The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2020 95 attack 11 years later—and the after- action reports and recommendations that ensued. (See also Amb. Bushnell’s January-February 2017 FSJ article on leadership lessons.) It is an eye-opening view and well worth reading, despite some repetitive passages and a factual error (Repub- licans retook the Senate in 2014, not 2010). Amb. Bushnell’s efforts to gain traction for practical proposals to ele- vate professional diplomacy in national security strategy and policymaking, and nurture a culture of leadership at the State Department, repeatedly run up against the inertia of business as usual, and worse. Ever resilient, however, she con- cludes on an optimistic note, even as she acknowledges the “unfinished busi- ness” her generation is leaving. As she tells her students in the international relations and national security fields: “The list of what needs doing is meaningful and compelling, and it is not too early to start doing something. Go craft smart policies to address Muslim alienation in western countries. Start researching how to address the terror of mass shootings in our own country. Design the recon- struction of the State Department and USAID with clear missions and cultures of leadership. Strengthen the authorities of ambassadors along with the support and development of professional staff.” “Nothing in history is predeter- mined,” Amb. Bushnell writes, “and every problem presents a leadership opportunity.” In this book she has shown us what responding to that opportunity can look like. n Susan Brady Maitra is senior editor of The Foreign Service Journal . events. Although we may disagree with their conclusions, both books are thought- provoking. In Whiteshift , Eric Kaufmann uses demographic and polling data tomake the case that today is a time “in which hegemonic liberal norms … are being challenged by both populists and centrists, some of whom are trying to install new social norms” (attacking the liberal con- sensus). He argues that these normative challenges are a sociologically understand- able response to the impact of demo- graphic change in the West. Further, he notes, enough voters support challenges to liberalism tomake the phenomenon impossible to ignore. From the left, critics have derided Whiteshift as a conservative apologia for white ethno-nationalism. This claim is simplistic. While conceding whites are more privileged than other ethnic groups, Kaufmann argues that inexorable demo- graphic decline has kindled growing white ethnic discomfort that will be reflected in elections. Political trends in democra- cies cannot simply be derided as “racist”; electorates have a right to democratically express their views about their future. Kaufmann argues that political har- mony may drive a shift away from accept- ing refugees and humanitarianmigrants in favor of immigrants more likely to integrate into host nations’ dominant cultures. Such a notion calls into question current U.S. and E.U. migration policies and would privilege elite migrants at the expense of the poor and the oppressed. Just decades away frompotential large-scale migra- tion crises associated with global climate change, Whiteshift is a thought-provoking, contrarian and, at times, dystopian book. National Populism ’s authors wrote after the June 2016 Brexit vote and the 2016 U.S. presidential election; it’s a quicker read than Whiteshift . Professors Eatwell Populism and Migration Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities Eric Kaufmann, Abrams Press, 2019, $35/hardcover, $12.99/Kindle, 624 pages. National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin, Pelican, 2018, $16.95/paperback, $9.99/Kindle, 384 pages. Reviewed by Andrew Erickson Not since the 1960s has the West’s political zeitgeist shifted so dramatically. Profound realignments in advanced democracies are normalizing historically unprecedented levels of political animosity toward immigrants, refugees and the very dream of multiculturalism. Political norms are shattering. To cite just one example, Great Britain’s impending Brexit from the European Union rejects a half-century of U.K.-E.U. integration. Polls show that discomfort with immigration was a key driver of the Brexit vote. Populist and anti-immigration parties are ascendant in the West, where the long-dominant narrative of the desirability of multiculturalism is being besieged. The consequences for U.S. inter- ests are stark. The authors of Whiteshift and National Populism offer their views on these recent