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Painting of a city along a river, with a long dock and commerical ships

James Buchanan's 1832 Mission to the Tsar

The plight of Poland and the limits of America's revolutionary legacy in Jacksonian foreign policy.
President John F. Kennedy meets with William Fitzjohn, Sierra Leone's charge d’affairs in Washington, in the Oval Office on April 27, 1961.

The African Diplomats Who Protested Segregation in the U.S.

Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy publicly apologized after restaurants refused to serve Black representatives of newly independent nations.
President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands at the Group of 20 summit.
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Diplomacy Defused Cold War Crises. It Can Help Again Today.

The type of quiet, personal, informed diplomacy advocated by George Kennan can reduce tensions with China and Russia.
Collage of George Kennan and the Pentagon.

The Ghosts of Kennan

Lessons from the start of the Cold War.
Political Cartoon with various animals (representing different American groups) talking to a Lion (England).

The Curious Affair of the Horsewhipped Senator: A Diplomatic Crisis That Didn’t Happen

The senators, like the grand jurors, knew their man, and probably conceded that Temple had given him the hiding he had been asking for. 
Photo of Franklin Delano Roosevelt grilling hot dogs.

Why American Leaders Relish Hot-Dog Diplomacy

For 80 years, wieners have been an essential component of foreign policy.
Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, speaks as Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken watches from the side.

“Pale, Male, and [Educated At] Yale"

Diversity, national Identity, and the fraught history behind the State Department’s search for diplomats who “look like America.”
Activists with a sign saying "No More Stolen Sisters" march for missing and murdered Indigenous women at the Women's March California 2019 on January 19, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. Sarah Morris/Getty
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Colonial Traffic in Native American Women

“European and Indian men—as captors, brokers, and buyers—used captured and enslaved women to craft relationships of trade and reciprocity with one another.”
Frederick Douglass and the Haiti Commission on USS Tennessee in Key West.

Frederick Douglass and American Empire in Haiti

Toward the end of his life, Frederick Douglass served briefly as U.S. ambassador to Haiti.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President Joe Biden
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The Atlantic Charter Then and Now: Security and Stability Needs Justice

The new agreement echoes the original 1941 version, but mentions human rights and dignity explicitly, envisioning them as a starting point for the world order.
Maxim and Ivy Litvinov

The People’s Ambassadress: The Forgotten Diplomacy of Ivy Litvinov

How Ivy Litvinov, the English-born wife of a Soviet ambassador, seduced America with wit, tea and soft diplomacy.
Guar standing in front of a building with a large painting of Mao Zedung above the entrance.
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Turn Out the Lights: When the Last American Diplomats Fled China

Untold stories of American diplomats who "lost" China.

Day One at Yalta, the Conference That Shaped the World: ‘De Gaulle Thinks He’s Joan of Arc’

A day-by-day account of the historic summit in Yalta, seventy-five years later.
Photo of Richard Holsbrook on an abstract paint background.

Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century

After serving in Vietnam, Richard Holbrooke became a proponent of soft power. He would then contribute greatly to American foreign policy.
Richard Holbrooke and two images of people carrying weapons of war.

The End of the American Century

What the life of Richard Holbrooke tells us about the decay of Pax Americana.

Diplomatic Back Channels Were Once Seen as a Good Thing

But they've always been risky.

What the Cuban Missile Crisis Can Teach Us About the North Korean Missile Crisis

To avoid catastrophe, Kennedy turned to diplomacy. Trump would be wise to do the same.
John McCain stands in a crowd shaking hands in a Ukrainian city.

How Decades of Folly Led to War in Ukraine

For decades, US hostility towards Russia and continued NATO encroachment ever further into Eastern Europe have laid the groundwork for the current crisis.
John F. Kennedy meeting with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, 1961.

The Way We Understand the Cold War Is Wrong

People tend to assume they know exactly what the Cold War was and when it ended. Anders Stephanson argues that this standard chronology doesn’t fit the facts.
A group of workers in hard hats walk through the shallow water of one of the Panama Canal's locks.

‘The Canal Is Ours’

Trump’s threats to take control of the Panama Canal have precipitated a struggle over the country’s sovereignty.
President Gerald R. Ford and the Shah of Iran confer over a map in 1975.

History of Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Detailed in New Collection

U.S.-Iran diplomacy, intelligence on South Korea's nuclear program, and fears that a reactor given to India would become a “do-it-yourself bomb kit.”
Charles Sumner

How Charles Sumner Convinced Abraham Lincoln and the Union To Take a Stand Against Slavery

The domestic and international dynamics of the early days of the Civil War.
The U.S.-Canada border, as seen in this satellite map, mostly runs along the 49th parallel — and wasn't chosen at random.

Trump Calls the U.S.-Canada Border an "Artificial Line." That's not Entirely True.

Just because it's man-made doesn't mean it's not legitimate.
Lithograph depicting the Congress of Vienna, 1815.

The Conservative Historian Every Socialist Should Read

A lifetime spent studying the disastrous lead-up to World War I gave Paul Schroeder reason to be horrified at the recklessness of US foreign policy.
Arthur Zimmerman and his intercepted telegram.

Worse Than Signalgate

Accidentally sharing attack plans in a group chat is bad. Causing a rising superpower to declare war on you because of a Western Union telegram is worse.
Book cover of "Squanto: A Native Odyssey" by Andrew Lipman.

Squanto: A Native Odyssey

A new biography tells a far more complex, nuanced, and, frankly, interesting historical episode than that depicted in the typical grade-school pageant.
French Gen. Jean de Rochambeau and American Gen. George Washington giving the last orders in October 1781 for the battle at Yorktown.

How Allies Have Helped the US Gain Independence, Defend Freedom and Keep the Peace

Why should a country want or need allies? President Donald Trump and his followers seem to disdain the idea. So did George Washington.
President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

The First Draft of the Ukraine War’s History

Washington’s policy-makers showed themselves more wicked and feckless than their Vietnam- and Iraq-era predecessors.
Jimmy Carter and General Omar Torrijos shake hands after signing the Panama Canal Treaty in 1977

The Panama Canal Treaty Declassified

Kissinger warned: “This is no issue to face the world on. It looks like pure colonialism.”
Trump's airplane in Greenland.
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Why Trump Wants Greenland—And Why He Probably Won't Get It

He's not the first to set his sights on the island.

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