"Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency"

Join Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, to hear about the fluctuating waves of global democracy. Learn what can be done to ensure that its preservation remains a possibility for future generations. Diamond works to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and advising dissidents fighting autocracy worldwide. Deeply attuned to the cycles of democratic expansion and retreat that determine the fates of nations, he watched uneasily as illiberal rulers rose in Hungary, Poland, Turkey and beyond, while China and Russia grew increasingly bold and bullying. Then, with Trump's election, the global retreat from freedom spread from democracy's margins to its heart. The core argument in “Ill Winds” is stark: the defense and spread of democratic ideals relies on US global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian wave could provide an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and others to turn the 21st century into a dark time of surging authoritarianism. We are at a hinge in history, between a new era of tyranny and a new age of democratic renewal. Free governments can defend their values; free citizens can exercise their rights. We can make the Internet safe for liberal democracy and revive America's degraded democracy. “Ill Winds” offers concrete, deeply informed suggestions to fight polarization, reduce the influence of money in politics and make every vote count. Larry Diamond is a professor by courtesy of political science and sociology at Stanford University and past director of its Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. In 2004, he served in Baghdad as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He is the author of numerous books, the primary or secondary editor of fifty books, and a founding coeditor of the Journal of Democracy.