Just want to recommend Abe Greenwald’s piece in the new issue of Commentary, titled “The Failure at the End of History.” Greenwald traces out the collapse of Western hopes that trade liberalization with China would make China and certain parts of the former Soviet Bloc more like us. He concludes that, in fact, we’ve become more like them in the process. More corrupt. More authoritarian. Western firms that do business in China and elsewhere have lost the ennobling excuse for their buck-raking, the excuse that they were also involved in making the world a freer and better place. It’s a thought that has occurred to most of us in recent years and especially in recent months, but Greenwald’s treatment of it is very good.

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review Online . @michaelbd