Ivan Krastev Quotes

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.'

The post-Cold War order in Europe is finished, with Vladimir Putin its executioner. Russia's invasion of Georgia only marked its passing. Russia has emerged as a born-again 19th-century power determined to challenge the intellectual, moral and institutional foundations of the order.

Any unveiling is also veiling. No matter how transparent our governments want to be, governments will be selectively transparent.

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.

[It's] difficult to engage people in politics when they believe that what really matters is where they personally stand.

America gave the world the notion of the melting pot - an alchemical cooking device wherein diverse ethnic and religious groups voluntarily mix together, producing a new, American identity. And while critics may argue that the melting pot is a national myth, it has tenaciously informed the America's collective imagination.

Living in truth cannot be reduced to having access to full information.

For the Kremlin, it is more feasible to preserve its great-power status in cooperation with the United States than in confrontation.

It is people's willingness to take personal risks and confront the powerful by daring to speak the truth, not the truth itself, that ultimately leads to change.

Transparency is not about restoring trust in institutions. Transparency is the politics of managing mistrust.

Democracy is the only game in town. The problem is [when] people start to believe that it is not a game worth playing.

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.

The E.U. cannot act as guardian of the post-Cold War status quo without risking a collapse of Europe's current institutional infrastructure.

A more stable relationship between Poland and Russia based on reconciliation might revive the reunification of Europe.

Bulgaria has been deindustrialized by interest groups who extracted state assets like oil states extract the oil in their ground.

As China is about adaptation, not transformation, it is unlikely to change the world dramatically should it ever assume the global driver's seat. But this does not mean that China won't exploit that world for its own purposes.

Authoritarianism is not pretending anymore to be a real alternative to democracy, but we can see many more authoritarian practices and styles basically being smuggled into democratic governments.

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.

The Church of TED is very optimistic. Bulgarians are some of the most pessimistic in the world. There are the Happy, the Unhappy and the Bulgarians.

Regimes like the one in Russia are stabilized by the fact that they have no ideology. There is really no ideological means to attack them.