Ukraine

Ambition, insecurity, and the perils of independence.

Ukraine didn’t become an epicenter of world history all of a sudden; it became an epicenter again.

To understand the tragedy of this war, it is worth going back beyond the last few weeks and months, and even beyond Vladimir Putin.

Why has Ukraine been a stumbling block for U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War?

Catastrophic accidents at power plants have heightened fears about the safety of nuclear energy, but it's getting renewed attention as a way to fight global warming.

Railroads—in the Jim Crow South just as in today’s Ukraine—employ physical infrastructure to create racial divisions.

A new history makes a case for the world-ordering power of wheat.

The US’s history of evasiveness around wartime atrocities undermines the very institution that could bring Putin to justice: the International Criminal Court.

A stubborn and surprising immigrant enclave, hiding in plain sight on the Lower East Side.

"The Origins of Totalitarianism" has much to say about a world of rising authoritarianism.

Even the most ardent advocates of NATO expansion after the implosion of the USSR realized that it had limits—and one of those limits was Ukraine.

NATO expansion - the trigger for Russia's attack on Ukraine?

Yes, the Russian leader is an authoritarian aggressor. But different decisions at key points by the U.S. might have made him less so.

A decade or two ago, opposing NATO expansion to Ukraine was a position espoused by pillars of the American establishment. What happened?

Before Trump, one lobbyist’s pursuit of foreign cash and shady deals laid the groundwork for Washington’s corruption.

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

In the 1930s, Americans fell in love with Czechoslovakia and Spain; today, it’s Ukraine. What happens when one finds a “second mother country”?

The Folkies and WWII, Part Two.

As the war in Ukraine worsens, there’s little debate about Western policy choices. This is a mistake.

In 1932, Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer for stories defending Soviet policies that led to the deaths of millions of Ukrainians.