Your new book "Liberalism and its Discontents" was completed before the Russian attack on Ukraine. How does this disturbing event influence your view of the future of liberal societies?

The Ukraine invasion didn’t change my views, really. It was a good illustration of the crisis of liberalism because the biggest critic of liberalism is Vladimir Putin. In 2019, he said that liberalism is an obsolete doctrine. If you read his most recent speech that he gave to justify the annexation of the four Ukrainian provinces, he makes it pretty clear that he thinks the West and its liberal traditions are hypocritical and the source of all evil in the world today. And so, the invasion was a very vivid, forceful effort to overturn an existing liberal regime. It is an illustration of the kind of threat that I talk about in the book.

What does Ukraine's resistance stand for in your eyes –  beyond a nation’s fight for survival?

 I think that the Ukrainians are fighting for a much broader set of ideas, far greater than their own sovereignty. Obviously their nation’s sovereignty is at the core of what motivates them, yet Putin has made the West as a whole — and the ideas that underpin it — his enemy. In this sense, the Ukrainians are defending Europe, and in particular the settlement that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 –  the moment when communism fell, the Soviet Union broke apart, and the Warsaw Pact dissolved. The countries of Eastern Europe that had been under Soviet domination were able to determine their own futures. It’s precisely that freedom that Putin disliked, and now he is trying to reverse the course of history.

 You say in your book that liberal states have no points of reference for a strong national consciousness. Perhaps Ukraine could be a good example of a liberal state with both political freedom and national identity?

 I strongly believe that liberalism needs to be embedded or rooted in an actual country. People aren’t loyal to abstract ideas, but to the manner in which a set of ideas play out in their society. That is what is motivating the Ukrainians.

Putin's attack on Ukraine has weakened populists who sympathise with him. Yet they emerged stronger from the last elections in France and Italy. What is your explanation for that? First of all, things may be a little different if Putin really loses the war convincingly. He is a symbol and a model for many populists around the world of the ‘strong man’. That’s why Donald Trump likes him

Putin doesn’t have to listen to courts or to a hostile media, he can just do what he wants. However if that is proven to lead to disaster for Russia, then that’s not going to seem like such an attractive model. Moreover, the populists are driven by a lot of other things beyond Russian geopolitics. Sweden and Italy have particular problems with immigration, because they accepted a great many immigrants and their integration into the host societies has been complex.

You said, "we need to understand the sources of discontent." What are the main sources of discontent?

There is a set of economic complaints because globalisation has increased inequality, in particularly for traditional working-class people. They have lost their jobs, they’ve lost opportunities, they have seen their industries outsourced to other parts of the world. But the real driver is less that than the cultural threat they perceive. They have a certain understanding of national identity that is more traditional; it’s built around more conservative values. And in fact, the value of patriotism itself is often at stake here because they believe that the so-called globalists don’t believe in the nation. Whereas they, the people, continue to be loyal to their country. It’s that combination of both economic and cultural discontents that’s driving them to populism.

What about left-wing populism?

Left-wing populism is different. Here, too, there are some economic reasons, for instance workers that are not doing well under the current dominance of global capitalism. But for an important part of the left, the idea of progress in their agendas has shifted away from the working class to specific identity groups – racial minorities, immigrants, women, gays and lesbians, and various types of marginalised communities. They don’t like liberalism because liberalism doesn’t recognise groups; the Left desires a pluralism of groups rather than a pluralism of individuals.

We need to deal with the discontents, but perhaps it also applies to our representatives of the democratic order - politicians, media, institutions, etc. Is there an “establishment”, an elite which has lost touch with the general public?

A large social gap has emerged between two sets of people. The first are well-educated people living in big cities; they have a lot of economic opportunities, they are well-connected, and very cosmopolitan. The second set of people live in smaller second, and third tier cities and towns, and in the countryside; they have more traditional social values. There is probably truth to the charge that the former group looks down on the latter, and that they don’t particularly empathise with their compatriots who don’t have the same level of education as they do, and who hold more traditional values.

That perception of disrespect has driven a lot of people to vote for populist parties and politicians. Hillary Clinton made the famous remark about the ‘deplorables’, which for many people symbolised the kind of distain that people like her have for the working class.

There are only a few weeks left until the mid-term elections in the US. With what expectations or even fears do you look to the coming elections and election campaigns?

The Democrats are very likely to lose control of the House of Representatives. That always happens in the first mid-term election. It may not be as catastrophic as some were predicting six months ago, but I still think they’re going to lose, and then they may even lose control of the Senate as well. That’s going to mean – even just the loss of the House of Representatives – that Biden is not going to be able to accomplish anything in the next two years, because he is constantly going to be fighting with the Republicans in Congress. The Republicans have threatened — and they will carry out their threat — to hold a lot of investigations. They will try to impeach Biden, as they want payback for the way they perceive the Democrats treated Donald Trump. Of course, Donald Trump deserved all that and Biden doesn’t, but the partisan politics is so strong that unfortunately Congress will waste a lot of time on such matters.

The 2024 elections are probably more important…

Frankly, I don’t think Biden is going to last until 2024 but yes, he certainly has been hoping that Donald Trump could make a comeback. That would help Biden because Trump was really planning to pull out of NATO, and sympathises more with Russia than with Ukraine.

The interview was conducted by Konstantin Otto, Die Politische Meinung, in Berlin on 5.10.2022.