 Western hegemony, which is now being brutally challenged by Russia's war on Ukraine. The double blow of the pandemic and the largest war in Europe since 1945 has brought to an end the era of transformation ushered in by the end of the Cold War.
This in-depth analysis of the post-1989 mess in the world will be of great interest to those who want to understand how we got to where we are today and the enormous challenges we now face.“
Philipp Ther, historian, is a professor at the Institute for Eastern European History at the University of Vienna. He is the winner of the Wittgenstein Prize and founder of the Research Centre for the History of Transformations
Helfried Carl, Diplomat, has been a partner of the company he co-founded in 2019. Innovation in Politics Institute in Vienna. From 2014-2019 he was Austria's ambassador to the Slovak Republic, before that, from 2008-2014, he was head of office and foreign policy advisor to National Council President Barbara Prammer.
Philipp Ther:
How the West Lost the Peace. The Great Transformation Since the Cold War
Translated by Jessica Spengler
May 2023, Polity Press, ISBN 978-1-5095-5060-9, € 23,70