Chapter 4 centers on his educational activism, whose principal vehicle was Federal Union, an organization founded during the war, and which in 1946 launched a monthly magazine, Freedom & Union, to stimulate discussion of Atlantic federal union and of federalist frameworks more generally. Political and financial considerations prodded Streit to champion abstract principles of democracy, freedom, and liberty, which further Americanized his project by rooting it in dominant Cold War ideological paradigms while also eliding differences between the United States and Western European countries.

The 1997 Russia–Ukraine Friendship Treaty appeared to confirm Ukraine’s borders and to settle the status of the Black Sea Fleet and Sevastopol, but many leading Russian politicians opposed it. Ukraine balanced its fear of Russia by becoming a leading participant in NATO’s Partnership for Peace. Meanwhile, the war in Yugoslavia exposed the tension between the western insistence on “European norms” and Russia’s insistence on its prerogatives as a traditional great power. By 1999, Russia was furious at NATO over expansion and Kosovo, and still sought to reintegrate Ukraine. However, the question of Ukraine remained largely distinct from Russia’s broader relationship with the West.

As the conflict in Donbas stabilized, Ukraine and Russia reached an impasse over how the Minsk agreements should be implemented. Ukraine gradually strengthened its ties with Europe, and secured the separation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from Moscow’s control. The election of Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019 led to hopes for a breakthrough in negotiations, but little progress was made. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin enacted constitutional changes that would potentially keep him in power until 2036. While not quite frozen, the conflict appeared likely to endure at a manageable level of violence, potentially for many years.

Chapter 1 considers Streit’s early years. It begins with his path from an ambitious high school and university student in Montana to Europe: as soldier in World War I, as a low-level member of the US delegation to the Paris peace conference in 1919, as a Rhodes scholar, and finally as a budding journalist. It then examines his emergence as a well-regarded foreign correspondent during the 1920s, a period often presented as the profession’s golden age. Although Streit lacked the glamor of better-known celebrity colleagues, his experiences offer another perspective on the work of interwar foreign correspondents. The final section focuses on Streit’s tenure as the New York Times’ correspondent in Geneva for much of the 1930s covering the League of Nations. This extended posting provides an intriguing vantage point for reconsidering the League’s place in US foreign relations at the time.

On a warm Washington, DC evening in mid-May 1979, a reception got underway in the speakers’ dining room in the Capitol building. Cohosted by Paul Findley, a Republican representative from Illinois, and Jim Wright, a Texas Democrat and the House Majority leader, and chaired by Tip O’Neill, the House speaker from Massachusetts, the reception celebrated Clarence Streit, described as the “founder of the Atlantic Union movement and author of ‘Union Now.’” Successive speakers affectionately recalled Streit’s four decades of dedication, in Findley’s words, to the cause of “greater unity among the nations which prize individual liberty.” Wright bestowed on the guest of honor an award named after Estes Kefauver, the deceased senator from Tennessee, former vice-presidential candidate, and Streit’s political ally during the 1950s. Other tokens of admiration included a card signed by almost 200 well-wishers, as well as a book of “congratulatory messages” with entries from former presidents Nixon and Ford, among other political luminaries. Accompanied by Jeanne, his wife and collaborator of over five decades, Streit characteristically urged the attendees to continue the couple’s work. His appeal, though, did little to dent the pervasive sense of nostalgia, of bygone times, and vanishing possibilities. Afterward, Streit quickly faded from view, his death in 1986 at the age of ninety marked by perfunctory obituaries.1 Today, he is all but forgotten.

The delay of the Association Agreement spurred protests, and violent repression caused them to grow. Yanukovych’s ouster outraged Putin, who again saw a revolution thwart Russia’s position in Ukraine. He saw an irresistible opportunity to respond. Seizing Crimea regained a territory Russia had always wanted; it showed that Russia could defy the West; it boosted Putin’s domestic popularity; and it hamstrung Ukraine’s new government. The conflict then spread to eastern Ukraine, where the shooting down of a passenger aircraft dramatically increased international outrage at Russia’s actions. The West enacted sanctions, while the conflict itself stabilized territorially in the February 2015 Minsk-2 agreement.