A World Run Aground
Reflections from The Ideas Letter
A discomfiting, heterodox response to our era of polycrisis, seeking to inspire questions and deepen our understanding of world affairs.
Description
Have we returned to a world where states have primacy, where ethnicity and ethnonationalism hold significant sway, and where global cooperation is being dramatically reorientated? The relative decline of America is a major factor in this dynamic, but so too is the renewed role of China, India and Brazil on the international stage.
Emanating from the Ideas Workshop of the Open Society Foundations, A World Run Aground brings together sharp, often heterodox analyses of pressing global issues. It covers a wide range of topics, including the current condition of global political economics, liberalism and democracy (and their future); the state of the Anthropocene; and the perils and contradictions of artificial intelligence. Rather than trying to convince readers of right and wrong, to push a particular policy position or ideological hobby horse, the contributors offer a big-tent set of perspectives and critical takes on contemporary issues—without demanding that readers take sides. In a volume that rejects politics based on divisive party lines, more questions are raised than answered.
With contributions from Quinn Slobodian, Iza Ding, Kaiser Kuo, Evgeny Morozov, Basharat Peer, Nesrine Malik, Ivan Krastev and others, this is a thought-provoking new look at today’s turbulent world.
Table of contents
AGAINST THE CURRENT
1. Human Rights on the Edge, Nicholas Bequelin
2. Is It All About Power?: A Response to “Human Rights on the Edge”, LuHan Gabel
3. Further Thoughts: A Rejoinder to LuHan Gabel, Nicholas Bequelin
First Principles, Aryeh Neier
4. The Moral Economy of the Far Right, Miri Davidson
5. The Great Reckoning: What the West Should Learn From China, Kaiser Kuo
6. A New Dependency Theory Moment, Marcos Nobre
7. Why Identity is Failing—and Can’t be Abandoned, Tessy Schlosser
8. Social Democracy After Class?, Bhaskar Sunkara
9. Social Democracy, Immigration, and the Working Class, Sohrab Ahmari
10. The 2024 Nobel Laureates Are Not Only Wrong About China, but Also About the West, Yuen Yuen Ang
11. Disaster Capitalism Revisited Isabella M. Weber
12. The New Legislators of Silicon Valley Evgeny Morozov
13. Intellectual Historians Confront the Present: An Interview with Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, Leonard Benardo
PLACES
14. An Inescapable Past Shehryar Fazli
15. Sudan and the Silence of the Activists, Nesrine Malik
16. Goodbye, Gibbon, Iza Ding
17. India and America: A Certain Ambivalence, Basharat Peer
18. Peronism Now, Jordana Timerman
19. Tunisia: When Obsolete Anti-imperialism Kills Democracy, Nadia Marzouki
MEDITATIONS
20. Flights of the Intelligentsia, Leonid Ragozin
21. My New York Intellectuals, Tomiwa Owolade
22. Writing from the Vortex of War, Muhammad Al-Zaqzouq
23. Lasching Out, Soli Özel
24. Rethinking Foreign Aid (From the Inside), Almut Rochowanski
25. Malaparte!, Gary Indiana
26. The Return of the Future and the Last Man: An Interview with Ivan Krastev, Carlos Bravo Regidor
Reviews
‘When politicians and pundits offer only simplistic and outdated solutions to complex problems, intelligent and hard-hitting criticism is more essential than ever. This spirited and wide-ranging collection of essays will inspire, challenge, vex, and enlighten you, and force readers to rethink issues that they thought they understood. For anyone seeking intellectual alternatives in these troubled times, it is essential reading.’ — Stephen Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School.
‘The great Hannah Arendt once described her philosophical method as “thinking without a banister,” as reasoning without holding tight to inherited assumptions and ideological readymades. A similar spirit suffuses this erudite and heterodox collection, which spans human rights, far right economics, artificial intelligence, Peronism and much more. Read A World Run Aground to loosen your grip on the handrail and see what reflections, objections, and debates these thought-provoking essays inspire.’ – Astra Taylor, author of Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone
‘The keyword of this collection is surprise. The essays, on a range of subjects from AI to the Russian intelligentsia to, above all, human rights in their various aspects, are consistently thoughtful, engaged, contemporary–and surprising. The perspectives come mostly, though not exclusively, from the heterodox left. Each is worth reading. Taken together, they form a guidebook to our troubled present from a group of people who have the rare courage to think for themselves.’ — Keith Gessen, a contributing writer at The New Yorker, was born in Moscow and grew up outside of Boston. He is a founding editor of the literary magazine n+1 and a novelist.
‘An essential compass for navigating our increasingly precarious planet.’ — Lola Shoneyin, Director of the Book Buzz Foundation, Lagos
‘There are very few intellectual venues as cosmopolitan, bold and reliably stimulating as The Ideas Letter. Our appreciation for its steadfast dedication to the life of the mind in a dark time will only be enhanced by this rich anthology.’ — Pankaj Mishra, author of The World After Gaza
‘Just dipping into this collection from The Ideas Letter workshop is to be struck by the engagement with often intractable issues in what so often feels like the worst of times. Provocative, but never just for the sake of it, these essays offer a medley of voices and a sustained commitment to the difficulty and urgency of critical thought.’ — Jacqueline Rose, Co-Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities
‘Opens a global conversation on the shocks of our moment—from the impoverishment of democracy to the power grab of Silicon Valley, from the shortcomings of identity politics to the failures of the human rights project. It offers no verdicts, only arguments left open. A true celebration of pluralism, critical thinking and the spirit of an open society.’ — Enrique Krauze, founding editor of Letras Libres, Mexico City
‘If you are one of those souls who finds yourself standing at the edge of an enormous abyss staring down into a generation of inexplicable global disorder and mendacity, this volume will help you make sense of how the past became the present.’ — Orville Schell, writer, Sinologist and Arthur Ross Vice President of the Center on U.S.-China Relations
‘An impressive collection of essays which speak to the need to critically examine “whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories”, in the words of Karl Popper. The new kid of the internet block challenges cherished assumptions of a supposed settled world order being undermined most starkly by the ongoing genocide in Gaza.’ — Adewale Maja-Pearce, writer and author of Shine Your Eye: In Search of West Africa
‘In a media landscape dominated by verbal bombast and self-righteous rigidity, the Ideas Letter revives the virtues of the great, little magazines, of the last 20th century: intellectual provocation, careful argument and a broadly liberal spirit. This book shows how essential, and how delightful, that is.’ — Peter Beinart, columnist, writer, and former editor of The New Republic
‘Expertly curated, these essays explore the exhaustion of political movements, ideas, and processes wrought by globalisation’s multiple crises. These crises are deftly elaborated in sparkling analyses indicating that the world has run aground.’ — A. Dirk Moses, Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations, CUNY, author of The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression
‘We seem to be in a moment of unprecedented anxiety and change. Nothing seems to be adequate in helping us understand the present and future. What better antidote than a series of short and sometimes infuriatingly provocative essays about practically every major issue facing us. Benardo’s collection is electrifying and forces us to abandon complacency as we navigate and improve the human condition.’ — Leon Botstein, conductor, educator, historical musicologist and scholar, president of Bard College from 1975 to 2026.
Editor(s)
Leonard Benardo is Vice President of the Open Society Foundations and Director of its Ideas Workshop. His intellectual background is in Eurasian geopolitics and society, though his interests span all continents. He has written for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books and Prospect, among others. Benardo is author (with Jennifer Weiss) of Citizen-in-Chief: The Second Lives of the American Presidents and of Brooklyn By Name: How the Neighborhoods, Streets, Parks, Bridges, and More Got Their Names.
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