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Cold War



  • Climate Policy Needs a Return to Land Reform

    by Jo Guldi

    In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the United Nations' international development agenda took its cues from struggles for decolonization from Ireland to India, making the redistribution of rural land a top priority. Is this the key to more effective climate change mitigation? 



  • The "Great" Powers are Seeing Remarkably Diminished Returns from War

    by Tom Englehardt

    The legacy of the victory culture engendered by World War II has been a string of costly defeats and stalemates against theoretically overmatched foes and the destructive subordination of the economy and democracy to "national defense" and militarism. 


  • The "Madman Theory" Was Quintessential Nixon

    by Zachary Jonathan Jacobson

    Richard Nixon's famed foreign policy ruse—encouraging adversaries to think him capable of seemingly insane decisions—had one essential component: Nixon himself, and his commitment to the tightrope-walking performance. 



  • Despite Ike's Warning, We're Still Nailed to a Cross of Iron

    by William Astore

    At the start of his presidency, Eisenhower warned of the dangers and costs of escalating militarism. By the end of his term, he was convinced the Military-Industrial Complex had entrenched itself. It was only getting started. 



  • The Victims of Communism Museum is a Propaganda Machine for Normalizing the Hard Right

    by Billie Anania

    The museum, which counts numerous Nazi sympathizers among its founders, peddles a spurious notion of "double genocide" that lets fascists off the hook by promoting the number of 100 million victims of communism. How do they get that tally? Including every German soldier killed on the eastern front and every victim of COVID-19. 



  • Whittaker Chambers's Odyssey from Communist Spy to Conservative Hero

    by Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell

    Praised by the right and loathed by the left, Whittaker Chambers entered the public eye when he accused State Department worker Alger Hiss of being a Communist. But his story before and after reveals much more about the political history of midcentury America. 



  • Who Poisoned Pablo Neruda?

    by Ariel Dorfman

    "In retrospect I wonder if perhaps I was so tired of tales of torture and disappearances, so full of death and grief, that I could not deal with one more affront. I preferred to shield the sacred figure of Neruda from the violence."



  • Why George Kennan Thought He Failed His Biggest Challenge

    by Patrick Iber

    After urging the United States to firmly oppose the expansion of Soviet influence as a way of bringing the USSR's internal weaknesses to the forefront, Kennan grew disillusioned at the militarized tack later versions of "containment" took. A new book revisits and challenges canonical studies of the diplomatic thinker.