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The Brazen Illegality of Trump’s Venezuela Operation

A scholar of international law on the implications of the U.S. arrest of President Nicolás Maduro.
by Oona Hathaway, Isaac Chotiner via The New Yorker on January 3, 2026
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration headquarters.
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Trump May be Repeating Reagan's Deep Sea Mining Mistake

Undermining international oceans governance could damage American interests.
by Sonya Schoenberger via Made By History on June 17, 2025
Photo contact sheet from Ronald Reagan speech on Nicaragua in 1986.
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Letting the World Scream

The U.S., Nicaragua, and the International Court of Justice in the 1980s.
by Sean T. Byrnes via HNN on November 26, 2024
Hideki Tojo in a courtroom testifying at the Tokyo Trial, guarded by American soldiers.

The Hypocrisies of International Justice

A recent history revisits the Tokyo trial.
by Colin Jones via The Nation on September 18, 2024
Palestinians gather around a statue of Nelson Mandela after South Africa files a landmark case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, Ramallah, Jan. 10, 2024.

1948: Israel, South Africa, and the Question of Genocide

The UN’s failure to dismantle the colonial order foreclosed the application of the Genocide Convention to Israel, South Africa, and the United States.
by Robin D. G. Kelley via Hammer & Hope on March 19, 2024
Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia, president of the U.N. Security Council for February and permanent representative of the Russian Federation, at the U.N. headquarters on Feb. 28.

The ‘Rules-Based International Order’ Doesn’t Constrain Russia — or the United States

American pundits say Putin is undermining the international order. But the ability of great powers to ignore the rules is a lamentable part of the system.
by Samuel Moyn via Washington Post on March 1, 2022
The First Hague Conference in 1899: A meeting in the Orange Hall of Huis ten Bosch palace – collections of the Imperial War Museums.

Oh, the Humanity

Yale's John Fabian Witt pens a review of Samuel Moyn's new book, Humane.
by John Fabian Witt via Just Security on September 8, 2021
Afghan refugees at Dulles Airport

The Status of Refugees

Seventy years after the UN Refugee Convention, the United States should refresh its commitment to displaced people.
by Linda K. Kerber via Dissent on August 25, 2021
A man standing infront of a police line

The ‘Global Policeman’ Is Not Exempt From Justice

Confronting the violence of U.S. policing requires an international perspective.
by David Helps via Foreign Policy on August 13, 2021
Painting of a maritime battle between two tall ships, the 'Constitution' and the 'Guerrière.'

Judicial Nation-Building

The Early Republic’s maritime jurisprudence is even more relevant given the immense power of the modern executive.
by Sam Negus via Law & Liberty on January 13, 2026
Driving along the border wall, May 2025.

A Theology of Smuggling

In the early 1980s Tucson, activists and religious leaders joined forces to protect refugees at the U.S.-Mexico border, galvanizing the Sanctuary Movement.
by Caroline Tracey via Places Journal on November 13, 2025
Defense Department map of showing the U.S. within missile range from Cuba.

The Lost History of Latin America’s Role in Averting Catastrophe During the Cuban Missile Crisis

A common US-centric narrative holds that the crisis ended when Washington stood firm against the Soviets. But that story ignores a whole continent.
by Renata Keller via The Conversation on October 24, 2025
Brandenburg Gate

The Historical Precedents for Trump’s Gaza Plan

After two years of war and tens of thousands of casualties, Israel and Hamas have accepted a peace plan put forward by US President Donald Trump.
by Heather Penatzer via Compact on October 10, 2025

Guantánamo’s Secret History

Trump isn’t the first U.S. president to use the military base to incarcerate migrants.
by Miriam Pensack via The Dial on September 30, 2025

Latin America, the United States, and the Creation of Social-Democratic Modernity

A Q&A with the author of "America, América: “A New History of the New World.”
by Greg Grandin, Alexander Aviña via Public Books on September 9, 2025
Cypress Hills, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Exceptional Policing: American perspectives on the Cypress Hills Massacre

Bringing historical perspective to the current moment of nationalism redux and US-Canada border complexity.
by Max Hamon via Borealia: Early Canadian History on July 9, 2025
A hand holds a small rock, with a keffiyeh draping beside it.

The Horrors Inflicted for 500 Years

How Israel’s war in Gaza echoes the ancient doctrine of conquest behind Spain’s colonization of Latin America.
by Greg Grandin via Tom Dispatch on May 22, 2025
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House.

Trump’s Gaza Plan May Mark the End of the Postwar Order

Although the West has long tolerated forced expulsions when convenient, its postwar framework at least nominally rejected them. Now the US is endorsing it.
by Dirk Moses via Jacobin on February 16, 2025

How the U.S. Gamed the Law of the Sea

It made itself bigger.
by Jack Truesdale via The Atlantic on January 25, 2025

Globalism, Sovereignty, and Resistance

Quinn Slobodian and Jennifer Mittelstadt discuss their research on the meanings of “globalism” and “sovereignty” throughout history.
by Jennifer Mittelstadt, Quinn Slobodian via History & Political Economy Project on November 18, 2024
A painting of a desolated, ruined street.
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Defeating Death Only with Death

On civilians’ opinion of killing civilians by air during World War II.
by Cormac Ó Gráda via HNN on September 10, 2024
Painting of a colonial battle in Africa.

No War Is Too Small: How Localized Conflicts Sparked Imperial Violence

Small wars have been used as a foundation of global order. The belief that limited violence preserves peace serves imperial control.
by Lauren Benton via Literary Hub on September 9, 2024
USS San Jacinto on ocean
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The U.S. Only Pretends to Want 'Freedom of the Seas'

Too often, U.S. support for open navigation has devolved into military conflict.
by Grace Easterly via Made By History on February 15, 2024
The shrouded bodies of people killed in the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

“Genocide” Is the Wrong Word

We reach for the term when we want to condemn the worst crimes, but the UN’s Genocide Convention excuses more perpetrators of mass murder than it condemns.
by James Robins via The New Republic on November 21, 2023
The cover of the United Nations FAO-Unesco Soil Map of the World, 1974.

The Earth for Man

Redistributing land was once central to global development efforts—and it should be today.
by Jo Guldi via Boston Review on May 3, 2023
A woman wearing a winter coat and a mask walks outside the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund, Washington, D.C., January 2022.

How the System Was Rigged

The global economic order and the myth of sovereignty.
by Branko Milanović via Foreign Affairs on June 21, 2022
Town council leader and lawyer Khalid Salman by the graves of his sister and her children, who were among the twenty-four Iraqi civilians killed by US Marines in the 2005 Haditha massacre, Haditha, Iraq, 2011.

Our Hypocrisy on War Crimes

The US’s history of evasiveness around wartime atrocities undermines the very institution that could bring Putin to justice: the International Criminal Court.
by Fintan O’Toole via New York Review of Books on May 5, 2022
Photograph of woman interrogated by soldier at Korean prisoner-of-war camp

A Permanent Battle

A new history draws on recently declassified archives to illustrate how the Korean War was an intimate civil conflict, not just a proxy battle between superpowers.
by E. Tammy Kim via New York Review of Books on May 5, 2022
US military pilots operating Predator drones from the ground control station.

The Forgotten Crime of War Itself

A new book argues that efforts to humanize war with smarter weaponry have obscured the task of making peace the first goal of foreign policy.
by Jackson Lears via New York Review of Books on March 31, 2022
Paul Robeson and other members of the Civil Rights Congress submit a report on police brutality and systemic racism against Black people, accusing the U.S. of genocide, to the United Nations.

70 Years Ago Black Activists Accused the U.S. of Genocide. They Should Have Been Taken Seriously.

The charges, while provocative, offer a framework to reckon with systemic racial injustice — past and present.
by Alex Hinton via Politico Magazine on December 26, 2021
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