The crisis of democracy in the West is not the result of falling in love with another system. In Europe and America people who are disillusioned with democracy do not dream about the Chinese model or any other form of authoritarian rule. They do not dream about government that controls Internet and puts in prison those daring to disagree. Ivan Krastev Read Quote
What makes me worry today is the alarming decline in the trust in democratic institutions – political parties, Parliaments, political leaders. Less and less people are going to the polls in most advanced democracies. Ivan Krastev Read Quote
For the European Union, Russia is as important politically and economically as China is to the U.S. Ivan Krastev Read Quote
Germany, because of the fact and the perception of a special relationship with Russia, is the only one who can influence Russian debate. Russians also believe that Germans understand them best because they’ve been through a big war and know what humiliation means. Ivan Krastev Read Quote
The E.U. cannot act as guardian of the post-Cold War status quo without risking a collapse of Europe’s current institutional infrastructure. Ivan Krastev Read Quote
The United States and Russia probably do not have common aims and dreams, but they have common worries: Both Washington and Moscow are concerned about the rise of China and are threatened by the rise of radical Islam. Ivan Krastev Read Quote
In 2008, Putin’s message was, ‘We aren’t like a Central Asian republic, we aren’t going to build a personalistic regime, we will have institutions.’ This is all abolished now. The very idea of a governing party and party career, as you have in China, that didn’t work. Ivan Krastev Read Quote
Bulgaria has been deindustrialized by interest groups who extracted state assets like oil states extract the oil in their ground. Ivan Krastev Read Quote
For the Kremlin, it is more feasible to preserve its great-power status in cooperation with the United States than in confrontation. Ivan Krastev Read Quote
America is a nation of immigrants, but it is also a nation of people who never emigrate. Notably, Americans living outside the United States are not called emigrants, but ‘expats.’ Ivan Krastev Read Quote
