Vindman — The Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself About Russia and Betrayed Ukraine

A book talk by Alexander Vindman, Senior Fellow at the Kettering Foundation and board member at the Renew Democracy Initiative

Event Page
https://www.huri.harvard.edu/event/al...

About the Book
A chilling analysis of how Western indecision and apathy made possible the return of brutal Russian expansionism with catastrophic consequences – “A must-read for anyone who wants to understand what went wrong and how it can be fixed” (Serhii Plokhy, Harvard University)

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, six US presidential administrations of both parties pursued policies for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia that emboldened Russia, playing into its imperialist, centuries-long mythos of regional hegemony. The result: military aggression and full-scale invasion. It was all too foreseeable.

In The Folly of Realism, leading national security expert and bestselling author Alexander Vindman argues that America’s mistakes in Eastern Europe result from policymakers’ fixation on immediate, short-term problem-solving and misplaced hopes and fears. He proposes a new long-term, values-based approach that insists on the fundamentals of liberal democracy and a rules-based world order.

Enlivened by firsthand accounts and behind-the-scenes interviews with leading Washington and international policymakers and culminating in the shocking brutality of Putin’s invasions of Ukraine, the book exposes the follies of western foreign policymaking, sources of the dangerous return of Russian imperialism, and prescribes how it can be contained.

About the SpeakerAlexander Vindman, lieutenant colonel US Army (retired), was the director for European Affairs on the White House’s National Security Council, former Political-Military Affairs Officer for Russia, and diplomat at the American Embassies in Moscow and Kyiv. He is currently a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. Vindman received his PhD in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins in 2022. He holds a MA degree in Regional Studies – Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia (REECA) from the Davis Center at Harvard and is an alumnus of our Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute (Class of 2011). In addition to The Folly of Realism (2025), he is the author of the New York Times–bestselling memoir Here, Right Matters (2021), and leads the Here Right Matters Foundation organization which focuses on helping Ukraine win the war against Russia. Vindman lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.