Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency

From America’s leading scholar of democracy,a personal, passionate call to action against the rising authoritarianism that challenges our world order—and the very value of liberty

Larry Diamond has made it his life's work to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and by advising dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. Deeply attuned to the cycles of democratic expansion and decay that determine the fates of nations, he watched with mounting unease as illiberal rulers rose in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, and beyond, while China and Russia grew increasingly bold and bullying. Then, with Trump's election at home, the global retreat from freedom spread from democracy's margins to its heart.

Ill Winds' core argument is stark: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on U.S. global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian swell could become a tsunami, providing an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the twenty-first century into a dark time of despotism.

We are at a hinge in history, between a new era of tyranny and an age of democratic renewal. Free governments can defend their values; free citizens can exercise their rights. We can make the internet safe for liberal democracy, exploit the soft, kleptocratic underbelly of dictatorships, and revive America's degraded democracy. Ill Winds offers concrete, deeply informed suggestions to fight polarization, reduce the influence of money in politics, and make every vote count.

In 2019, freedom's last line of defense still remains "We the people."

• Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone
• Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day
• A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy
• This America: The Case for the Nation
• People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent
• The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality
• American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump
• The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal
• Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide
• A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism