Departments

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Cold War

  • SOURCE: The Baffler
    9/15/2021

    On the Eve of Destruction: Breaking the Double-Bind of the Nuclear Arms Race

    by Richard Rhodes

    Politicians and defense contractors who wanted American nuclear supremacy won out over scientists seeking international effort to contain the extinction-level threat posed by thermonuclear weapons, even to the point of denying the planet-destroying power of the H-bomb. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    8/16/2021

    Review: How Espionage Has Helped Win Wars

    A roundup of new books in the history of espionage covers Asian Americans in the WWII OSS, the early Cold War, and an examination of the roots of Putin's aggressiveness against dissidents.

  • SOURCE: The Baffler
    8/19/2021

    How Empires Fall

    by Matt Wehmeier

    "Decisive political moments are rarely expected, and even more rarely planned. Governments change all the time. But every once in a while, empires fall."

  • SOURCE: The Conversation
    8/4/2021

    5 Ways Americans Misunderstand Cuba

    by Caroline McCulloch

    Both the Cuban government's censorship and many Americans' nationalistic perspective hinder an accurate understanding of even the basic history and politics of the Cuban-American relationship. 

  • SOURCE: The Nation
    7/26/2021

    Like JFK, Biden Has Good Reason to Be Wary of the Military

    Joe Biden faces challenges like those that confronted JFK: both presidents faced a substantial presence of right-wing extremists within the active and retired ranks of military leadership. Biden must stand firm in the face of manufactured controversies including over diversity training. 

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    6/29/2021

    Blackness and the Bomb

    by Erica X. Eisen

    "Throughout the atomic age, civil defense authorities demanded the active participation of Black citizens whom their measures failed to protect."

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    6/15/2021

    The Freeing of the American Mind

    Louis Menand joins Ezra Klein's podcast to discuss his new book and the intellectual history of the cold war era. 

  • 6/13/2021

    It's Time for a "Don't Trust, Do Verify" US-Russia Cybersecurity Treaty

    by Glenn C. Altschuler and Justin Lifflander

    The Reagan-Gorbachev summit meetings that yielded the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and established mutual weapons monitoring weren't expected to succeed, but offer hope that negotiations between Biden and Putin could advance progress toward needed mutual cybersecurity action. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    6/8/2021

    The U.S. War On Drugs Helped Unleash The Violence In Colombia Today

    by Kyle Longley

    Counternarcotics operations have been a pretext for funding a buildup of the Colombian security forces, allowing a US-friendly rightist government to avoid dealing with the economic and social causes of unrest. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    5/12/2021

    The U.S. Role in the El Mozote Massacre Echoes in Today’s Immigration

    by Nelson Rauda and John Washington

    Renewed efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of the 1981 El Mozote massacre of Salvadoran civilians during the civil war will further demonstrate American involvement in the perpetuation of inequality and violence in Central America and, the authors argue, the hypocrisy of US immigration policy. 

  • SOURCE: Retro Report
    4/26/2021

    Lesson: The Cold War and the Nuclear Weapons Threat

    The Cold War may be over, but an arms race continues, even as safeguards once in place have fallen away. Some experts worry that nuclear weapons may pose a greater threat to humanity than ever before.

  • SOURCE: TomDispatch
    4/27/2021

    Waiting for the Cyber-Apocalypse

    by John Feffer

    The latest iteration of imperial blowback is coming in the form of cyberwarfare techniques pioneered by US intelligence agencies being turned against the country's patchwork internet security. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    4/20/2021

    The Long History of Members of Congress Talking Directly with U.S. Adversaries

    by Richard A. Moss and Sergey Radchenko

    New documents demonstrate that Senator Ted Kennedy had back-channel contact with the Brezhnev regime in the 1970s, which aimed both at resolving sticky diplomatic issues and at elevating Kennedy above Democratic party rivals. It's unclear if Kennedy was acting with or undercutting American intelligence agencies. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    4/16/2021

    The Book That Stopped an Outbreak of Nuclear War

    Serhii Plokhy adds new insight to the Cuban Missile Crisis by examining the domestic political context of the Soviet Union and the political incentives toward nuclear brinksmanship.