Blind-Spot Politics

Appeasement, Authoritarianism and Hypocrisy in Europe

By: Paul Lendvai

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Hardcover | 1 February 2026

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Hardcover
272 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
19.0 x 12.6 x 2.3

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A leading Central European journalist investigates how political and intellectual elites in Europeâs democracies underestimate and enable the continentâs authoritariansâ"from the Cold War onwards.

âPutin has obviously deceived everyone.â These were the words of Manuela Schwesig, First Minister of the German state Mecklenburg- Western Pomerania, after the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. She was trying to explain why her federal government had been so closely implicated in Russiaâs controversial completion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Why have other German, Austrian and European politicians and commentators so often got it so very wrong in their assessments of Moscow policy? Why has the EU been so slow to recognise the danger posed to its liberal values by nationalist autocrats such as Viktor Orb¡n of Hungary? And why have lessons from past blunders in Western policyâ"particularly in the Balkansâ"and the example of German Ostpolitik gone ignored, until it was too late?

Paul Lendvai, a veteran reporter on the continentâs centre and east, exposes the role of double standards embraced, blind eyes turned and human and political weakness overlooked in policies of appeasement towards Europeâs authoritarian regimes, past and present. Combining analysis of new developments with decades of personal experience as a correspondent, he provides fascinating political profiles in deceit, sketching both the victims and the perpetrators of political fraud in Central and Eastern Europe.

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