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J. Robert Oppenheimer.

For Oppenheimer, a World Government Was the Only Way to Save Us From Ourselves

Might a world republic provide humanity with the tools to address the climate emergency, runaway artificial intelligence, and new weapons of mass extermination?
Political cartoon featuring Theodore Roosevelt carrying a club labeled "The New Diplomacy."

Visiting a Forgotten Chapter in American History

Sean Mirski terms the Monroe Doctrine “revolutionary” in his impressively erudite "We May Dominate the World."
Richard Nixon pointing to a map of Cambodia.

The Unhappy Legal History of the War Powers Resolution

How the law became a staging ground for unrestrained war.
two men, with one holding a basket on his basket, climb up sharp rocks on the Farallon Islands.

How a War Over Eggs Marked the Early History of San Francisco

Competition over eggs on the Farallon Islands in the midst of the California Gold Rush in San Francisco led to an all out war between eggers.
Artists conception of the Annis Mound and Village Site.

Against the Grain?

Native farming practices and settler-colonial imaginations in the video game "Empire: Total War."
Robet Kagan resting his head in his hands in a contemplative position, with a dark red background

Robert Kagan and Interventionism’s Big Reboot

He fell from favor after the disaster of the Iraq War. But he was always biding his time.
Two unnamed Black officers in the Union Army.

Richard Wright’s Civil War Cipher

Archival records of Black southerners' military desertion tribunals can be read as a distinct form of political action.
George Kennan.

George Kennan’s False Moves

The great grand strategist of the Cold War believed he failed in his most important task.
Alexander Hamilton stands guard over the U.S. Treasury building in Washington.

The Constitutional Case for Disarming the Debt Ceiling

The Framers would have never tolerated debt-limit brinkmanship. It’s time to put this terrible idea on trial.
Painting depicting the U.S. Army and American Indians signing the Treaty of Greenville, 1785.

How the (First) West Was Won: Federalist Treaties that Reshaped the Frontier

Treaties with Britain, the Confederated tribes, and Spain revealed that America was still dependent on the greater geopolitics of the Atlantic World.
Dorothea and Gladys Cromwell serving French troops outside the Cantine des Deux Drapeaux in Châlons-sur-Marne.

Strange, Inglorious, Humble Things

The Cromwell twins fled the constrictions of high society for the freedoms of the literary world. Ravenous for greater purpose, the twins then went to 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. 
Black and white photo of Geronimo

How Grief and Revenge Made Geronimo Into a Legendary War Chief

Before Geronimo met any white Americans or came to think of them as enemies of the Apaches, he spent years fighting Mexicans.
Linotype operators of the Chicago Defender

Reading Langston Hughes’s Wartime Reporting From the Spanish Civil War

Several years before the United States officially entered World War II, Black Americans were tracking the international spread of fascism.
Drawing of people gathered around a speaker at the liberty tree.

The Letter That Helped Start a Revolution

The Town of Boston’s invention of the standing committee 250 years ago provided a means for building consensus during America’s nascent independence movement.
Print shows Rebel troops killing the citizens of Lawrence, Kansas, and setting fire to the buildings.

Where Will This Political Violence Lead? Look to the 1850s.

In the mid-19th century, a pro-slavery minority used violence to stifle a growing anti-slavery majority, spurring their opposition to respond in kind.
Demonstrators in front of the U.S. capital, supporting Ukraine.

Small Nations, Big Feelings

In the 1930s, Americans fell in love with Czechoslovakia and Spain; today, it’s Ukraine. What happens when one finds a “second mother country”?
Albert Sidney Burleson partially obscured by postage stamps with Woodrow Wilson's face.

America’s Top Censor—So Far

Woodrow Wilson’s postmaster put papers out of business and jailed journalists. The tools he used still exist.
An 1886 illustration of a cowboy and cow camp.

When Texas Cowboys Fought Private Property

When cattle barons carved up Texas with barbed wire in the late 19th century, cowboys formed fence-cutting gangs to preserve the open range.
Actor Tom Hanks and President George W. Bush stand on stage at the dedication of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. on May 29, 2004.

Destructive Myths

Romanticized stories about the Second World War are at the heart of American exceptionalism.
US Soldiers in armored cars in Iraq.

Our Invasions

If we’re never going to hold U.S. war criminals accountable, what moral credibility do we have when we condemn Russia and others?
Black and white image of people observing photographs hanging on the wall at an exhibition in Oaxaca in 1999 about magonismo.

The Mexican Revolution as U.S. History

Making the case for why U.S. history only makes sense when told as a binational story.
Man training under water with scuba gear.

Remembering the World War II Frogmen Who Trained in Secret off the California Coast

Recruits learned the arts of infiltration, sabotage, and survival at a hidden base on Santa Catalina Island.
Francis Fukuyama

Last Man Standing

Francis Fukuyama pines for that old-time liberalism.
Photo illustration of a button causing death courtesy of MIT Press Reader.

How Americans Got Comfortable With Killing at the Push of a Button

For years, the idea seemed immoral and dangerous.
Noam Chomsky

“Every Time We Build Up Our Military Budget, We’re Attacking Ourselves”

Noam Chomsky discusses the hypocrisies of US empire and why if we really wanted to build a decent society, we’d immediately slash the massive military budget.
Black and white photo of D-Day Normandy Landings

For the Anniversary of D-Day - Blitzkrieg Manquée? Or, a New Mode of "Firepower War"?

Why and how did D-Day succeed? The question has given postwar historians no peace.
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.
English painting of Pocahontas by Simon van de Passe.

The Moment That Changed Colonial-Indigenous Relations Forever

How a massacre on March 22, 1622 irrevocably shaped relations between Indigenous Americans and English colonists.
Illustration of John von Neumann surrounded by mathematical formulas, by Valentin Pavageau

John von Neumann Thought He Had the Answers

The father of game theory helped develop the atom bomb—and thought he could calculate when to use it.

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