The 10 Most Popular Posts From 2025
What captured reader interest and sparked discussion
In 2025, the world order has proven to be remarkably unstable, with the U.S. changing its posture to view Europe as something of an enemy, while attempting a rapprochement with Russia and viewing China as more of an economic competitor than a military adversary. It’s been my privilege at Public Sphere to try to make sense of this disorienting moment with a mix of analysis and interviews.
The newsletter is attracting more attention, with the top five most viewed posts ever all being from 2025. However, readership stagnated in the second half of the year — it could be algorithm changes, the fading of the shock from the second term of Donald Trump, or some combination of the two. If you’ve enjoyed reading Public Sphere as much as I’ve enjoyed writing and interviewing people for it, becoming a paid subscriber is a great way to support the publication. To round out the year, I’m listing the top 10 posts from the year. Here they are:
Q&A: Lithuania's Former Top Diplomat Says the U.S.-Russia Talks Feel a Bit Like the Hitler-Stalin Pact
This past week has seen a sea change in European security. On February 12, U.S. …
A Slain Ukrainian Writer's Unfinished Manuscript Shows Courage Amid Chaos
It's a crime that Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina's book, Looking at Women Lo…
Incompetence is Part of One-Man Rule
A letter to Harvard with demands so extreme that Trump officials later said its delivery was "unauth…
Trump Obeyed in Advance to Putin
For all of his vaunted deal-making skills, Donald Trump has been repeatedly proven to be a poor negotiator. His willingness to concede may be a disaster for Ukra…
What JD Vance Could Not Understand About Ukraine
It’s too soon to tell what the global consequences of U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s Oval Office upbraiding of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be. It certainly looks like the U.S. has switched sides to allying with Russia. However, there is reason to be skeptical that this about-face will actually result in a lasting partnership: Russia has no alliances with major powers. (It is a junior partner to China.) European countries will have to make painful choices now--including freezing Russian assets, cutting generous social benefits, and raising debt--to defend themselves from fighting an even larger war. In this meeting, which went off the rails with Vance's reality-TV-style accusation that Zelenskyy hadn't thanked Trump, one exchange stood out to me:
Trump's Embrace of Putin Could Lead to Endless War
The February 28 Oval Office berating of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the Russian nesting doll of contemporary geopolitics; it has many layers. One comment fr…
The Authoritarian Bargain That Trump Didn't Make
Authoritarian leaders sometimes try to make a bargain with their citizens: stay out of politics, and we will make you wealthy. This bargain is alluring to both rulers and citizens: as long as rulers maintain rising living standards, they can plunder as they wish, and citizens take solace in economic stability amid declining freedoms. This is how the Chinese Communist Party maintained its grip on power after cracking down on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989. I understood the power of this bargain while living in Vladimir Putin's Russia as a student in the mid-2000s: after the economic depression of the 1990s, the promise of rising living standards came true for many, and questions over presidential abuses of power and human rights violations were pushed to the side. (Many middle-class Russians I knew only began leaving the country after Putin suppressed protests upon his return to power in 2012.)
Look Who's Escalating Now
During the Biden Administration, a debate ensued over which kinds of military assistance to Ukraine would count as an escalation against Russia. The Biden Administration wanted to avoid a war with Russia but also provide military assistance to Ukraine; gradually, the pendulum swung in favor of arming Ukraine after it became clear that Russia did not escalate when a new type of weapons system was delivered. The last volley in this debate was after Donald Trump won the election, and Biden
The Great Capitulation
Almost every day, friends and colleagues from outside the United States ask me: "Why aren't Americans resisting the Trump Administration?" However, there is a fair amount …
Here's What I Think is Going On Between Trump and Putin
In a bid to end the war between Ukraine and Russia, the rhetoric of U.S. President Donald Trump has been Orwellian, verging on emetic. Last week, he lied and said that Ukraine started the war against Russia and called Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the democratically-elected president of Ukraine, a "dictator." Trump also vastly exaggerated the amount of U.S. financial support for Kyiv and the number of Ukrainian casualties. On February 24, Trump declined to call Russian leader Vladimir Putin a dictator, despite the fact that he has never won a free and fair election and routinely jails and kills his critics. The same day, in an about face of U.S. policy, the United States sided with Russia at the U.N. on a resolution about the war, while voting down a Ukraine-sponsored resolution naming the aggressor as Russia.