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Justice Wargrave: an Analysis of The Character

Categories: And Then There Were None

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Published: Mar 20, 2024

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Personality, motivations, role in the novel.

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Justice Lawrence Wargrave

Justice Lawrence Wargrave, otherwise known by his mysterious alias “Mr. Owen,” is a recently retired judge. He is often described using reptilian imagery , such as when Dr. Armstrong first describes him as having a “frog-like face […] tortoise-like neck […] hunched up attitude […] and […] pale shrewd little eyes” (30). Christie doesn’t reveal that Justice Wargrave is the murderer until the very end of the novel in the form of a manuscript that Justice Wargrave put into a bottle and tossed out to sea. Justice Wargrave writes in the manuscript, which essentially is a confession letter, that from an early age he always took a sadistic pleasure in seeing or causing death; however, he also always felt a strong commitment to justice. To satisfy these contradictory urges, he joined the legal profession as a judge. Eventually, condemning the guilty to death was not enough and he longed to commit a murder himself.

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Home Essay Samples Literature And Then There Were None

Justice Wargrave - Representation Of Contrasting Flaw And Virtue Of Society

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And Then There Were None - Justice

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. ” This quote, said by Martin Luther King Junior, shows the main theme of Agatha Christie’s signature novel, And Then There Were None: justice. Justice Wargrave, the murderer, clearly felt threatened in this way. He was determined to avenge evildoers so he did what he wanted to do. In his letter, Justice Wargrave explains his reason for what he did. Wargrave, one of the ten, had a deep passion for killing ever since he was born. Aside from that, he had contradictory trait the pervaded throughout him: justice.

He chose a law profession because it satisfied both of these appetites. Diagnosed with a terminable disease later on in his life, he was determined to commit a mass murder before he died. Mr. Wargrave didn’t want to murder innocent people so during his spare time, while not presiding over a court, he collected information about people who killed others and could not be punished by the law. These people were the ones who were invited to Soldier Island. In this story, Justice Wargarve acts as a vigilante.

A vigilante is any person who takes the law into his or her own hands, as by avenging a crime. Justice has several definitions. One is the administering of deserved punishment or reward. Another one is the quality of being fair and reasonable. In the mind of Wargrave, everyone on the island deserved the punishment of death. Emily Brent wouldn’t allow Beatrice Taylor back in her house after she got pregnant. Beatrice Taylor then felt guilty and abandoned so she committed suicide. Although Emily Brent did not physically harm her, Justice Wargrave found her guilty.

Dr. Armstrong operated, while intoxicated, on a patient and she ended up dying. This was a careless act by Armstrong but it was not a intentional one; yet, he was still found guilty by the judge. These deaths are truly the main theme of death. Another theme of justice in the story is the fact the Justice Wargrave had to kill himself. Yes, it is true that he had the intention of fairness, but he still killed 10 human beings. I do not consider that just. Another example I found concerns Vera Claythorne.

Intent on living with Hugo for the rest of her life, she let Cyril attempt to swim out to the rock and he drowned. Vera pretended that she tried to save him, but when Hugo looked into her eyes, he saw the truth and knew that all Vera wanted to do was be with him. Hugo then left Vera. Hugo probably didn’t see it this way, but it was an act of justice. Vera deserved that punishment. You can call it mad. You can call it twisted. You can even call it insane. No matter what, the actions of Justice Wargrave emphasized the major theme of justice in this story.

Author: Arron Johnston

The Importance and Challenges of a Speedy and Public Trial

This essay about the right to a speedy and public trial explains its importance in democratic justice systems. It highlights how a speedy trial prevents prolonged detention, protects defendants’ rights, and maintains the legal system’s integrity. Public trials ensure transparency and accountability, fostering trust in the judiciary. The essay discusses challenges in implementing these rights, such as balancing speed with quality of justice and managing privacy concerns. Technological advancements and international human rights law are suggested as potential solutions. Overall, the essay underscores the significance of upholding these rights to ensure fairness and transparency in the judicial process.

How it works

The right to a speedy and public trial is a cornerstone of democratic justice systems worldwide, enshrined in various constitutions and human rights documents. This principle aims to protect individuals from prolonged detention without trial and ensures transparency in the legal process. Its significance lies in balancing the scales of justice, preventing abuses of power, and maintaining public confidence in the judicial system.

The concept of a speedy trial ensures that a person accused of a crime is brought to trial within a reasonable timeframe.

This right prevents defendants from languishing in jail for extended periods, which can lead to loss of employment, disruption of family life, and deterioration of mental health. A delayed trial can also compromise the ability to mount an effective defense, as memories fade, evidence may be lost, and witnesses can become unavailable. Timeliness in the judicial process is crucial in maintaining the integrity of the legal system and upholding the rights of the accused.

A public trial, on the other hand, serves as a safeguard against judicial abuse and corruption. By allowing the public and media to observe the proceedings, transparency is promoted, which helps ensure that the trial is conducted fairly and according to the law. Public scrutiny acts as a check on the legal system, holding it accountable and fostering trust within the community. It also provides an educational function, informing the public about legal processes and the functioning of the judiciary.

However, implementing the right to a speedy and public trial presents several challenges. Ensuring speediness without compromising the quality of justice is a delicate balance. The judicial system must handle a large volume of cases, and resources such as judges, courtrooms, and legal personnel are often limited. This scarcity can lead to backlogs and delays, undermining the right to a speedy trial. Efforts to expedite proceedings must not come at the expense of thorough and fair consideration of each case.

Moreover, the requirement for public trials can sometimes clash with the need to protect the privacy and safety of those involved, particularly in cases involving sensitive issues such as sexual assault or national security. In some situations, extensive media coverage and public interest can create a circus-like atmosphere, which can influence the jury and affect the defendant’s right to a fair trial. Courts must find a balance between openness and the protection of the participants’ rights and safety.

Technological advancements offer potential solutions to some of these challenges. For instance, digital case management systems can help streamline court processes and reduce delays. Virtual courtrooms, which became more common during the COVID-19 pandemic, provide a way to conduct trials promptly while maintaining public access. These innovations can enhance the efficiency and transparency of the judicial system if implemented thoughtfully and with attention to the rights of all parties involved.

International human rights law also plays a significant role in upholding the right to a speedy and public trial. Documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights outline these rights and serve as a benchmark for national legal systems. However, the extent to which these rights are realized can vary significantly between countries, influenced by legal traditions, resources, and political will.

In some jurisdictions, there are statutory limits on the time a defendant can be held before trial, which helps enforce the right to a speedy trial. For example, in the United States, the Speedy Trial Act sets specific time frames for the various stages of a criminal prosecution. While such measures provide a framework, the actual implementation can be affected by numerous factors, including the complexity of the case, the availability of legal counsel, and procedural issues.

In conclusion, the right to a speedy and public trial is fundamental to the administration of justice, protecting the rights of the accused and ensuring transparency in the judicial process. While there are significant challenges in balancing speed, fairness, and public access, continued efforts and innovations can help address these issues. Upholding these rights requires vigilance, resources, and a commitment to the principles of justice and human rights. As legal systems evolve, maintaining the delicate balance between expedience and thoroughness, openness and privacy, will remain a central concern in the pursuit of justice.

Remember, this essay is a starting point for inspiration and further research. For more personalized assistance and to ensure your essay meets all academic standards, consider reaching out to professionals at EduBirdie .

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PODCAST: HISTORY UNPLUGGED J. Edgar Hoover’s 50-Year Career of Blackmail, Entrapment, and Taking Down Communist Spies

The Encyclopedia: One Book’s Quest to Hold the Sum of All Knowledge PODCAST: HISTORY UNPLUGGED

Joseph Stalin’ Show Trials: A Short Summary

Joseph Stalin’s show trials were common during his political repressions, such as the Moscow Trials of the Great Purge period (1937–38). The Soviet authorities staged the actual trials meticulously.

The trials were held against Stalin’s political enemies, such as the Trotskyists and those involved with the Right Opposition of the Communist Party. The trials were shams that led to the execution of most defendants. Every surviving member of the Lenin-era part was tried, and almost every important Bolshevik from the Revolution was executed. Over 1,100 delegates to the party congress in 1934 were arrested. The killings were part of Stalin’s Great Purge, in which opportunists and Bolshevik cadres from the time of the Russian Revolution who could rally opposition to Joseph Stalin were killed. He did so at a time of growing discontent in the 1930s for his mismanagement of the Soviet economy, leading to mass famines during periods of rapid and poorly executed industrialization and farm collectivization.

Prominent Americans could even be found to defend Stalin show trials, a spectacle of political theater so transparent that it would have taken genuine effort not to see through it. In order to terrorize Communist Party members into absolute submission and at the same time eliminate potential rivals, Stalin put on a series of high-profile trials in which prominent Communists confessed to treachery against the Soviet Union. In some cases, people were coaxed into making these confessions by threats against their families if they refused. One by one some of the most loyal Communists , dating back to the days of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, solemnly admitted to counterrevolutionary activity. George Orwell could hardly have improved on this eerie and macabre spectacle.

Yet there were those on the American Left who supported Stalin and vouched for the authenticity of the trials. In 1938, some 150 Americans prominent in the entertainment industry signed a statement in support of the verdicts reached in “the recent Moscow trials.” According to the expert opinion of these Broadway stars and assorted glitterati, the trials had “by sheer weight of evidence established a clear presumption of the guilt of the defendants.” As if this weren’t bad enough, people who knew better said the same thing. The U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph Davies , insisted to the American government that the trials were genuine, a claim he stood by in his 1941 book Mission to Moscow. He told the New Republic, “We see no reason to take the trial at other than its face value.” The proceedings, he said, had uncovered the “virus of a conspiracy to overthrow the [Soviet] government.” Duranty, for his part, described it as “unthinkable” that Stalin could have sentenced his friends to death “unless the proofs of guilt were overwhelming,” and wrote of his conviction that “the confessions are true.”A

After Stalin’s death, Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev repudiated the trials in a speech to the Twentieth Congress of the Russian Communist Party:

The commission has become acquainted with a large quantity of materials in the NKVD archives and with other documents and has established many facts pertaining to the fabrication of cases against Communists, to glaring abuses of Socialist legality which resulted in the death of innocent people. It became apparent that many party, Government and economic activists who were branded in 1937–38 as ‘enemies,’ were actually never enemies, spies, wreckers, etc., but were always honest Communists … They were only so stigmatized and often, no longer able to bear barbaric tortures, they charged themselves (at the order of the investigative judges – falsifiers) with all kinds of grave and unlikely crimes.

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Irreverence and the Sacred: Critical Studies in the History of Religions

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2 Moscow, Third Rome, and the Uses of Ressentiment: An Essay in Myth Criticism

Published: November 2018
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Historical scrutiny of the myth of Moscow, Third Rome, exposes its being an ideological mainstay of Muscovite imperial autocratic pretentions since the fifteenth century. As Third Rome, Moscow alone inherits the universal authority of imperial Byzantium (Second Rome) over all Christians. In particular, it asserts the rule of autocracy over rule of law. The myth persists stubbornly in the popular Russian mind. There, it seems impervious to historical scrutiny. But, while the myth has withstood standard rational historical critiques, I conclude that it remains vulnerable to being replaced by an anti-autocratic counter-myth that asserts Byzantium’s role in the rise of rule of law.

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And Then There Were None

Agatha christie, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Mystery novels, of which Agatha Christie is often considered the queen, generally present a complex and confusing cast of characters that, through the efforts of the detective/narrator/reader become organized into groups of good and bad, black and white. Generally, there are one or two criminals and lots of victims. And Then There Were None never works out this neatly. Agatha Christie presents justice as an ambiguous concept. Who deserves punishment and how much? The criminal of And Then There Were None , Justice Wargrave , is a justice fanatic. He believes that because the guests on Soldier's Island all committed crimes for which they were never punished, they now deserve to be emotionally tortured and eventually killed. Even if someone were to agree that the ten criminals deserve such punishment, Wargrave's conception of justice is complicated by the fact that, in the name of justice, he commits a much graver crime than any of the other characters in the novel.

Agatha Christie demonstrates that since humans are inherently flawed, justice is too. The ten victims in And Then There Were None were able to get away with their crimes because of some flaw in the system: there wasn't enough proof, the crime happened far away in another country, the death was caused by some accidental carelessness that does not count as murder. Yet when they get to Soldier's Island they enter a sort of penal colony where justice all of a sudden becomes an extremely rigid concept. By presenting the arbiter of justice as a life-long death and legal obsessed maniac, Agatha Christie shows the danger in a simplistic view of justice. There is a reason that the system is flawed, that one is innocent before proven guilty. There is no perfect way to catch and punish every criminal, but breaking from the existing, flawed system is even more dangerous. At the end of the novel, when the house and island are strewn with dead bodies it is hard to believe that the best answer to murder is more murder.

Justice ThemeTracker

Justice Quotes in And Then There Were None

“Watch and pray,” he said. “Watch and pray. The day of judgment is at hand.”

The faded blue eyes, shrewd in spite of their age, sized up Lombard. For a moment a judgment showed in them – had there been anyone to read it.

“Whoever it was who enticed us here, that person knows or has taken the trouble to find out a good deal about us all”

We're not going to leave the island … None of us will ever leave … It's the end, you see – the end of everything …” He hesitated, then he said in a low strange voice: “That's peace – real peace. To come to the end – not to have to go on … Yes, peace …”

“The damned fool, he believed every word I said to him. It was easy … I must be careful, though, very careful.”

“One more of us acquitted – too late!”

There was little pretense now – no formal veneer of conversation. They were five enemies linked together by a mutual instinct of self-preservation.

And all of them, suddenly, looked less like human beings. They were reverting to more bestial types.

They'd believe her all right. Cyril often told stories. He was an untruthful child. Cyril would know, of course. But that didn't matter … and anyway nothing would go wrong. She'd pretend to swim out after him. But she'd arrive too late … Nobody would ever suspect … Had Hugo suspected? Was that why he had looked at her in that queer far-off way? … Had Hugo known ?

“But don't you see , he's mad ? It's all mad! The whole thing of going by the rhyme is mad! Dressing up the judge, killing Rogers when he was chopping sticks – drugging Mrs. Roberts so that she overslept herself – arranging for a bumble bee when Miss Brent died! It's like some horrible child playing a game. It's all got to fit in.”

“And therefore, sir, there must have been someone else on the island. Someone who tidied up when the whole business was over. But where was he all the time – and were did he go to? The Sticklehaven people are absolutely certain that no one could have left the island before the rescue boat got there. But in that case –” … “But in that case,” he said, “ who killed them?”

The return of the enemy: Putin’s war on Ukraine and a cognitive blockage in Western security policy

Subscribe to the center on the united states and europe update, constanze stelzenmüller constanze stelzenmüller director - center on the united states and europe , senior fellow - foreign policy , center on the united states and europe , fritz stern chair on germany and trans-atlantic relations @constelz.

August 2023

39 min read

This is a translated, expanded, and updated version of an essay that appeared in the German magazine Kursbuch in June 2023. This piece is part of a series of policy analyses entitled “ The Talbott Papers on Implications of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine ,” named in honor of American statesman and former Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott. Brookings is grateful to Trustee Phil Knight for his generous support of the Brookings Foreign Policy program.

Eighteen months after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked full-scale invasion of his country’s sovereign neighbor on February 24, 2022, the question of how this war ends appears as open as ever. Ukraine has put up a heroic resistance to the invaders. The West, under U.S. leadership, and with huge financial and material outlays on both sides of the Atlantic, has helped. Kyiv’s counteroffensive is producing modest successes. But it is equally clear that it is taking a terrible toll — on Ukraine’s armed forces, on its citizens, and on its supporters worldwide. Russia, too, is taking heavy losses, has failed to reach key goals, and is arguably running out of options; the brief mutiny of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has revealed startling vulnerabilities in the top echelons of the Kremlin, including of Putin himself. 1 Still, Moscow continues its barbaric, indiscriminate attacks against Ukraine’s troops, its people, its cultural heritage sites, and the infrastructure of its economy.

Is it time — as critics continue to argue — to seek a compromise solution instead of further arms deliveries in order to prevent further bloodshed or a disintegration of the Western coalition? 2 Might it even be imperative for Ukraine to renounce regaining its entire territory in order to avoid defeat, the expansion of the war to neighboring states, a nuclear escalation by the Kremlin, or starvation in the world’s poorest countries? Certainly, Vladimir Putin appears to be calculating that time is on his side. “Far from seeking an off-ramp,” Alexander Gabuev writes, “Vladimir Putin is preparing for an even bigger war.” 3

Such a compromise peace would demand a near-superhuman degree of pragmatism and self-denial from the Ukrainians, who are victims of a war of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and who live under almost continuous Russian bombardment. The critics’ fears are nonetheless worthy of careful consideration because they are realistic. They are heightened by the visible fact of Western governments struggling with numerous other disruptive challenges, as well as the prospect of a string of elections in key states, from Poland in October 2023 to the United States in November 2024; all of which appear to be empowering the extreme right, or at least driving up the price of voter consent. Notably, opposition against U.S. support for Ukraine is rising in the ranks of Republican presidential candidates and among their voters as the election campaign takes off. 4 Responsible policymakers must acknowledge these constraints and weigh the costs and risks of all options.

Putin’s Russia: Take it literally and seriously

And yet the calls for negotiation elide a central question: What if Putin’s system and the Russian president himself are unwilling — even unable — to reach such a compromise? The distinguished German historian of Eastern Europe Karl Schlögel has described Putinism succinctly: “a violence-based order following on the demise of a continental empire and a system of state socialism” rooted in a “Soviet-Stalinist DNA … It includes the targeted killing of political opponents, commonplace violence in prisons and camps, impunity for crimes, arbitrariness, conspiracy myths, the notion of ‘enemies of the people.’” 5

In his now notorious historical essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” from the summer of 2021, Putin flatly — and not for the first time — denied Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent country; it was, he wrote, a component (together with Belarus) of a “single large nation, a triune nation.” 6 The Kremlin has repeatedly made it clear that only Ukraine’s complete surrender, including the relinquishment of its sovereignty, is acceptable as the basis for a peace agreement.

This maximalist intransigence is by no means limited to Ukraine. On December 17, 2021, the Kremlin sent two similar “draft treaties” to the White House and to NATO headquarters in Brussels which articulated the Kremlin’s goals for Europe with remarkable clarity. 7 The demands in the proposals — which were immediately dismissed by their recipients — included not just a veto on Ukrainian membership in the alliance but a revision of the Euro-Atlantic security acquis of the post-Cold War period on enlargement, basing, deployments, exercises, and cooperation with partners. They would have severely limited U.S. freedom of movement in Europe (with no concomitant limitations on Russia), reversed 25 years of Central and Eastern European integration into NATO and the European Union, ended the right of non-members to choose their own alliances, and re-established a Russian sphere of influence on the continent. 8 The coup de grâce was the final stipulation (Art. 7) of the draft U.S.-Russia treaty, that all nuclear weapons should be returned to their national territories: it would have meant the end of the U.S. nuclear umbrella over Europe and thus quite possibly of the alliance itself.

As my Brookings colleagues Fiona Hill and Angela Stent have warned: “This war is about more than Ukraine. … Ukrainians and their supporters understand that in the event of a Russian victory, Putin’s expansionism would not end at the Ukrainian border. The Baltic states, Finland, Poland, and many other states that were once part of the Russian empire would be at risk of attack or overthrow from within.” 9

Konrad Schuller, the Eastern Europe correspondent of the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, adds that the proponents of negotiations misjudge the categorical nature of this hostility: “In the case of total enmity, compromise never serves anything but a tactical pause.” This approach, he writes, has “deep roots in the Soviet Union,” and has been demonstrated time and again by Putin, as in the systematic violation of the Minsk agreements from the outset. 10

It appears Putin must be taken — like Donald Trump — literally and seriously .

It appears Putin must be taken — like Donald Trump — literally and seriously . That, in turn, requires confronting something else: the return of the category of the enemy to security policy.

1989: The end of enmity

The key theorist of this concept in the 20th century was Carl Schmitt, a fierce critic of liberal modernity, parliamentary democracy, and political pluralism; also an ardent antisemite. Despite his refusal to distance himself from his role as “crown jurist of the Third Reich,” his thought has unleashed what Jan-Werner Müller described as a “great and lasting intellectual fallout” for debates about political geostrategy to this day — not only in the West, but also in Russia and China. 11 For Schmitt, the concept of the enemy is the essence of the political: “The political enemy is … the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible.” 12 Enmity is not meant here in a metaphorical sense: “The friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from enmity. War is the existential negation of the enemy.” 13 Schmitt distinguishes here between “real” and “absolute” enemies: the former are capable of a territorial reconciliation of interests; the latter are incapable of this because of the ideological nature of their antagonism. 14

During the Cold War, much of the world was divided into camps of friend and foe, some of which were separated by genuine fortified borders such as the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. The West’s adversary was the Soviet Union, a rival superpower with a totalitarian ideology and a “settled and implacable hostility,” together with the Warsaw Pact. 15 In the words of John Lewis Gaddis, Western leaders envisaged a postwar European security order “that assumed the possibility of compatible interests, even among incompatible systems” — whereas Josef Stalin’s goal was “the eventual Soviet domination of Europe,” and it “assumed no such thing.” 16 The states of the West, on the other hand, as former French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian noted in 2016, no longer defined their national identity after 1945 in opposition to a “demonized Other.” 17

It seemed that the phenomenon of the enemy in international relations had ended up on the garbage heap of history.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States was left as the only superpower, with no rival far and wide. Its hegemonic status was also reflected in political theory: the so-called theory of convergence, according to which the rest of the world would gradually align itself with the Western model of free-market democracy. (Ironically, the notion of convergence originated in a famous essay by the Russian physicist and human rights defender Andrei Sakharov, whose 1968 essay “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom” posited that the political systems of the West and the Soviet bloc would converge as their relations thawed. 18 ) Thomas Wright has pointed out that “the notion of convergence pervaded the three post-Cold War U.S. administrations. It was an explicit goal of their strategy and defined the parameters of it.” 19

The convergence thesis found its classic expression in a 1990 address to Congress by then-President George H.W. Bush:

“Out of these troubled times … a new world order … can emerge: a new era — freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony. A hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor. Today that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we’ve known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak.” 20

History, as we know, has taken a somewhat different course since then. Nonetheless, there was remarkable progress in the decade that followed, which initially seemed to confirm the hope for convergence. The bipolar order of the Cold War reconstituted itself as an “aspiring global commonwealth that enlarged NATO and transformed the United Nations, the [International Monetary Fund] and the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the EU.” 21 Not only that, the democratic transformation of almost the entire Warsaw Pact found imitators around the world; civil society movements overthrew authoritarian regimes in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. It seemed that the phenomenon of the enemy in international relations had ended up on the garbage heap of history.

The key proponents of this thesis were the liberal political theorists. Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 essay “The End of History” — arguably the most influential articulation of the theory of liberal entropy — postulated outright that the category of the enemy state, or more precisely, the enemy state with an anti-Western ideology, was doomed to become an anachronism. “The passing of Marxism-Leninism first from China and then from the Soviet Union will mean its death as a living ideology of world historical significance … And the death of this ideology means … the diminution of the likelihood of large-scale conflict between states.” Fukuyama hastened to add that terrorism and wars of national liberation would continue, but “large-scale conflict must involve large states still caught in the grip of history, and they are what appear to be passing from the scene.” 22

As late as 2011, the most persistent proponent of the liberal convergence thesis, G. John Ikenberry, inveighed against the “panicked narrative” of the rise of illiberal, authoritarian powers: “China and other emerging great powers do not want to contest the basic rules and principles of the liberal international order; they wish to gain more authority and leadership within it. Indeed, today’s power transition represents not the defeat of the liberal order but its ultimate ascendance.” 23

The country that most enthusiastically embraced the narrative of the end of history, the victory of the West through diplomacy and democratic transformation, and the irresistible global spread of a rules-based world order, was reunified Germany. In 2019, the diplomat Thomas Bagger, then head of the planning staff at the German Foreign Office, described Berlin’s interpretation of the Zeitenwende of 1989 with gentle but unmistakable irony:

“Toward the end of a century marked by having been on the wrong side of history twice, Germany finally found itself on the right side. What had looked impossible, even unthinkable, for decades suddenly seemed to be not just real, but indeed inevitable. The rapid transformation of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe into parliamentary democracies and market economies was taken as empirical proof of Fukuyama’s bold headline. … Best of all, while Germany would still have to transform its new regions in the East, the former GDR, the country in a broader sense had already arrived at its historical destination: it was a stable parliamentary democracy, with its own well-tested and respected social market economy. While many other countries around the globe would have to transform, Germany could remain as is, waiting for the others to gradually adhere to its model. It was just a matter of time.” 24

Thirty years after reunification, the Germans’ remarkably complacent interpretation of the events of 1989 would become a stubborn cognitive blockage against perceiving and adapting to another, much darker period of climate change in international relations and the global security order.

In the United States, however, the representatives of the realist school of international relations viewed this liberal narrative of a linear arc of history with the same skepticism they harbored for international institutions, international law, and the notion of a liberal world order in general. Realist theorists such as Kenneth Waltz, John Mearsheimer, and Stephen Walt argued that competition was the main driver of the international system. But because realists consider interests to be far more important than ideologies, they are also disinclined to consider a rival state or even an adversary an “enemy” in the Schmittian sense. The competitor’s interests are simply different; this also makes it easier to negotiate with them, to come to a compromise, or even to accept their demand for a sphere of influence. 25 This rather relaxed — and quite condescending — view of the phenomenon of interstate competition was doubtless rooted in the fact that until recently the United States had no plausible peer rival. China’s rise has noticeably changed the realists’ tone.

A third school — the constructivists — took exception to the realists’ refusal to acknowledge identity and ideas as key factors in the behavior of states. And it was the constructivist Alexander Wendt who, a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, addressed the problem of the enemy head-on. He distinguished between Hobbesian, Lockean, and Kantian orders — based respectively on enmity, rivalry, and friendship. 26 Explicitly citing Schmitt, Wendt defined the difference between enemy and rival: “An enemy does not recognize the right of the Self to exist as a free subject at all … A rival, in contrast, is thought to recognize the Self’s right to life and liberty.” He adds: “Violence between enemies has no internal limits. … Violence between rivals, in contrast, is self-limiting, constrained by recognition of each other’s right to exist.” 27 Wendt cites post-Cold War conflicts occurring between “Palestinian and Israeli fundamentalists” and in Northern Ireland, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda as examples of hostility. All of these examples, however, are of internal or highly localized conflicts.

At the end of the first Bush presidency (1989-93) and then under his successor Bill Clinton (1993-2001), the United Nations sent peacekeepers to Cambodia and Rwanda, and NATO intervened in the Balkans with combat troops for the first time since its founding. Justifications for sending troops included the need to prevent regional destabilization, to end a humanitarian disaster, or the violation of basic principles of international law such as the prohibition of genocide. Leading Western states had patronage relationships with some of the conflict actors (France-Rwanda; France/U.K.-Serbia; Germany-Croatia), but they never went so far as to consider their clients’ enemies as their own. Meanwhile, relations among the great powers were for the most part stable and constructive. Russian President Boris Yeltsin and U.S. President Clinton clashed over NATO’s air war against Serbia. Otherwise, however, they largely cooperated with each other; Clinton paved the way for China to join the World Trade Organization.

2001: Terrorists, the West’s new enemy

It was the rise of radical Islamist terrorism, al-Qaida’s attacks on America on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent “Global War on Terror” with which the category of the enemy as the enemy of the West returned to trans-Atlantic strategic discourse. The neoconservative strategists of President George W. Bush (2001-2009) were convinced that the terrorists and their state sponsors had to be utterly defeated; they put this conviction into practice by driving the Taliban out of Afghanistan and invading Iraq. Their highly controversial formulas, such as the “axis of evil” or “Islamofascism,” were reminiscent of the “absolute enemy” in Schmitt’s “Theory of the Partisan . ” 28 What distinguished the neoconservatives from the Schmittians, however, was the fact that they were moral universalists and, in the majority, convinced advocates of a democratic transformation of the Middle East. On this issue, they were in broad agreement with the liberal internationalists.

The Islamist enemy, it was hoped, would also be transformed by the pull of freedom and democracy. As my colleague Robert Kagan wrote in 2008: “The best [option] may be to hasten the process of modernization in the Islamic world. More modernization, more globalization, faster.” 29 The great powers of Russia and China would — or so it was assumed — share the task of combating terrorism with the West. For the rest, the great powers would — as the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy put it — “compete in peace.” 30 In 2005, Bush’s Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said that once China became a “responsible stakeholder” in the U.S.-led world order, all differences could be settled in light of shared interests. 31

A decade later, Le Drian identified the Islamic State group (IS) as France’s “current enemy.” 32 But he simultaneously introduced a distinction that was as precise as it was careful: for France, he explained, IS was an ennemi conjoncturel , an enemy whose status was contingent, depending on the current threat it posed. France, on the other hand, is an ennemi structurel for IS, based on an “apocalyptic, totalitarian, and eliminatory vision of this combat … Our deeds are of little importance from this point of view. We are targeted above all for what we are, and for what we represent.” 33 We will have to come back to this distinction.

2008-present: The pulverization of peaceful convergence

The presidency of Barack Obama (2009-2016) was the last in the post-Cold War era to spell out its national security strategy within the paradigm of peaceful convergence. Obama, however, viewed the interventionism of his predecessors with skepticism. He understood that competition was rising globally, but he was determined not to let that fact define his administration. 34

When Obama took office in 2009, Dmitry Medvedev was his counterpart in the Kremlin. But the power center was Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who had served once before as prime minister (1999-2000) and as president (2000-2008). Putin had triggered a sharp revisionist turn in Russian foreign policy in 1999 with the bloody Chechen war. In February 2007, he challenged the West in a speech at the Munich Security Conference. 35 In August 2008, the Kremlin provoked Georgia into a week-long shooting war as punishment for its aspirations to become a NATO member. Obama nevertheless offered Russia a “reset”; it produced the New START Treaty on strategic arms reduction and greater Russian cooperation on Afghanistan and Iran.

In 2012, Putin again assumed the Russian presidency. Yet even as Russia illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and sent proxy troops into eastern Ukraine, Obama — supported by German Chancellor Angela Merkel — resisted pressure from Congress and his own administration to send lethal weapons to Kyiv. When Putin intervened in Syria in 2015 in favor of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad (triggering Germany’s refugee crisis), the United States also remained reluctant to intervene. Obama believed that the Europeans should take more responsibility for their own security; for him, the most important American security interests lay elsewhere, in Asia.

But China had also become much more power-conscious, both in its own neighborhood and in international institutions. The Obama administration initially took a wait-and-see approach; then it tried to change course with the “pivot to Asia” — with limited success. Derek Chollet, who had served as a senior Pentagon official in the administration, described U.S.-China relations as “increasingly cooperative on select issues, [but] rooted in competition and distrust.” 36 Few people, however, would have been less inclined to view a challenging great power like Russia or a rising rival like China as an enemy than the cerebral Obama; indeed, he notoriously dismissed Russia as a “regional power.”

Donald Trump’s term in office did not end the era of friendly convergence — that had already been ‘pulverized’ by the global financial crisis, the failure of the Arab Spring, Russia and China’s increasing challenge to the Western-led liberal world order, and the global rise of populism.

Donald Trump’s term in office (2017-2021) did not end the era of friendly convergence — that had already been “pulverized” by the global financial crisis, the failure of the Arab Spring, Russia and China’s increasing challenge to the Western-led liberal world order, and the global rise of populism. 37 But it became the scene of a bizarre power struggle in U.S. security policy between Republican traditionalists and the president. The former sought to articulate a new paradigm of global great power competition with the 2017 National Security Strategy. The document referred to Russia and China as “revisionist powers”; however, it simultaneously emphasized the importance of democracy, values, and allies. 38 This restrained intonation of systemic rivalry enjoyed bipartisan consensus. It found an increasing echo in Europe as well — such as in the European Union’s 2019 China Strategy, with its description of the emerging great power as a “partner, competitor, and strategic rival.” 39

The commander-in-chief’s political instincts, as it happened, were diametrically opposed to those of his advisers. The president had nothing but contempt for institutions, rules, allies, and especially NATO and the EU; he admired authoritarian leaders like Putin all the more submissively. In all this, Trump was (and is) neither a strategist nor an ideologue, but a transactional “America First” nationalist in a zero-sum world — a theory of American power that an anonymous senior official described as a “no friends, no enemies” policy. 40 Trump’s attacks on the rules-based world order were ultimately unsuccessful, as were his attempts to prevent his successor from winning the election. Nor did he manage to stop the U.S. government from providing Ukraine with lethal assistance, increasing sanctions on Russia, and strengthening the American military presence in Europe. 41

The lasting damage done by Trump’s tenure, however, was and is the normalization of ethno-nationalism, open contempt for democracy, and violence in the U.S. conservative camp. The enemy of the right-wing of the GOP (as is the case with other radical populists) is none other than liberal modernity itself. The Economist reported from a meeting of the hard-right Conservative Political Action Conference: “the movement’s goal is the utter destruction of the enemy.” 42

Joe Biden assumed the presidency of a politically and socially deeply divided country in January 2021, in the midst of a historic pandemic that by today’s count has claimed the lives of nearly seven million people worldwide and has shed an unsparing light on the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the international order and Western democracies. 43 An administration strategy paper from March of that year described Russia as a disruptor (“determined to enhance its global influence and play a disruptive role on the world stage”) and China as a potential peer opponent (“the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system”). 44

2022: The return of the great power enemy

Only eleven months later, Putin invaded Ukraine; shortly before, Moscow and Beijing had sworn a “friendship” with “no limits.” 45 In October 2022, the administration’s National Security Strategy stated succinctly: “The world is now at an inflection point. This decade will be decisive, in setting the terms of our competition with the [People’s Republic of China], managing the acute threat posed by Russia, and in our efforts to deal with shared challenges, particularly climate change, pandemics, and economic turbulence.” 46 But in the summer of 2023, fears of a U.S.-China war continue to haunt Western capitals; Russia shows no signs that it might be willing to relent.

The free democracies must now understand that they are dealing with a phenomenon they had believed to be historically obsolete: state rivals who see them as ideological enemies. Specifically, “absolute” enemies as defined by Schmitt, or ennemis structurels, as Le Drian put it. Or — to use a more old-fashioned term — mortal enemies. Whether the leadership in Beijing perceives the nations of the West in this sense can be left open here — but in the case of Putin and his regime, the case is clear. Putin’s frequent characterization of the Kyiv leadership as “Nazis,” the tirades with which Putin rails against a “corrupt” Ukraine and a “decadent” West and threatens to “cleanse” “filth and traitors” in his own population, the threats of nuclear Armageddon — these linguistic tropes are familiar from the history of 20th-century genocides. 47

Conceivably, in the case of Putin himself, there is a personal psychopathology at play. Equally possibly, it is — as Fiona Hill argues — simply a cynical terror strategy designed to paralyze the resistance of Ukraine and the West. 48 Perhaps Putin is convinced that he can win this way; perhaps he feels compelled to articulate his invasion as a life-or-death struggle because his power and his life depend on not losing? In any case, the facts are that this unhinged language is amplified daily in the most garish colors by members of the Kremlin leadership as well as Russia’s state-controlled media, that it is taken at face value by much of the Russian population, and that it is implemented in brutal and sadistic ways by Putin’s armed forces. In this respect, Putin’s publicly staged hostility has long since developed a political life of its own. “If anything,” writes Tatiana Stanovaya in a compelling analysis of the hardening mood of Russia’s next-generation security elites, “the country is becoming more committed to the fight … No one is seriously considering or discussing a diplomatic end to the war: a notion that looks to many high-profile Russians like a personal threat, given all the war crimes that their country has committed and the responsibility that the entire elite now bears for the carnage in Ukraine.” 49

Help Ukraine win, strengthen Europe’s defenses, and avoid the mirroring trap

So how should the West grapple with this dilemma? Peace for Ukraine must at some point involve negotiations with Russia. But given the Kremlin’s implacable attitude, the burden of proof for the credibility of its negotiating offers would be extremely high. An armistice based on a freezing of the status quo in the form of continued Russian occupation of Crimea and the Donbas would reward Putin’s aggression and merely pause hostilities. The fact that the aggressor’s identity and the extent of his war crimes are beyond legal doubt will weigh heavily on any negotiations; an end to the fighting without some form of accountability, atonement, and reparations is hard to imagine. Diplomacy, in other words, would have to be very largely on Kyiv’s terms. That does not necessarily presuppose a Russian military defeat or a Ukrainian military victory. Conceivably, Russia could be forced to conclude that the price of pursuing Ukraine’s subjugation is unsustainably high by, for example, losing the support of a key non-Western power like China, or if the so-called Global South turned away from it. But as long as neither of those scenarios is within reach, helping Ukraine means helping it win on the battlefield. 50

Given the risk that an end to the war becomes an interregnum between wars, only the strongest guarantees can satisfy Ukraine’s security interests, and indeed those of the Western alliance.

Would that lead Russia to stop seeing it, and the West, as enemies? Certainly, Germany only embarked on the road to atonement after utter defeat, capitulation, and occupation — a scenario that seems unimaginable for Russia in this conflict. Given the risk that an end to the war becomes an interregnum between wars, only the strongest guarantees — a clear, constructive, and hopefully short path to NATO and EU membership — can satisfy Ukraine’s security interests, and indeed those of the Western alliance. The EU has accelerated membership talks, and the European Council is expected to kick off accession negotiations with Ukraine in December, a process that my Brookings colleague Carlo Bastasin notes comes with “huge political, financial, and institutional implications.” 51 Managing it carefully is all the more crucial because NATO member states were unable to agree on accelerating Kyiv’s NATO accession at the Vilnius summit in July; the question will unquestionably return with full force at the alliance’s 75th-anniversary summit in Washington, DC in July 2024.

Meanwhile, NATO, as well as the European Union, will have to continue to radically rethink their security provisions and address their huge deficits in deterrence and defense. Given the evolving U.S. presidential election campaign, Europeans especially will have to do more (much more) to defend themselves. As long as Russia is internally totalitarian and externally neo-imperial, Europe’s security can only be defined against Moscow.

Finally, as Le Drian put it succinctly in his 2016 essay: we must not fall into the intellectual trap of mirroring. This risk is not trivial, as was demonstrated by the attempts of Justice Department officials under the Bush administration after the September 11 attacks to justify “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding by invoking a quasi-unlimited executive prerogative. 52 The current debate on how to deal with China’s increasingly assertive global stance also has hysterical overtones, even if the concern itself is justified. And, yes, there is a very real danger of subjecting those who leave authoritarian regimes to blanket suspicion, racism, and dehumanization.

The 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said: “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. When you gaze long into the abyss for a long time, the abyss also gazes into you.” 53 In an age of what a recent U.K. strategy paper calls accelerated, constant, and dynamic systemic competition and faced with authoritarian great powers who think of us as the absolute enemy, that warning is especially pertinent. 54

I was a law clerk for Justice Alito. He must recuse himself from hearing cases involving Donald Trump.

Flying the U.S. flag upside down, once a signal of distress, has become a symbol of those who reject the results of the 2020 presidential election. When Alito did so, it was indeed a distress call.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. has refused to recuse himself from cases concerning Donald Trump despite a New York Times report that flags used as symbols of support for the 45th president were flown outside two of Alito's homes.

As a former law clerk to Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., I often admired him as a person for his integrity and honesty. As a progressive liberal, however, I vehemently disagreed with the approach he takes to reading the Constitution, the narrow interpretation he adopts, and his reverence for the framers’ restrictive intent.

Over the years, I became increasingly distressed with the results of his decisions. And then came Dobbs .

By striking down the rights of women to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy, the decision last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , which he wrote , eviscerated women’s fundamental right to self-determination. Dobbs is not just about abortion; it is about setting the clock back and undermining the core protections enshrined within the Constitution of liberty, equality, and access to justice.

And then came the flag.

Flying the American flag upside down, formerly a signal of distress, is now understood to unequivocally telegraph support for those who have co-opted and corrupted its original intent . It has become the symbol of those who attacked the U.S. Capitol in a violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, who challenged — and continue to deny — the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election. It is the emblem for the “Stop the Steal” Trump factions , the symbol now held hostage by those who attacked our democracy at its very core.

The New York Times reported earlier this month that Justice Alito flew an upside-down flag at his home in Fairfax, Va. , and another controversial flag at his beach house on Long Beach Island — acts that are widely accepted as an abhorrent affront to anyone who respects our constitutional democracy. So, when that flag is flown upside down by a member of the nation’s highest court, it is indeed a distress call.

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently deciding whether a president’s actions while in office are absolutely immune from criminal prosecution , irrespective of whether they concern the legitimate business of the office. Donald Trump has been indicted in state and federal courts in Washington, D.C., Florida, Georgia, and New York, alleging fraud as well as crimes in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection, the mishandling of classified documents , election interference , and more.

If the Supreme Court decides that he has blanket immunity — a decision expected any day now — these criminal charges, and any others, disappear. This means a president could commit serious crimes while in office, having nothing to do with the legitimate function of government, without facing any consequences. A president could theoretically hire an assassin to kill a competitor with impunity.

Justice Alito must recuse himself from having any role in the decision of these cases.

Federal law requires a justice, judge, or magistrate to disqualify themself in proceedings in which their “ impartiality may reasonably be questioned .” Judges routinely recuse themselves from cases where the mere hinted appearance of impropriety is enough to warrant stepping away from a case.

Flying the flag, upside down, at your home is more than a hint of political impropriety — it irrefutably calls into question impartiality and bias toward the former president. It is a tangible demonstration of support for those who continue to assert that the election was stolen from him. It is the chosen insignia of those who tried to hijack the election by attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6 and gut the very constitutional democracy that established the Supreme Court.

The flag flying over Justice Alito’s home casts a shadow over his ability to be impartial.

This is not the first time the “Stop the Steal” specter has arisen at the court. Revelations and allegations about Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife’s communications with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows , allegedly supporting the disruption of the results of the November 2020 election, raised the appearance of political impropriety. So, too, does the flag flying over Justice Alito’s home cast a shadow over his ability to be impartial.

It is precisely to guarantee independence from political pressure that Supreme Court justices (and all federal judges) serve for life. They do not need to run for reelection, nor curry favor with politicians to ensure their reappointment. But this same guarantee of political independence engenders a lack of meaningful oversight, creating an opportunity to make decisions based on personal, political persuasions.

Moreover, with a majority of Supreme Court justices largely understood to have a conservative agenda, much of which aligns with a Republican platform, the fear that civil rights are in jeopardy is tangible. Now more than ever, there is no place for politics on the court.

Justice Alito may or may not be biased in favor of the former president, but the flag flying upside down at his home in the past unequivocally telegraphs reasonable questions about his impartiality in cases involving Trump. These questions, separate and apart from the crisis in confidence that such conduct may raise for the court, mandate Justice Alito’s recusal from these cases.

The gravity of the implications of Justice Alito’s refusal to recuse himself from these decisions cannot be understated. At stake is not only the independence of the court itself, but also its credibility, and its role as a protector of our constitutional democracy.

Susan Sullivan is a professor in the political science department at Temple University and served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

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Guest Essay

Mexico’s Women Are Speaking. Will a Female President Listen?

A woman climbs down a boulder in Mexico.

By Cristina Rivera Garza

Ms. Rivera Garza’s book “Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice” is about one of the many women killed by femicide in Mexico.

My mother was born in 1943 in a country where she was not allowed to vote. The Mexican government did not grant women the right to vote in national elections — or the right to hold public office on a national level — until Oct. 17, 1953. Now, almost 71 years later, for the first time two women are leading the race to be Mexico’s next president: Claudia Sheinbaum, who is the front-runner, and Xóchitl Gálvez. It is no small feat for a country with a longstanding and complex relationship with machismo , and where every day some 10 women or girls are killed on average.

And yet this accomplishment has often felt like an afterthought during this historic election. Ms. Sheinbaum, a scientist running on the ticket of the ruling Morena party, and Ms. Gálvez, a businesswoman representing a mix of parties from the political establishment, have nodded at the achievements of feminism and its influence on Mexico’s public life. But they have been cautious about lingering too long on women’s issues in their campaigns, conspicuously tiptoeing around abortion and reproductive rights, seemingly out of deference to conservative voters. Neither candidate has put forth a strong agenda to serve the women who put them where they are today.

For as Mexico descended into its nightmare of generalized violence, from the U.S.-backed war on drugs to the government of Felipe Calderón and the administration of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, it has been women — their tireless work, infinite rage and deepening sorrow — who have provided a moral compass to this nation. Women’s mobilizations have grown stronger and louder in the face of government indifference and repression, mounting the only serious opposition against the status quo and making women’s issues and gender justice central to any discussion of our shared future.

To be fair, male candidates have not historically been required to present their agenda for women either. They are seldom even asked about it. But women constitute a little over half of the Mexican electorate; it is imperative that Ms. Sheinbaum and Ms. Gálvez discuss their views and positions on issues that will affect women’s bodies, security and everyday life — not because they are women, but because they are presidential candidates, striving to represent all of us in the highest political office in the country.

On June 2, a woman will almost certainly be given a mandate to govern all of us. She will preside over an electorate that is deeply concerned about insecurity and corruption. The security policy of the current administration — known as “Hugs Not Bullets” — has failed to meaningfully de-escalate the violence unleashed by America’s failed drug policy, a fact painfully brought home by the ever-growing number of disappearances and high rates of gender-related violence. A staggering number of victims’ collectives, made up mostly of the mothers, wives, sisters and daughters of the disappeared, travel the nation with little to no funding or institutional support, sometimes unearthing the remains of their loved ones.

The women in my family tell more than the story of suffrage in Mexico. We are also among the countless families seeking justice for their murdered daughters in a country where impunity and corruption regularly obstruct them, particularly in cases of femicide. One among the many pending cases in Mexico today is that of Liliana Rivera Garza , my younger sister, who was killed on July 16, 1990. The man who is presumed to have killed her has never been arrested, despite a warrant.

But this is only part of the picture. The next president of Mexico will also run a country that is home to a vocal and energized women’s movement. In Mexico, femicide is a distinct crime; a specialized prosecutor’s office for the crime of femicide was created in Mexico City in 2019, when Ms. Sheinbaum was mayor. While the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion in 2023. There is much work to be done — for economic justice, equal access to education, and labor rights, and against racism and homo- and transphobia. But this young generation of Mexican women has made genuine progress, helping find language that is precise, compassionate and forceful enough to dismantle the narratives that have forcibly silenced them and normalized gender violence for too long.

Their success is part of something bigger. Across Latin America, women have been at the forefront of the fight against military dictatorships in Chile (the arpillera movement, for example) and Argentina (the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo). Today, they are holding states responsible for violence and reclaiming public space to remind us that they — that all of us — have the right to live and thrive in safety. On Nov. 25, 2019, during a celebration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the Chilean feminist collective Las Tesis performed the protest song “Un violador en tu camino” (“A rapist in Your Path”), rallying thousands of us to chant against our governments. The next president of Mexico should be aware that the energy unleashed by these actions, which reverberate in Latin America and beyond, is here to stay.

It is these struggles and demands that have shaped the political arena in which Ms. Sheinbaum and Ms. Gálvez now stand. Will the first female president of Mexico be willing and able to honor such history, acknowledging that women’s equality and gender justice are not peripheral issues but crucial to the country’s future? Will she be ready to face the immense challenge of organized crime, both within and outside the government, to secure a violence-free life for all? Will she preserve and defend the safety of the journalists and activists who risk their lives as they hurl hard questions at power? Unlike former presidents, will she listen?

I believe women are complex human beings “with the full range of saintly and demonic behaviors this entails, including criminal ones,” as Margaret Atwood once wrote. And many female leaders — Margaret Thatcher and Corazón Aquino, to mention just two — demonstrated that a woman running the country does not necessarily translate into support for women. Like all presidents in the past, and in the future, the next leader of Mexico will be judged not by her gender but for the decisions and actions of her government.

My mother’s story is part of one Mexico — the one where women have worked together to lift two female candidates to this moment. My sister Liliana’s story warns of another Mexico, one where violence ends things before they get started. Two years before her death, Liliana exercised her right to vote, on July 6, 1988, and enthusiastically joined the crowds that congregated at the main square in Mexico City afterward. She was ready to defend our emerging democracy and oppose the pervasive electoral fraud that kept the Institutional Revolutionary Party in office at the time.

She, like the countless other victims of violence against women in Mexico, cannot vote this week. We can cast our vote only if we are alive.

Cristina Rivera Garza is the author of “Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice,” which won a Pulitzer Prize this year.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Analysis. Justice Wargrave reads the paper on a first class train and starts thinking about his destination: Soldier Island. He remembers the gossip that an American millionaire had lived there but that it was then bought by Mr. Owen. This started many rumors that it had actually been bought by a movie star or a Lord.
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The return of the enemy: Putin’s war on Ukraine and a cognitive blockage in Western security policy

Putin’s Russia: Take it literally and seriously

1989: The end of enmity

2001: Terrorists, the West’s new enemy

2008-present: The pulverization of peaceful convergence

2022: The return of the great power enemy

Help Ukraine win, strengthen Europe’s defenses, and avoid the mirroring trap

I was a law clerk for Justice Alito. He must recuse himself from hearing cases involving Donald Trump.

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