The Decline of Public Ideals and Institutions in American Politics

We Must Save the Books. That’s Michael Kimmage’s SOS message from Trumpian Washington in this issue of Liberties Quarterly. Kimmage, former director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, describes the surreal experience of being hired in January 2025 only to see his institution shuttered by Trump's administration three months later. He reflects on the "American ruin" created as a consequence of abandonment of the Wilson Center's 30,000 book library. And Kimmage connects the rapid destruction of foreign policy institutions like USAID and the U.S. Institute of Peace to a broader assault on expertise and nonpartisan learning, warning that without such institutions, "an abyss opens" in American governance and international relations.

Five Key Takeaways

* Institutional Destruction was Swift and Unexplained - The Wilson Center, USAID (reduced from 10,000 to 15 employees), and U.S. Institute of Peace were shuttered within months with no clear rationale provided, creating a "nightmare-like" quality where decisions happened without accountability.

* America's First Modern Ruin - Kimmage describes the abandoned Wilson Center library as unprecedented in American experience - a functioning institution in the heart of Washington D.C. suddenly left as a tomb-like ruin, unlike anything seen in a country never defeated on its own soil.

* Books Were Saved, But Expertise Was Lost - While the 30,000-volume library was eventually rescued and distributed to universities, the real loss was the destruction of nonpartisan expertise and institutional knowledge that took decades to build.

* Echoes of 1950s McCarthyism - The assault on expertise mirrors McCarthyism, with direct connections through Roy Cohn's mentorship of Trump, but differs in scale since it's driven by a president rather than a senator.

* The Death of Learning in Government - The shutdowns represent a fundamental rejection of the idea that careful, nonpartisan study of international affairs is essential to effective policymaking, potentially creating an "abyss" in American foreign policy capacity.

Michael Kimmage is Director of the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute. Prior to joining the Kennan Institute, Michael Kimmage was a professor of history at the Catholic University of America. From 2014 to 2017, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. He has been a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and at the German Marshall Fund; and was on the advisory board of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. He publishes widely on international affairs and on U.S. policy toward Russia. His latest book, Collisions: The War in Ukraine and the Origins of the New Global Instability, was published by Oxford University Press in March 2024. He is also the author of The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy, published by Basic Books in 2020, and The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers and the Lessons of Anti-Communism, published by Harvard University Press in 2009.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

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