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An Instant New York Times Bestseller
A Foreign Policy Biggest Foreign Policy Book of 2025
"An excellent book."—Rachel Maddow
“Vindman has made his case. Trump, meanwhile, acts like Tony Soprano with nukes.”—Guardian
“In The Folly of Realism, Alexander Vindman has written a bracing primer about this catastrophic conflict and its implications for what used to be called the free world... Vindman draws on his extensive knowledge and experience to show that the war Russia is waging against Ukraine isn’t just about territorial gains or the global balance of power, as many realists insist. Fundamentally, it is a struggle over belief and historical memory.”—Quillette
“Vindman shines. He doesn’t simply dispense with the Russocentric visions of previous administrations, but he eviscerates the schools of thought undergirding the 'realism' motivating Bush, the idealism motivating Obama, and the kleptocratic rapaciousness motivating Trump.”—Bulwark
“The timing could not be better for the release of Alexander Vindman’s new book The Folly of Realism, which serves as a stark warning against the historically utilised ‘Russia First’ approach in U.S.-Ukrainian relations.”
—Journal on Baltic Security
“Vindman combines intricate analysis with personal observations…to make a spirited riposte to ‘realists’ who argue America has no vital interests in Ukraine. It’s a penetrating take on American foreign relations.”—Publishers Weekly
“In a carefully laid-out case, Vindman urges that the U.S. take stronger steps to protect Ukraine as a democratic nation with Western values whose very existence repudiates Putin’s Russia ‘and Putinism itself.’…A persuasive case for rethinking America’s guiding foreign policy doctrine in the face of global chaos.”
—Kirkus
“Alexander Vindman combines decades of experience in the US military and government with academic insight to explain how successive American administrations misjudged Russia and emboldened the Kremlin to start the largest conventional war in Europe since 1945. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand what went wrong and how it can be fixed.”—Serhii Plokhii, author of The Russo-Ukrainian War
“The Folly of Realism offers a powerful critique of the decades of policies, followed by Democrats and Republicans alike, that failed to defend sovereignty of and democracy in Ukraine. Drawing on his decades of unique experiences working on relations between the United State, Ukraine, and Russia, Vindman writes with clarity and persuasion first in diagnosing past problems and then in suggesting future prescriptions for US foreign policymakers.”—Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia
MARCH 2025 - AudioFile
Jacques Roy's narration sounds like a political science lecture as Alexander Vindman's analysis of Russia's invasion of Ukraine delves into the history behind the conflict. He covers the Chernobyl disaster, denuclearization efforts, Ukraine's role in the fall of the Soviet Union, and relations between Russia and the region dating back to the seventeenth century. It's packed with enough detail to bring listeners up to speed on the conflict today. There's brief excitement as Roy recounts Vindman's own observation mission at Ukraine's border in his diplomatic work for the U.S. Roy injects passion into Vindman's criticism of President Trump and calls for neo-idealism, a foreign policy based on U.S. values that would help Ukraine and other nations maintain self-rule in a world of aggressive powers. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2025-03-22
European affairs expert Vindman recounts the many ways in which American foreign policy has gone astray.
“Realism’s impulse to avert crisis at virtually any cost doesn’t even avert crisis,” declares the author, deprecating the long-standing doctrine, courtesy of Henry Kissinger and company, that indexes foreign policy decisions to American interests. Instead, Vindman advocates a rising doctrine called neo-idealism, which “demands using a more nuanced and coherent understanding of interest, viewed through our values, along with other important inputs, to determine a compass heading for a US foreign-policy approach.” In the instance of his native Ukraine, Vindman argues, U.S. foreign policy has been driven by Moscow’s narrative, a holdover of a long-ago empire and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in which Ukraine is seen as an integral part of Russia. “Without Ukraine, Russia cannot sustain an imperialist, revanchist narrative of the so-called unity of the ethnic-Russian and Russian-speaking peoples,” he writes. Vladimir Putin’s use of this narrative includes the view that the U.S. has continued to wage the Cold War all along, using “hybrid warfare” that includes—deep irony here—American interference in Russian elections. In a carefully laid-out case, Vindman urges that the U.S. take stronger steps to protect Ukraine as a democratic nation with Western values whose very existence repudiates Putin’s Russia “and Putinism itself.” Neo-idealism also demands that the U.S. take greater interest in protecting democratic nations that realism would consider insignificant and, with that, “strengthening South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan” against China. Regrettably, he concludes, all that’s unlikely to happen under his bête noire, Trump, with the result that the “next administration will inherit not just a fractured global order but also allies wary of America’s reliability”—a situation reparable by means of neo-idealism.
A persuasive case for rethinking America’s guiding foreign policy doctrine in the face of global chaos.
