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foreign policy

  • SOURCE: The Nation
    5/15/2023

    Henry Kissinger: A War Criminal Still at Large at 100

    by Greg Grandin

    Henry Kissinger was instrumental in Nixon's decision to undertake the illegal bombing of Cambodia. His foreign policy machinations also led him to push Nixon to the actions that led to Watergate and the president's downfall, though Kissinger has remained unaccountable. 

  • SOURCE: Woodrow Wilson Center and National History Center
    5/16/2023

    Chad Williams on W.E.B. DuBois and the First World War

    Michelle Moyd and David W. Blight comment on Chad Williams's discussion of DuBois's unfinished manuscript about the deep questions of race, democracy, and world affairs raised by the first World War. 

  • SOURCE: Foreign Policy in Focus
    4/24/2024

    Ukraine has Never been America's War

    by Lawrence Wittner

    A historian of diplomacy and peace movements argues that efforts to blame the war on American imperialism don't stand up to scrutiny. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    3/29/2023

    What Iraq Should Teach Advocates of Foreign Policy Restraint

    by Joseph Stieb

    Many advocates of a less assertive role for United States power in the world point to Iraq as an example of the folly of intervention. But if they want to make their views a reality, they need to understand why pro-war arguments succeeded by offering a solution to Americans' post-9/11 fears and anxieties. 

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    3/27/2023

    David Allen: What Happened to Democracy in Foreign Policy?

    by Daniel Bessner

    The idea that ordinary Americans should have a say in the nation's role in the world is dismissed out of hand by the foreign policy elite. But what if the problem isn't the complexity of world affairs, but the American elite's rejection of democracy? 

  • SOURCE: New Statesman
    3/24/2023

    The 2003 Iraq Invasion Was the Culmination of a Long Betrayal

    by Noah Kulwin

    Although the UK backed the US invasion of Iraq, that nation had been supplying weapons to Saddam Hussein since the 1980s to advance anti-Iranian policy in the middle east. Before the invasion, the government worked to cover those tracks. 

  • 3/26/2023

    O'Hanlon: Policymakers Need to Know More History

    by James Thornton Harris

    "Studying war in this way should humble us about our ability to control and contain it in the future," says the Brookings Institution scholar, who urges security policymakers to read as much history as they can. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    1/12/2023

    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. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    1/4/2023

    How is the Biden Doctrine Working after Two Years?

    by Matt Duss and Stephen Wertheim

    After pledging to reorient foreign policy around the global issues affecting Americans – climate, disease, and ending "forever wars" – progress toward a Biden Doctrine has been incremental. 

  • 12/11/2022

    Will the Republican's Tilt Toward Isolationism End?

    by Waller R. Newell

    The Republican Party's fracturing between the remaining neocons and a younger group of isolationists comes at a critical moment when Russia is testing the possible limits on its expansive ambitions. 

  • SOURCE: London Review of Books
    10/13/2022

    Understanding Colombia's Truth Commission Report after 60 Years of Civil Conflict

    by Rachel Nolan

    Colombia's armed conflict between government forces, leftist rebels, and paramilitary death squads is the world's longest continuous conflict. The nation's massive Truth Commission report undermines decades of official government narrative about the apportionment of blame for atrocities. 

  • SOURCE: War on the Rocks
    9/16/2022

    How Ideology Shapes America's View on the World

    Christopher McKnight Nichols, Raymond Haberski, Jr., and Emily Conroy-Krutz join host Jeremi Suri of the University of Texas, Austin to discuss what ideology is, and explore the ways in which it has shaped, and continues to shape, America’s role in the world.