by Bill Murray International order in the twentieth century was set by empires, then blocs engaged in ideological struggle, and finally by alliances based on common ideological and financial interests. Now even those alliances are dissolving. The Iran episode is the unmistakable break, and the United States is the agent of that break. For most…

by Bill Murray An era of worldwide illiberal governance approaches. If the Trump administration has its way, future illiberal leaders will face fewer opponents. Aspiring autocrats will lose the constraint of the United States as a potential opponent. Autocracy will spread. We speculated for years about how the unipolar moment would end. With the rise…

by Bill Murray One Monday in 1883 Southeast Asia woke to “the firing of heavy guns” heard from Batavia to Alice Springs to Singapore, and maybe as far as Mauritius, near Africa. “So violent are the explosions that the ear-drums of over half my crew have been shattered,” one ship’s captain wrote. “I am convinced…

by Bill Murray We humans think we’re so smart. But animals and plants, too, have far more wisdom and abilities than we give them credit for. This is the third in an occasional series of links to the remarkable world of non-human abilities. The first two are here and here. Zebra finches pick singing coaches…

by Bill Murray At the end of the road, Kirkenes punches above its weight It’s different in the Arctic. Norwegians who live here make their lives amid long cold winters, seasons of all daylight and then all-day darkness, and with a neighbor to the east now an implacable foe. Finnmark, Norway’s northernmost county, is bigger…

by Bill Murray Today’s modest topic is the future of the West. Will it end in a bang, whimper or maybe just sort of muddle through in some zombie stagger? Whatever happens, a quarter of the way through the American Century, the standard of liberal democracy we hoisted as global inevitability twenty years ago hangs…

by Bill Murray 1 Even if Ronald Reagan’s actual governance gave you fits, his invocation of that shining city on a hill stood daunting and immutable, so high, so mighty, so permanent. And yet our American decay has been so avoidable, so banal, so sudden. Our American decline wasn’t born from calamity. It came not…

by Bill Murray I. A hundred years ago two battered and beleaguered old men, one an Italian prisoner, the other taken to wandering Irish bogs, arrived at the same fateful truth: the world around them was collapsing. Antonio Gramsci, Marxist theorist, imprisoned member of the Italian parliament, wrote from his cell that “the old world…

by Bill Murray The same media that warned us against Donald Trump now warn us against tuning out. Though our side has lost, we must now ‘remain engaged’ with the minutiae of Mike Johnson’s majority and all that, strap in, batten down and pay attention. I was persuaded by media warnings against Donald Trump. Now…

by Bill Murray Maybe it’s defeat in a short, sharp war far from home. Maybe Russia captures Ukraine, or China attacks Taiwan. Maybe nothing happens yet, maybe it’s four or eight years away, but however the big change comes we’ll all agree the signs were there all along. Our executive branch is hobbled by an…

by Bill Murray It’s raining in Russia. Thunderheads boil up in the afternoon heat over there, behind the limestone block fortress on the other side of the river. Which is not a wide river. You can shout across it. Here’s how close Russia is: on Victory Day, May ninth, commemorating the Nazi defeat in World…

by Bill Murray Countries can be sensitive as teenage girls about their names. The change from Turkey to Türkiye aligned Türkiye’s name in Turkish with its internationally known name, but mainly, disassociated itself from the bird with the goofy reputation. Some countries’ names become less ethnic (Zaire to Democratic Republic of the Congo) and others…

by Bill Murray A nasty typhoon punished southeast Africa in early 2023. Cyclone Freddy dropped six months of rain in six days, killed 1400 and pounded the poor, overmatched region for thirty-eight long days. From its origins in the Indonesian archipelago, Freddy wound up across the entire breadth of the Indian Ocean before battering the…

by Bill Murray First a note on the April 8th North American eclipse: Many people have seen a partial eclipse of the sun and wondered what all the fuss is about. The sky looks out of whack, things go all shimmery, you can see reflections of the partially occluded sun on leaves, animals act up,…

by Bill Murray The Balkans isn’t everybody’s first choice for summer holiday, but that’s where we’re headed this year. First we’re flying to Chișinău, while we still can, and I don’t mean to be flip. Forgive my wavering confidence in Western guarantors of freedom, democracy and territorial integrity. My idea then is to press south…

by Bill Murray Petro Oliynik wore a flag draped around his shoulders like a cape and didn’t speak. If it wasn’t an act, it was at least a presentation. You don’t often meet a man as unusual as Petro Oliynyk and the truth is, I haven’t really met him either. Maybe better to say I…

by Bill Murray This month’s travel column includes suspiciously little travel – just two short walks, to a courthouse and a jailhouse. I live in Atlanta, where quite a bit of national politics has happened in those two buildings these last few weeks. I walked downtown a couple of weeks ago when things were going…

by Bill Murray With earth set on a slow rolling boil through the rest of the summer, now might be a good time to mentally transport oneself to the cold. How’s about a winter weather sailor’s tale? St. John’s, Newfoundland and the Grand Banks People feel pain but too often fail to appreciate its absence.…

by Bill Murray In my exuberance after a spring trip to Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia, I proclaimed Africa the world’s greatest travel destination. It’s only fair to defend my thesis, for surely others will disagree. First let’s dispense with the ‘Africa is not a country’ technicality by defining the travel to Africa that I have…

by Bill Murray We’re here early this year. June has just gotten started, and after a day or two of intermittent rain with a blustery sky and a stiff wind off Lake Saimaa, fifty degrees Fahrenheit feels a lot colder than the same back in Atlanta. I’ve just learned that it hasn’t been this cold…