Some animals—like beavers, nesting ants, bees, and humans—actively reshape their environments to make them more favorable for their own species.  My guest today believes that the same is also true of nations. This, he argues,  is the true meaning of Woodrow Wilson’s phrase “to make the world safe for democracy.” 

But animals also change as they are adapting their own environment. John Owen argues that liberalism has evolved in ways that are no longer conducive to its own survival; and meanwhile autocratic governments in Russia and China are actively reshaping the international environment to favor autocracy. He believes that the way to ensure democracy’s survival in the United States is to reimagine liberalism—to view it as less about disruption and perpetual openness, and more about commitment, community, and country. 

John M. Owen IV is the Amb. Henry J. and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Politics, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and the Miller Center for Public Affairs, all the the University of Virginia. His latest book is The Ecology of Nations: American Democracy in a Fragile World Order, and it is the subject of our conversation today.

I should add that John is a friend, now of many years standing; and while he might be a thorough-going political scientist, and this is not a work of history, there is a lot of historical thinking in it—but, more importantly, I wanted to have a chance to talk to him for one uninterrupted hour about the book. We recorded the conversation in his study.