Jan. 25, 2021
By pursuing a foreign policy that puts dissidents like Aleksei Navalny of Russia first, the United States can revive its moral leadership.Credit.Mstyslav Chernov/Associated Press
Thirty years from now, what will historians consider the most consequential event of January 2021 the storming of the U.S. Capitol by an insurrectionist mob, or Aleksei Navalny’s heroic return to Moscow, followed by his immediate arrest?
In a broad sense, the two events are about the same thing: the future of freedom. In one version of the future, the assault on the Capitol marks the point at which the forces of illiberalism, mob violence and disinformation, much of it stoked and financed by the Russian government, reached critical mass in the West. In another version, the assault will be remembered as a historical anomaly when compared with the recovery of freedom in places where it once seemed lost not just Russia but also China, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.