international relations

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• SOURCE: Z Blogs
  8/4/2020
  

  China and the United States Could Avoid an Unnecessary War

  by Lawrence Wittner

  Both the Chinese and U.S. governments are engaging in reckless behavior that could lead to disaster.

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  7/3/2020
  

  To the World, We’re Now America the Racist and Pitiful

  The United States, long the bedrock of the Western alliance, is less inspirational today—and perhaps will be even less so tomorrow.

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  6/10/2020
  

  How the US Government Sold the Peace Corps to the American Public

  by Wendy Melillo

  Given the growing counterculture movement in the early 1960s, the government feared that few young Americans would be motivated to join the Peace Corps by a message that they’d be volunteering to help to fight communism. 

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• SOURCE: Council on Foreign Relations
  6/5/2020
  

  How America’s Credibility Gap Hurts the Defense of Rights Abroad

  The U.S. government’s response to anti-racism protests risks causing lasting damage to American credibility and influence in protecting minorities and oppressed groups worldwide.

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• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  6/7/2020
  

  Yes, America Is in a Cold War With China

  "For too long the U.S. has looked the other way as the Chinese Communist Party has waged a new cold war against the American order," writes Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  6/4/2020
  

  The Damage Trump Has Done This Week Extends Far Beyond America’s Borders

  by Mary L. Dudziak

  Concern that Orval Faubus's defiant stand for school segregation in Arkansas would sully America's reputation abroad pushed Dwight Eisenower to deploy the National Guard in the interest of both racial justice and American leadership. Calls to deploy the military today must consider this context.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/29/2020
  

  The ‘Liberal World Order’ Was Built With Blood

  by Vincent Bevins

  American politicians, pundits and citizens need to understand that the history of American influence in the world has included violent subversion of democracy in the name of American interests.

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  5/11/2020
  

  The Myth of Henry Kissinger

  by Thomas Meaney

  Barry Gewen's new biography of the American national security figure argues that Kissinger's perspective was shaped by stories older German emigres told him about the end of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/10/2020
  

  Can the Democrats Avoid Trump’s China Trap?

  by Rachel Esplin Odell and Stephen Wertheim

  We stand on the brink of an even more destructive and less justifiable mistake than the post-Sept. 11 crusade.

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• 5/10/2020
  

  Are We Repeating Some Chapter of World History?

  by Peter N. Stearns

  Did I hear some smart aleck student mumble something about Santayana?

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• 5/10/2020
  

  The Real Thucydides Trap

  by Waller R. Newell

  Classical histories are in vogue as explanations for the Coronavirus-fueled tensions between the United States and China. A political science scholar argues that an influential theory gets Thucydides backwards.

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• 5/3/2020
  

  Trump’s Attacks on the WHO Evoke Nostalgia for George W. Bush

  by Jeffrey J. Matthews

  George W. Bush's promotion of cooperative international health initiaitves to fight HIV-AIDS is a bright spot in his presidential legacy.

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• 4/19/2020
  

  American Women at the UN: From Breakthrough to Dumping Ground?

  by Philip Nash

  More women belong in senior foreign and national security policy positions—at State, Defense, the National Security Council, and beyond—and not just at the United Nations.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/10/2020
  

  William R. Polk, Historian and Middle East Envoy, Dies at 91

  Over six decades, Mr. Polk delved into multiple careers, working in and out of government, writing, co-writing or editing more than two-dozen books and traveling the globe, often to hot spots.

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• 4/12/2020
  

  How Will History Judge Trump’s Foreign Policy?

  by Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

  Our 46th president, whenever he or she arrives, will confront a changed world, partly because of COVID, but also because of the effects of Trump’s personality and policies.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/27/2020
  

  Coronavirus Shows the Perils and Promise of Globalization

  by Samuel Zipp

  During the first age of “America First” in the 1940s, Wendell Wilkie's campaign challenged Americans to confront a discomfiting idea: Our lives depend on the well-being of many millions across the world.

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• 3/6/2020
  

  Truth and History: Historical Truth and Historical Narrative

  by Yoav J. Tenembaum

  Historical narratives may reflect historical truth or not. Their aim is not necessarily to ascertain what actually happened in the past, but to justify what happens in the present.

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• 1/12/20
  

  Do Morals Matter in Foreign Policy?

  by Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

  Examining 14 presidencies since 1945 shows that a radically skeptical view of morality is bad history. Morals did matter.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/6/20
  

  Iran Air Flight 655: Iran’s president invokes 1988 tragedy many Americans have forgotten

  On Monday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani invoked history right back in response to Trump’s threat.

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• 12/29/19
  

  Great Britain’s Secret Role in Prodding a Reluctant U.S. to Superpower Status

  by James Thornton Harris

  America’s rapid emergence as a global superpower after 1945 is the subject of Grand Improvisation: America Confronts the British Superpower 1945-1957. Author Derek Leebaert challenges the conventional wisdom that an exhausted Great Britain voluntarily “handed the baton” of world leadership to the U.S. after World War II.