Why follow the self-flagellant who claims virtue?

The further difficulty with using virtue as a source of foreign policy legitimacy is that the Biden administration keeps denouncing America as racist, neo-colonial, greedy capitalist, transphobic, patriarchal society only recently ruled by a new Hitler.

Can the U.S. Lead a Human-Rights Alliance Against China?

The Biden administration is trying to counter Beijing by highlighting its violations of democratic rights and values. But some of America’s partners hesitate to choose sides—and others have repressive records of their own.

Yet the move, and the fallout it has generated, highlight a key shift in U.S. foreign policy under the Biden administration: back to using human-rights issues—and the values that bind the U.S. and its Western allies together—as a tool in America’s strategic effort to keep an assertive, resurgent China from upending the international order. The difficulty is that a number of important allies against China, especially in Asia, have troubling human-rights records of their own.

The Spy in Moscow Station: A Counterspy’s Hunt for a Deadly Cold War Threat. The thrilling, true story of the race to find a leak in the United States Embassy in Moscow―before more American assets are rounded up and killed.