The Realist

Autocracy in America

The Atlantic

News, Society & Culture, Politics

4.8 • 999 Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Soviet dissidents have long admired the United States and its Founding Fathers for their attachment to a moral core, the basis for individual human liberty. So what happens when American power is used not for moral interests but for solely pragmatic ones? Host Garry Kasparov is joined by George Friedman, the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures, a firm that analyzes foreign policy and forecasts global events. George’s view of the world—drawn from the experience of his family fleeing Nazis in Eastern Europe—echoes Henry Kissinger’s geopolitical philosophy: realism, not idealism. Garry and George consider whether realism is realistic, and what the future of American foreign policy means for democracy at home. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/listener. Garry chairs the Renew Democracy Initiative, publisher of The Next Move. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:48.5	The traditional Soviet dissidents, those brave souls who spoke out against the totalitarian
0:58.8	communist regime, was based on morality.
1:02.3	They often sacrificed their freedom, and even their lives, to call out the evils of a government
1:07.2	that mentally and physically enslaved its own citizens and waged imperialistic wars abroad.
1:13.3	Andrew Sachery, the father of the Soviet age bomb, who later won the Nobel Peace Prize for his
1:18.8	criticism of the communist regime, was banished for speaking out for human rights.
1:24.5	Alexander Solzhenyzen, the writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, was exiled
1:29.3	for documenting the Stalin's Gulag system of prison camps and torture.
1:34.3	Their legacies inspired me, as did the great fall of the USSORI grew up in the United States of America.
1:42.3	Solzhenits in particular was a great admirer of the US, where he toured to
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