When the Cold War ended, Americans and Europeans were lulled into a false sense of security, convinced that democracy and globalization would guarantee peace and prosperity indefinitely. As Snyder shows in THE ROAD TO UNFREEDOM, this generated inequality and opened the door to fascism and authoritarianism. When Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia, he would begin a campaign meant to justify rule by an increasingly wealthy few and stagnation for the rest of Russia’s citizens. Snyder reveals a Russian ideology in which the West is, by its very existence, a permanent threat. The democratic institutions, values, and ideals that Americans and the countries of the European Union enjoy must be subverted. And so Russia began to employ the strategies it perfected at home— information and cyber warfare, attacks on the free press, the spreading of falsehoods and blatant denial of fact—abroad. Snyder shows how the rise of populism, the British vote against the EU, and the election of Donald Trump were all Russian goals, achieved by seizing upon European and American prejudices and vulnerabilities. Russia has prepared the way for the defeat of democracy as we know it and, as Snyder argues, that is a truth we cannot afford to deny. The “Russia story,” seen only partially from America, comes clear in Snyder’s international narrative, and hits home in ways we don’t expect