History As It Happens (Martin Di Caro)

The United States' most-wanted jihadist in Afghanistan is trying to portray himself as a pragmatic diplomat. Washington doesn't seem to be interested. Sirajuddin Haqqani has the blood of many U.S. soldiers and Afghan civilians on his hands. While the U.S. views him as an enemy, the CIA once handsomely supported his father Jalaluddin Haqqani in the war against the Soviets in the 1980s. The elder Haqqani was close to bin Laden in the years before the Haqqani network would violently resist U.S. invaders -- after the al-Qaeda strikes on 9/11/2001. Ah, Afghanistan, where the past is not even past. In this episode, Adam Weinstein of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft untangles the complexities of a land where the U.S. has been involved for most of the past forty years.

Further reading:

Is Afghanistan's Most-Wanted Militant Now Its Best Hope For Change? by Christina Goldbaum (New York Times)

Ghost Wars by Steve Coll

Taliban by Ahmed Rashid

With President Joe Biden out of the race, prominent Democrats and donors are coalescing around Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor, making it unlikely there will be a truly open nominating convention in Chicago next month. For most of American history, open conventions were the norm. Some ended in chaos, with the party and its chosen nominee weakened heading into the general election. In this episode, Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin delves into the fascinating, rough-and-tumble history of political conventions in presidential election years, and he explains why the major parties did away with them in the early 1970s.

Recommended reading:

What It Took To Win: A History of the Democratic Party by Michael Kazin

This is the first of two episodes looking back on the major events and ideas of 2023.

What events this year compelled you to reassess the past? What historic moments will you speaking about for years to come? In this penultimate episode of 2023, historians Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel talk about the enduring appeal of Trumpism, the health of democracy in the U.S. and abroad, the historical antecedents of the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and much more. 

When it was ratified more than 30 years ago, the North American Free Trade Agreement was hailed as a decision "that will permit us to create an economic order in the world that will promote more growth, more equality, better preservation of the environment, and a greater possibility of world peace," according to President Bill Clinton. Today, NAFTA is toxic, and populist anger at the multilateral free trade regime of the post-Cold War era is redefining global politics. In this episode, Dan Kaufman, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, tells us how NAFTA destroyed the working class in his home state of Wisconsin, specifically in Milwaukee, once the "machine shop of the world."

Further reading:

How NAFTA Broke American Politics by Dan Kaufman

Further listening:

The Economy, Stupid with historian Nelson Lichtenstein

This is the fifth episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The most recent episode, The Election of 1932, was published on June 17.

George W. Bush's historically narrow victory over Al Gore is remembered for how it was decided: the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to end a Florida court-ordered recount of disputed ballots, handing the state's 25 Electoral College votes to the Texas Republican. The campaign itself was relatively tame as the candidates sparred over how best to spend a federal budget surplus. Vice President Gore struggled to escape the shadow of his boss Bill Clinton, as voters did not credit Gore with the economic boom that took place during Clinton's two terms. Bush had a shaky grasp of policy and world events, but he struck voters as genuine. In this episode, historians Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel delve into the election of 2000. If the winner only knew what awaited him on Sept. 11, 2001... 

After the disastrous failures of the U.S. projects in Iraq and Afghanistan, many Americans have soured on nation-building, especially if it involves the deployment of U.S. troops in a hostile country for years on end. Americans also remember the fiasco in Somalia in 1993 or the hazy national interest when it came to intervening in the Balkans. In this episode, Keith Mines, a former U.S. Army officer and State Department diplomat, contends nation-building is more successful than its detractors are willing to concede. Mines, now an expert on post-conflict stabilization at the U.S. Institute of Peace, has worked in Latin America, Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and elsewhere.

Further reading:

Why Nation Building Matters: Political Consolidation, Building Security Forces, and Economic Development in Failed and Fragile States by Keith Mines

Most everywhere one looks in the Middle East today there is conflict: Israel-Gaza, Yemen and the Red Sea, Iraq, Iran and its proxies. The catalyst for this mayhem is the failure to reach a ceasefire in Israel's war against Hamas that would allow for the release of all remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas militants. Some analysts see the dangerous potential for a wider war -- or even a global war between the U.S. and its allies on one side versus Russia, China, Iran and other despotic regimes on the other. In this episode, Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft breaks down the causes of today's dangerous crises. 

The American diplomat George Kennan was the architect of the Cold War "containment" policy toward the Soviet Union. Writing in the late 1940s, Kennan viewed the USSR as a hostile expansionist enemy, but one that would be willing to compromise if checked by the United States. Containment did not mean the U.S. could or should militarily crush the Soviets. Can Kennan's ideas be applied to Vladimir Putin's Russia? In this episode, historians Michael Kimmage and Frank Costigliola discuss the enduring influence of Kennan's ideas on American policy-makers.

This episode was first published on August 17, 2023.

Original show notes:

When Robert Oppenheimer accepted the job to lead the top-secret Manhattan Project, he and his fellow physicists expected any bomb would be used against Nazi Germany. But by the time the A-bomb was ready in late July 1945, Hitler was dead and Germany had surrendered. Some scientists questioned whether it was necessary to use "the gadget" against Japan, whose weakened military and industrial capacities could no longer project power across the Pacific. Christopher Nolan's cinematic masterpiece has revived interest in this contentious debate: could the Second World War had been won without destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki? In this episode, eminent historian David M. Kennedy discusses the difficult circumstances of August 1945. For Americans who look back on it as "the good war," the destruction of Japan may raise uncomfortable moral and ethical questions.

Note: Audio excerpts of the "Oppenheimer" film are courtesy Universal Pictures. The source for Harry Truman's speeches is the Miller Center at the University of Virginia.

When Russian shells began raining on Ukrainian cities and Russian tanks smashed across the border toward Kyiv on Feb. 24, 2022, much of the world wrote off Ukraine. But Vladimir Putin's war of aggression did not go as planned. Ukrainian forces not only stopped the Russian drive on the capital, they drove the Russians back. This is the story told by the Wall Street Journal's Yaroslav Trofimov in "Our Enemies Will Vanish," an eyewitness account of the war's first year. In this episode, Trofimov, who has spent two decades covering conflicts from the front lines, discusses what's at stake for Ukraine as the war turns into a First World War-style slog, and as U.S. aid for Ukraine is entangled in election-year politics. ((Note: This conversation was recorded before the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka fell to Russian forces))

Distinguished historians of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras have submitted briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court explaining the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. It is unambiguous and self-executing: Anyone who violates his or her oath by engaging in insurrection is barred from holding public office again. It is not necessary to be formally charged with insurrection to be disqualified. On Feb. 8, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a Colorado case that resulted in Donald Trump's disqualification from that state's ballot. Challenges to Trump’s eligibility are currently pending in 11 other states. In this episode, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz contends that Trump should be disqualified based on an originalist rendering of Section 3. Wilentz rejects the notion that disqualifying Trump will damage democracy when the GOP frontrunner has made clear that he intends to eviscerate the country's democratic institutions upon returning to the White House.

Annelle Sheline resigned her position at the U.S. Department of State in protest of President Biden's unconditional support of Israel as it waged a war of immense destruction in Gaza. An expert on the Middle East at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Sheline says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is attempting to pull the United States into a regional war after Israel assassinated Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in Tehran and Beirut. The attacks virtually guaranteed Iranian retaliation at some point, and the Biden administration has vowed to protect Israel from attacks. For all the wars and terrorism in the Middle East since 1948,  the region has yet to witness a full-scale, regional conflict directly involving outside powers.

In an essay for Foreign Affairs, the Israeli historian Tom Segev argues that a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is impossible. As early as 1919, the future prime minister David Ben-Gurion observed that both nations' competing claims to the land created an unbridgeable abyss. In this episode, Segev traces the origins of today's war to the era of the British mandate. By facilitating the creation of a Jewish homeland in what was then an Arab-majority country, the British laid the groundwork for decades of bloodshed and grievances. (Foreign Affairs is the official publication of the Council on Foreign Relations).

By focusing our attention on only what's happening at the U.S.-Mexico border, we cannot hope to understand the causes of migration or its full consequences. U.S. authorities are encountering record-shattering numbers of migrants crossing into the United States because their home countries continue to lack political and economic stability. The origins of the crisis can be found in decades of political persecution, violence, crime, the rise of gangs, and climate-related crop catastrophes and natural disasters. Meanwhile, the U.S. political system failed to pass comprehensive reform, instead pouring billions into deportation and detention. In this episode, Catholic University historian Julia Young discusses the roots of migration to America.

In the United States and in capitals across the world, liberal democracy is under pressure. We are told that fascism is on the rise. Commentators rummage through the past on the hunt for analogies to explain our current predicament. How does democracy die? What does creeping fascism really look like? Maybe there are solid analogies to examine, if only to confirm that rising fascism is not a real problem today -- or is it? In this episode, political scientist Andreas Umland discusses the crushing of democratic experiments in Weimar Germany and post-Soviet Russia, and the triumph of fascism in the former. 

Zionism was a national liberation movement developed by European Jews in the late nineteenth century. Their early vision of a national homeland was fulfilled about half a century later with the creation of the independent state of Israel, which turned a majority Arab land into a Jewish state. Today, pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses routinely denounce Zionism as a violent colonial project. In this episode, political scientist Ian Lustick recovers Zionism's historical origins and discusses its future, as roughly 7 million Jewish Israelis face as many Arab residents on territory controlled by Israel.

The uproar over free expression and antisemitism on college campuses evokes a controversy from the late 1970s that left a lasting mark on First Amendment case law and provided an enduring lesson on the importance of free speech in a democratic society. In 1977, American Nazis led by Frank Collin sought permission to hold a rally in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, the home of thousands of Holocaust survivors. Outraged by the group's racist rhetoric and pamphleteering, the town won a preliminary injunction in court barring the Nazis from assembling. Realizing correctly that the First Amendment protects unpopular and hateful speech, the ACLU came to the Nazis' defense in a case that made national news and defined a generation of civil libertarians. In this episode, Nico Perrino of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) reflects on why Skokie matters at a time of increasing hostility to free expression across the American political spectrum. Perrino co-directed the documentary Mighty Ira, about Ira Glasser who led the ACLU for 23 years after the intense backlash against its legal defense of the Nazis' right to express themselves. 

With democracy in global decline amid the rise of autocrats and ongoing armed conflict, many politicians and pundits invoke the emergency of fascism a century ago in an attempt to make sense of our current dilemmas. Such comparisons are fraught with problems, not least the unique nature of Nazism’s ambitions for global conquest and genocide. In this episode, historian Richard J. Evans discusses the new urgency surrounding what “made and sustained” the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship as they relate to today’s threats to democratic institutions. Mr. Evans is the author of “Hitler’s People,” which aims to explain what motivated the Nazi leaders and bureaucrats to carry out their crimes. The book was reviewed in The Washington Times on Aug. 1. 

This is the second of two episodes dealing with the consequences of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and ensuing year of war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his country will prevail over its enemies and change the Middle East for the better. This is not the first time Netanyahu (or other national leaders) have claimed war will produce positive results. PLO violence against Israel failed to liberate Palestinians. Israel's victory in 1967, for instance, produced a new set of intractable problems when Tel Aviv decided to occupy the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And the United States' recent record in the region is one of disastrous failure. In this episode, Brian Katulis of the Middle East Institute discusses the Biden administration's diplomatic and security-related missteps after a year of ferocious and expanding war.

Recommended reading:

America's Strategic Drift in the Middle East by Brian Katulis

Treading Cautiously on Shifting Sands: An Assessment of Biden's Middle East Policy Approach, 2021-2023 by Brian Katulis

This conversation was first published in a Washington Times video on Dec. 20 available at washingtontimes.com.

Catholic University historian Michael Kimmage, an expert on post-Cold War Europe and U.S.-Russia relations, discusses the state of the Russia-Ukraine war. As winter sets in, Kyiv finds itself in an impossible situation. Its armed forces are entirely reliant on other countries for ammunition and hardware, but Republicans in Congress are not keen on an open-ended commitment in the tens of billions. Kyiv cannot expel Russian forces from its territory. On the other side, Putin does not believe he is losing even though Russia has failed to score a battlefield victory of strategic significance since the summer of 2022.

The Islamic State-Khorasan is forging a reputation for ferocious terrorist violence. Its gunmen massacred 137 people at a Moscow concert hall in March. In January, the group's jihadists slaughtered dozens at a memorial service in Iran. In August 2021, ISIS-K was behind the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. soldiers and 170 Afghan civilians. Who are these guys? Who is their leader? And what does ISIS-K aim to accomplish by committing spectacular acts of terrorism far from its home base in Afghanistan. In this episode, New America vice president and CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen discuss the group's origins, motives, ideas, and goals. 

This episode was first published on Feb. 22, 2024 as part of a series marking the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Original show notes:

In every war, there is a battle over its origins. In this episode, historians Michael Kimmage and Mark Galeotti discuss Kimmage's new book, "Collisions," which seeks to explain why the excessive optimism of the early 1990s about Russia's path toward democracy and market economics never materialized. Moreover, Kimmage's narrative explains what led to each major collision between Russia and Ukraine; Russia and Europe; and Russia and the larger "rules-based order" led by the United States. Russia under Putin -- and for a brief period, Dmitry Medvedev -- and the United States under five presidential administrations could not overcome a fundamental dissonance in how each viewed the other's role in the world. Institutions such as NATO and the E.U., seen in the West as bulwarks of democracy, human rights, and economic prosperity, were viewed with hostility by Putin, who believed an independent Ukraine had no right to join them. ((Note: This conversation was recorded before the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka fell to Russian forces))

The last time an incumbent president withdrew from a reelection campaign was 1968. On March 31, under immense stress from the failure of his Vietnam War policy, President Lyndon Johnson told a national TV audience that he would neither seek nor accept the nomination of the Democratic Party for another four years in the White House. Vice President Hubert Humphrey would win the nomination, as all hell broke loose on the Chicago streets outside the convention, during one of the most turbulent years in U.S. political history. By late October, as Humphrey gained ground in the polls against Republican Richard Nixon, LBJ learned that a woman by the name of Anna Chennault was interfering in his 11th hour bid to initiate peace talks with the North Vietnamese government in Paris. The person who orchestrated this dirty trick was Nixon himself. In this episode, University of Virginia historian and researcher Ken Hughes tells the story of the Chennault Affair.

Recommended reading:

"Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate" by Ken Hughes

By granting former President Donald Trump absolute immunity from criminal prosecution "for official acts" as Trump fights charges stemming from his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election results, the Supreme Court "descended to a level of shame reserved until now for the Roger B. Taney Court that decided the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857," says Princeton historian Sean Wilentz in an essay for The New York Review. In this episode, Wilentz discusses the problems with the Court's 6-3 ruling that declared a president above the law -- a first in U.S. history.

As another presidential election looms, so does the possibility that the ultimate winner will lose the popular vote. The race is decided by the Electoral College, which critics say is anti-democratic body that distorts outcomes. Since 1988, Republican candidates have won the popular vote once (2004), but twice won the White House thanks to an Electoral College majority -- in 2000 and 2016. In this episode, historian Sean Wilentz delves into the origins of the Electoral College at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, debunking the argument that the Electoral College was a concession to slaveholders. Also, Wilentz discusses his new essay in the journal Liberties where he contends a Trump victory in November will imperil American democracy in ways the news media fail to take seriously.

Further reading:
The Clear and Present Danger by Sean Wilentz in Liberties

Collective memory -- what our society chooses to remember, honor, or erase from our past -- is perpetually mediated. For generations Confederate statues and monuments stood in public squares until a new racial reckoning compelled cities and towns to remove them. But that wasn't the end of the story -- at least not in Shenandoah County, Virginia. Its school board voted to restore the names of Confederate Generals Lee, Jackson, and Ashby to a pair of schools which had been renamed (Honey Run and Mountain View) in 2020. In Tennessee, the caretakers of the Franklin Battlefield just dedicated a new monument honoring the Texas soldiers who fought there for the Confederacy in 1864. In this episode, historian and Substack writer Kevin Levin discusses the grip Lost Cause mythology continues to hold on the minds of some Americans today, and the difficult task of acknowledging important historical events and actors without glorifying their causes.

In a major campaign speech to start 2024, President Joseph Biden likened the remarks of his likely November opponent to the rhetoric of Adolph Hitler. "He talks about the blood of America is being poisoned, echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany," said Mr. Biden from Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. In fact, Donald Trump has warned his supporters at rallies that immigrants poison the country's blood, and he also recently referred to his political opponents as "vermin." But does likening Trump to the Nazi dictator clarify or confuse? Can Americans understand the challenges to their democratic system by studying 1930s Europe and the rise of fascism? In this episode, esteemed Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov of Brown University dives into the debate over whether Donald Trump poses a unique threat to American democracy, and whether comparisons to Hitler work.

This is the second of two episodes looking back on the major events of 2023.

Our year in review continues with historians Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel. As professional scholars, they share their perspectives on the controversy involving free speech and antisemitism on college campuses. They also look ahead to the presidential election of 2024 for which there appear no obvious parallels in U.S. history. The two historians and host Martin Di Caro conclude by sharing their favorite moments of 2023 as well as their thoughts on the importance of historical thinking.

This episode was first published on March 4, 2024.

Original show notes:

The embattled incumbent expressed anguish over soulless materialism. The optimistic challenger promised Americans they could overcome any and all problems. The election of 1980 pitted Democrat Jimmy Carter against Republican Ronald Reagan as Americans struggled with stagflation at home and crises abroad. Reagan's victory marked a sea change in U.S. politics, tilting the political landscape to the right. Reagan crusaded against big government and Soviet Communism. If the incumbent looked impotent in the face of these vexing problems, Reagan projected strength -- a timeless lesson of campaigning. In this episode, historians Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel discuss why this election still matters.

This episode was first published on June 25, 2024.

Original show notes:

Why are Palestinians stateless more than 75 years after the founding of a Jewish state in the same land? Why have international law and the rules-based order established after 1945 failed the Palestinian people? Why hasn’t the U.N. with its security council designed to prevent conflict, stopped the Israel-Palestinian conflict? In Nov. 1947 the United Nations General Assembly voted 33 to 13 with 10 abstentions to partition Palestine in one of the most consequential votes the body has ever taken. One side achieved statehood; the other rejected the vote. From this point forward international law hasn't helped Palestinians meet their national aspirations. In this episode, Victor Kattan of the University of Nottingham explains why.

Ronald Reagan was the most consequential U.S. president of the second half of the twentieth century. Conservatives once lionized him before the rise of Donald Trump. Yet how Reagan is remembered does not entirely square with his actual record. Although an anti-government, anti-Communist ideologue, Reagan governed like a pragmatist. Moreover, the fortieth president was a terrible manager with a flimsy grasp of policy. His administration was rife with scandal. When he left office, the federal deficit had nearly tripled. Despite it all, Reagan was an effective national leader who inspired Americans to feel proud of their country again. In this episode, historian and biographer Max Boot delves into the life and times of "The Great Communicator" whose Hollywood and television careers prepared him for political success.

Further reading/listening:

Reagan: His Life and Legend by Max Boot

When Reagan Pressured Israel (podcast) with Salim Yaqub 

Election of 1980 (podcast) with Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel

Star Wars (podcast) with Joe Cirincione

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and running mate J.D. Vance say they will lead America into the future with an economic platform that resembles something from the past. High tariffs were once the mainstay of U.S. economic policy, accounting for the large part of government revenues in the era before the personal income tax. The tariffs, trade barriers, expulsion of migrants, and domestic manufacturing espoused by the Republican ticket might be called an economic nationalism of the populist right. In this episode, historian Phil Magness delves into the fascinating history of American tariffs from the founding through the end of the Second World War.

Recommended reading:

The Problem of the Tariff in American Economic History by Phil Magness 

This is the fourth episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The most recent episode, The Elections of 1860 and 1864, was published on May 7.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the oath of office in March 1933, the American people faced a paralyzing national emergency of historic proportions. The unemployment rate was 25 percent and much of the nation's wealth had evaporated with astonishing speed. It was a moment of high drama, unlike the election that put Roosevelt in the White House. When voters went to the polls in Nov. 1932, there was little doubt FDR would defeat the hapless Herbert Hoover by a wide margin. Unclear was whether Roosevelt's promised New Deal would pull the country out of the Great Depression. In this episode, historian David M. Kennedy explains how Roosevelt's economic vision made him a transformational figure.

Recommended reading:

Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945.

In Yemen a rebel movement of Shia Islamists has been firing missiles at commercial shipping in the Red Sea, provoking several rounds of U.S. airstrikes in retaliation. Few Americans know much about the Houthis, who go by the formal name of Ansar Allah or "Defenders of God." The Houthis seized control of Sana'a in 2014, leading to years of catastrophic war once Saudia Arabia intervened to try to restore the ousted government. Today, this relatively small militia is disrupting global shipping, as cargo ships have been forced to avoid the strait at the mouth of the Red Sea on the way to the Suez Canal. In this episode, Eurasia Group analyst Gregory Brew discusses the Houthis' motives and the impact of their missile attacks on the geopolitics of the region.

Is there a Biden Doctrine? What did it achieve? Where did it fail? The president sought to reset U.S. foreign policy after the unilateralism of the Trump years. Biden spoke of a global battle pitting democracies versus autocracies, and he reinforced U.S. alliances in Europe and Asia. Presidents from Truman to Reagan to George W. Bush saw their names attached to actionable ideas, i.e. containment of Communism, but whatever the name of the strategy U.S. foreign policy since 1945 has been designed to maintain primacy. In this episode, historian Jeffrey Engel delves into decades of doctrines and Biden's successes and failures.

Additional reading:

What Was the Biden Doctrine? by Jessica T. Mathews in Foreign Affairs

Hey, 2024 is an election year! This is the first episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history.

The moralistic incumbent expressed anguish over soulless materialism. The optimistic challenger promised Americans they could overcome any and all problems. The election of 1980 pitted Democrat Jimmy Carter against Republican Ronald Reagan as Americans struggled with stagflation at home and crises abroad. Reagan's victory marked a sea change in U.S. politics, tilting the political landscape to the right. Reagan crusaded against big government and Soviet Communism. If the incumbent looked impotent in the face of these vexing problems, Reagan projected strength -- a timeless lesson of campaigning. In this episode, historians Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel discuss why this election still matters.

Far-right political movements achieved power in Europe a century ago, wrecking parliamentary democracies and instigating wars of conquest and genocide. Today’s far-right populists are not the same as yesteryear’s fascists, but their growing popularity on a prosperous, mostly peaceful continent has caught many observers by surprise. In the elections for the European Parliament in early June, there was a clear shift to the right. Yet it would be wrong to conclude that Europe, with its stated commitment to human rights and market economics, is hurtling toward a far-right revolution. The results in France's snap elections dealt Marine Le Pen's National Rally a stunning setback, for instance. In this episode, political scientist Veronica Anghel of the European University Institute explains what's driving Europe's turbulent politics. 

The selections of Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz as vice presidential running mates received non-stop media attention this summer, but will either choice really matter come November? Does anyone vote for vice president? John Adams once called the vice presidency "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." Yet many vice presidents have played consequential roles in U.S. history because eight presidents have died in office, suddenly vaulting the No. 2 office holders into the Oval Office. In this episode, historians Jeffrey Engel and Jeremi Suri delve into the relevance (or irrelevance) of the veeps.

In our world of conflicts, a civil war in Africa is going mostly unnoticed in the United States, at least compared to the attention given to the wars in Ukraine and Israel. For the third time in its post-independence history (from 1956), Sudan is embroiled in a horrendous civil war full of massacres, the displacement of millions, and the potential for mass famine. In this episode, Alex de Waal, one of the world's foremost experts on Sudan, delves into the war's origins and the horrible reasons why the world seems helpless to stop it. 

As military aid remains stalled in Congress, Ukraine is facing shortages of weapons and ammo as its military forces fight a war of attrition against the Russian invaders. Moscow now has more than 400,000 troops in Ukraine which also faces a manpower shortage. In this episode, Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft argues time is not on Ukraine's side, so Kyiv and its Western backers, namely the U.S., should seek a diplomatic resolution to the war. Are negotiations with Putin possible? Can Ukraine be secure while ceding territory to an aggressor?

This is the second of two podcast episodes this week dealing with the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald J. Trump and the causes and effects of political violence in America.

Political violence comes in different forms. A political movement might have a paramilitary force that engages in extrajudicial mayhem. A lone assassin may or may not be motivated by political ideas. Mobs break out in sheer anger and frustration at injustice, real or perceived. In this episode, Oxford Brookes historian Roger Griffin, an expert on socio-political movements, fascism, and terrorism, delves into the causes of political violence that are often difficult to clearly discern or contain.

Russian exiles in the West may not be able to change, let alone save, their home country, which is locked in the grip of the Putin autocracy, at war in Ukraine, and in a long conflict with the United States. Yet the exiles are important beyond the realm of politics because their minds and talents enrich Western societies. In this episode, historian Michael Kimmage and Russian journalist and political scientist Maria Lipman, an exile herself, contend "the opposition has no chance of acquiring power in Russia in the foreseeable future." At the same time, Western political leaders and societies must avoid projecting their own beliefs onto the exiles, who find themselves in a very difficult position criticizing their home government from afar.

Further reading:

Exiles Cannot Save Russia by Michael Kimmage and Maria Lipman in Foreign Affairs (official publication of the Council on Foreign Relations)

President Joseph Biden's decision to pause bomb shipments to Israel over its planned invasion of Rafah provoked a curious charge from Republican legislators. They accused Biden of "abandoning" Israel despite his steadfast support of the Jewish state not only for much of the past seven months (since the 10/7 Hamas attack) but also for most of his decades-long career in Washington. The truth is that every U.S. administration since 1948 has supported Israel, but rarely has the support come without any conditions or criticisms. In this episode, historian Jeremi Suri discusses the deep historical roots of the "special relationship" between the two countries. In the context of the past 75 years, President Biden's move to withhold certain weapons because they may be used to kill Palestinian civilians is the kind of politics that has often tested, but not severed, the bilateral bond.

After the election, there was a hurricane of postmortems attempting to explain why Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump. Eschewing small-bore analysis, historian Daniel Bessner posted on X, "I feel like people are missing the fundamental lesson of the election: it is not the Democratic Party that is in crisis; liberalism itself is in crisis." Liberalism—the dominant political philosophy of the American Century—appears to be a spent force amid a wave of illiberal populism and anti-establishment politics. In this episode, Bessner, who co-hosts American Prestige podcast, delves into the origins of liberalism's rise and apparent decline in this post-post-Cold War period.

Further reading:

Empire Burlesque: What Comes After the American Century? by Daniel Bessner (Harper's)

This is the follow-up episode to the one published on Feb. 6 previewing the oral arguments in the Colorado ballot case, Trump v. Anderson.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state may not disqualify a candidate for federal office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, whose Reconstruction-era framers sought to bar anyone from holding office who had violated their oath by engaging in insurrection. In doing so, the Supreme Court restored Donald J. Trump to the Colorado ballot. But the conservative majority also invented a rule that only Congress has the power to disqualify by passing legislation, something that has no constitutional basis. In this episode, University of Maryland constitutional scholar Mark Graber explains where the Supreme Court mangled U.S. history. Graber also provides a definition of insurrection based on his exhaustive research of centuries of relevant cases.

The U.S. invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein more than 21 years ago, yet the U.S. is still at war there. Why? Against whom? Will American forces ever leave the country U.S. leaders claimed was liberated way back in mid-2003? In this episode, Chatham House analyst Renad Mansour talks about the armed groups that have attacked U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, triggering tit-for-tat retaliatory airstrikes that damaged the militias' military infrastructure but failed to advance the political and governmental reforms necessary to turn Iraq into a stable nation-state. A generation after invading and causing a catastrophe, the U.S. cannot extricate itself from Iraq. Also, read Renad Mansour's essay about the Iraqi armed groups in Foreign Affairs, the official publication of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Why are Palestinians stateless more than 75 years after the founding of a Jewish state in the same land? Why have international law and the rules-based order established after 1945 failed the Palestinian people? Why hasn’t the U.N. with its security council designed to prevent conflict, stopped the Israel-Palestinian conflict? In Nov. 1947 the United Nations General Assembly voted 33 to 13 with 10 abstentions to partition Palestine in one of the most consequential votes the body has ever taken. One side achieved statehood; the other rejected the vote. From this point forward international law hasn't helped Palestinians meet their national aspirations. In this episode, Victor Kattan of the University of Nottingham explains why.

In 1994 Rwanda was scarred by an organized campaign of mass carnage perpetrated by the Hutu majority against the Tutsi minority and moderate Hutus. It was the final genocide of the twentieth century, with the killers murdering about one million people in about 100 days. The United Nations and U.S. looked on but failed to act, a tragic misstep that has influenced decision-makers since to look differently at the task of intervening in foreign conflicts to protect the innocent. In this episode, Omar McDoom of the London School of Economics and Political Science, a scholar of genocide and expert on central Africa, reflects on the enduring lessons of Rwanda's darkest hour.

It's Election Day in America and the survival of liberal democracy is said to be on the ballot. What does this mean? Has the United States ever been a democracy where all enjoy political freedom and economic rights? In this episode, historians Sean Wilentz and James Oakes delve into the history of political conflict in America, the progress and regress of democracy and liberty, a story of liberalism competing and coexisting with illiberalism. 

Recommended reading:

The Rise of American Democracy by Sean Wilentz

Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865 by James Oakes

This is the third episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The most recent episode, The Election of 1992, was published on April 4.

Audio excerpts of "Civil War" are courtesy A24 Films.

Democracy and the Constitution are on the ballot. The fate of the republican is at stake. The potential for violence festers as Americans view their political foes as existential enemies. This was the United States in 1860. Abraham Lincoln's victory as the first antislavery president was met with Southern secession and war. In 1864, Lincoln expected to lose before major Union victories propelled him to a landslide victory, thereby keeping alive the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery forever. In this episode, two of the premier historians of nineteenth century American politics, Sean Wilentz and James Oakes, delve into the enduring consequences of these two "revolutionary" elections.

This is the second conversation in a two-part series recorded inside the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon.

John Adams' one-term presidency was sandwiched between towering figures of the American past. He succeeded the living legend George Washington and was succeeded by Thomas Jefferson, and Adams' time in office was marked by incessant crisis and ferocious partisanship. Historian Lindsay Chervinsky, the new executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library, wants us to look at Adams with a fresh pair of eyes. In her view, President Adams cemented important and lasting precedents for his office at a time when many wondered if the presidency could survive without Washington's calming influence. With the potential for violence looming as the election of 1800 was decided for Jefferson, Adams quietly exited the stage, establishing the republican tradition of the peaceful transfer of power, which lasted until Jan. 6, 2021.

Recommended reading: 'Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic' by Lindsay Chervinsky

Alexei Navalny was Russia’s most prominent and effective opposition leader, an anti-corruption crusader and democratic politician who entered public life as a provocative blogger around the same time his future persecutor, Vladimir Putin, became Russia's president. Navalny died inside an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16. He was 47. He leaves a legacy, setting an example of how to challenge the regime even while under constant state persecution. In this episode, Miriam Lanskoy of the National Endowment for Democracy explains who Navalny was, why his opposition movement was so effective, and what his death says about late Putinism. 

American public opinion is increasingly intolerant of migrants, given the record numbers who have illegally crossed the southern border over the past several years. The U.S. immigration system is broken, as harsher enforcement in the name of deterrence has not magically fixed the root causes of human migration from Central and South America. Under election year pressure, President Joseph Biden signed an executive order to bar most asylum seekers, but comprehensive immigration reform remains out of reach. The asylum system, codified in 1980, was never designed to handle so many people. In this episode, New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer, the author of "Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here," explains the ins and outs of asylum and the human costs of failing to reform a broken system.

President Joseph R. Biden will begin 2024 managing the same commitments and crises that defined his foreign policy in 2023. In both Ukraine and Israel, as well as in the Indo-Pacific, Mr. Biden tied U.S. power and influence to his global crusade against rising autocracy. But as he runs for re-election, the president must balance his time and energy between, on the one hand, managing the U.S. role in foreign wars of questionable popularity and, on the other, tending to pressing domestic issues such as high prices and border chaos. In this episode, The Washington Times' national security team leader Guy Taylor and military and foreign affairs correspondent Ben Wolfgang look ahead to the fourth year of Mr. Biden's foreign policy agenda.

Is fascism what's ailing the American body politic today? Are Donald Trump and the Republican Party fascists or has fascism been around much longer, going back to the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow? In this episode, historian Daniel Bessner, the co-host of American Prestige, discusses what has been a preoccupation among public intellectuals and commentators since Trump entered presidential politics in 2015. Bessner co-authored an essay published in a new anthology edited by the historian Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, "Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America."

Audio excerpts from "The Zone of Interest" are courtesy A24 Films.

Oscar-nominated "The Zone of Interest" dramatizes the domestic life of the fanatical Nazi Rudolph Hoess, his wife Hedwig, and five kids. They're living in their dream home -- directly adjacent to the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp where Commandant Hoess implemented Hitler's Final Solution, the genocide of Europe's Jews. In this episode, historian Christian Goeschel, an expert on Nazi Germany and modern European history, discusses the film's strengths and weaknesses as well as the decades-old debates over how to study and depict the Holocaust.

Today marks the 80th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy, a massive military campaign to begin liberating Western Europe from Nazi occupation on the way to victory in the Second World War. American memories are filled with heroism and sacrifice, as D-Day remains a touchstone in the U.S. self-image as a global superpower and defender of freedom and democracy. For the people of France, memories are more complicated, even painful, because the liberation came at a cost of thousands of French civilians. Moreover, the French defeat of 1940 continued to loom large in collective memory as a source of shame. In this episode, the Smithsonian's Kate Clarke Lemay discusses her work studying the war cemeteries in France, which stand as monuments to U.S. military and cultural primacy. Lemay is the author of "Triumph of the Dead: American World War II Cemeteries, Monuments, and Diplomacy in France." 

Both Donald Trump and Joseph Biden claimed they were indispensable to their party's electoral prospects, which both men attached to the very fate of our republic. "I alone can fix it," Trump once thundered. Up until Biden finally bowed out of the race on July 21, he insisted he was the best candidate to defeat Trump, despite his poor approval ratings and age-related mental disintegration. It may be cliché to consult the wisdom of the founding generation, but pieces of their wisdom can still help us come to terms with the bewildering events of our own time. For starters, George Washington set an example that seems to have been lost on both Trump and Biden. Giving up power -- knowing when to walk away -- is a sign of virtue. In this episode, eminent historian Joseph Ellis discusses Washington's warning about the threats to stable republican government.

Recommended reading:

His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph Ellis 

This is the first conversation of a two-part series recorded at the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans visit Mount Vernon annually. Relatively few people see the inside of the George Washington Library. Its new executive director is historian Lindsay Chervinsky, and she wants to make the library a meeting place for elevated, historically-informed conversations on current events, while continuing to achieve its core mission of providing space and resources for professional scholars and researchers. Chervinsky's new surroundings are inspiring, as she reveals in this episode of History As It Happens. 

This is the first of two podcast episodes this week dealing with the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald J. Trump and the causes and effects of political violence in America.

Historian Jeremi Suri says violence has been a part of our national story from the beginning. In a Time op-ed, Suri argues, "We have inherited a very violent culture in the United States. Moving forward, we have a choice. We can continue to encourage violence, or, we can step back and actively discourage personal attacks, bullying, and intimidation, knowing all too well where they can lead."

In this episode, Suri, who co-authors Democracy of Hope on Substack, explores the reasons behind the many assassinations in U.S. history and their effect on the rest of society. 

**New episode! History As It Happens has returned!**

This is the eighth and final episode in a monthly series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The most recent episode, Election of 2008, was published on Sept 17.

As the Obama presidency ended, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the obvious frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. As for the Republicans, 17 candidates vied for the top spot. As the election year unfolded, few "informed observers" believed the New York real estate developer-turned-reality TV star Donald Trump had a chance. They were all wrong. Not only did Trump, a man with no government or political experience, take over a major party, but he defeated Clinton in the general election, the most stunning upset in American history. What explains the rise of Trump? Historians Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel delve into the defining question of the 21st century in the United States. 

In early 1964, Stanley Kubrick's black comedy Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb premiered in theaters. Sixty years later, it remains one of Kubrick's greatest films, a commentary on the madness of the idea that anyone could win a nuclear exchange. If you watch the film today unaware of the cultural and political milieu in which it was made, you might not get the jokes. In this episode, Joe Cirincione, an expert on nuclear arms control and the history of the arms race, discusses the very real scenarios the movie brilliantly satirized. 

Before Gaza became synonymous with poverty and human misery, the area was a thriving commercial hub and a crossroads for the armies of empires. Before it became the much smaller Gaza Strip and a seedbed of Palestinian nationalism, it was home to 80,000 Arabs and of little interest to Zionists. But since the middle of the 20th century, Gaza's Arab inhabitants -- the great majority refugees from the violence that brought the independent state of Israel into being -- have been cut off from the greater region. In this episode, eminent historian Jean-Pierre Filiu explores the origins of today's war and its continuities with the past. By his count, there have been 15 wars between Israel and the Arabs of Gaza since 1948. Over the past 75 years, each time Israeli leaders have sought a solution to the problem of Gaza they failed to fulfill Palestinian national aspirations. The result was a cycle of violence spanning generations. Read Jean-Pierre Filiu's essay about Gaza in Foreign Affairs here.

A crushing economic crisis, caused by the subprime mortgage meltdown, and two failing wars were the backdrop for the election of 2008. At the onset of the year, a first-term Democratic senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, was a long shot taking on Hillary Clinton, the New York senator and former first lady with universal name recognition. On the Republican side, Arizona Senator John McCain emerged from a crowded primary field to choose little known Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, whose inane manner became the butt of late-night jokes, as his running mate. The outcome made history as Obama became the first Black president. In this episode, historian Jeremi Suri takes us back into the recent past to examine an election that seems more distant than it actually is, thanks to the earthquake that followed 8 years later.

Over the centuries, Thanksgiving traditions have changed with political, cultural, and religious winds. The holiday's mythic origins were propagated in the mid-nineteenth century, and soon Americans were all celebrating Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. Parades and football games are important pieces of Americana now synonymous with Thanksgiving -- as is the start of the Christmas shopping season. In this episode, historian David Silverman delves into the history of a quintessential American holiday whose development has as much to do with magazine editor Sara Josepha Hale as the Pilgrim Edward Winslow.

After Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982, President Ronald Reagan grew infuriated by Israel's siege of Beirut because of thousands of civilian casualties. His administration cut off some arms shipments to Israel, and Reagan himself tore into Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to convince him to withdraw. Today, President Joseph Biden is being criticized for failing to effectively exert U.S. pressure on Israel to curb its campaign in Gaza to protect Palestinian civilians and avoid provoking a wider Middle Eastern war. In this episode, historian Salim Yaqub, an expert on U.S. foreign relations and the Middle East, delves into the analogy between Reagan in 1982 and Biden in 2024.

In Israel (and the Palestinian territories), support for a two-state solution has dramatically dropped since the more optimistic years of the Oslo peace process. Since the Second Intifada from 2000, the Israeli peace camp "suffered domestic delegitimization," according to Dahlia Scheindlin, a political strategist and a public opinion expert who has advised on nine national campaigns in Israel among 15 countries. In this episode, Scheindlin explains why leftist politics and political parties have lost ground in Israel, which is now governed by the most right-wing coalition in its history.

Further reading:

Israel's Annexation of the West Bank Has Already Begun by Dahlia Scheindlin and Yael Berda in Foreign Affairs

The Israeli military raids and unchecked settler violence in the West Bank are shifting, for a moment, the world's attention away from the ongoing war in Gaza -- and revealing the brutal realities of Palestinian life under military occupation. In July the U.N.'s top court issued a non-binding opinion saying Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories and expanding settlement activity violate international law. In this episode, Omar Rahman of the Middle East Council on Global Affairs delves into the history of Israel's occupation and settlement of the West Bank, which came under its control following the Six Day War in June 1967.

This is the third episode in an occasional series examining major counterfactual scenarios in history. The most recent installment (Nov. 30, 2023) examined what would have happened to slavery in America without the Civil War.

The rebellious colonists' victory in the Revolutionary War and the high ideals of the Declaration of Independence are so integral to the American origin story that it is difficult to grasp our modern society without them. Yet, the British came close to capturing General George Washington's army in 1776 in the first major battle after the delegates in Philadelphia signed the Declaration. The rebellion might have been crushed. So why didn't Great Britain win with its advantages of a professional military, powerful navy, and advanced economy? In this episode, University of Virginia historian Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy discusses the reasons why history turned out the way it did.

Recommended reading:

"The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of Empire" by Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy

This month marked 50 years since Richard Nixon resigned the presidency for the crimes of Watergate. The endless fascination with the break-in and the cover-up has obscured what may be more important in Nixon’s legacy as Americans demand a more restrained foreign policy today: his contribution to the imperial presidency and the crimes he got away with. In the summer of 1974, Congress had a chance to hold the chief executive accountable for concealing the bombing of a neutral Cambodia during the Vietnam War. But this article of impeachment was voted down. In this episode, historian Carolyn Eisenberg takes us into the Nixon White House and the jungles of Southeast Asia to show how an American president and his national security advisor prolonged the war, misled the public, and caused appalling carnage in faraway places – but got away with it, with terrible consequences for our own time.

Recommended reading: 'Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia' by Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, winner of a 2024 Bancroft Prize

This is the first of two episodes dealing with the consequences of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and ensuing year of war.

A year after Israel began its military campaign in Gaza with the aim of destroying Hamas in retaliation for the 10/7 terrorist atrocities, the radical Islamist group survives. Hamas is weakened, but it maintains a brutal grip on power in Gaza. Hamas also continues to hold Israeli hostages who were kidnapped last October. Its leader Yahya Sinwar is believed to be hiding underground, his attitude hardening toward reaching a ceasefire with his lifelong enemy. In this episode, Nathan Brown, an expert on Hamas at George Washington University, delves into the militant group's ability to survive and its political outlook after a year of war.

Further listening:

Hamas with Nathan Brown (published on Oct. 12, 2023)

The Philippines' oldest ally is the United States. Bound by a mutual defense treaty more than 70 years old, the two nations are aligning against China's aggressive behavior in the vitally important South China Sea. If the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte marked a low point in relations, new president Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is renewing the alliance with the U.S. while also courting other nations in the Indo-Pacific and Europe in an anti-China coalition. In this episode, The Washington Times Asia bureau chief Andrew Salmon and U.S. Institute of Peace senior expert Brian Harding discuss the up and down history of the alliance and the importance of keeping the South China Sea from becoming a Chinese lake.

This episode was first published on April 12, 2022.

Original show notes:

Was the Constitution pro- or anti-slavery? Maybe that is the wrong question to ask, even though it remains the question at the heart of public discourse about the founding generation. In this episode, Sean Wilentz and James Oakes -- two major scholars of eighteenth and nineteenth century America -- argue the Constitution was a contested document that marked the beginning of a political conflict over the future of slavery and, therefore, the nature of American democracy. They reject race-centered interpretations that elide early political conflicts over enslavement and the hard-fought progress won by Black Americans and their white allies. The American Revolution was an event of world-historical importance, marking a turning point in the history of human enslavement because it gave life to the world's first abolitionist movement.

Does the historical concept of oblivion offer a way out of our ruptured political life? "For centuries, legislative acts of oblivion were declared in times when betrayal, war, and tyranny had usurped and undermined the very foundations of law; when a household or nation had been torn apart, its citizens pitted against one another; when identifying, investigating, trying, and sentencing every single guilty party threatened to redouble the harm, to further fracture already divided societies," writes the scholar Linda Kinstler. In this episode, Kinstler delves into the history of oblivion as well as its limitations, as Donald Trump prepares to return to the presidency having gotten away with his attempt to subvert democracy on Jan. 6, 2021.

Further reading:

Jan. 6, America's Rupture, and the Strange, Forgotten Power of Oblivion by Linda Kinstler (New York Times)

Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends by Linda Kinstler (2022)

This episode was first published on Oct. 24, 2023.

Original show notes:

Today's war between Israel and Hamas has its origins in the unresolved problems caused by the events of 1948. The year that witnessed the creation of an independent Jewish state in the former British mandate of Palestine, is known by Palestinians as the nakba, or catastrophe. Internecine violence intensified in 1947 as the U.N. weighed partitioning Palestine into two independent states, one Jewish and one Arab. Then five neighboring Arab countries invaded the new state of Israel immediately after David Ben-Gurion declared independence on May 14, 1948. In all, approximately 750,000 Arabs fled or were driven from their homes by Jewish forces. Many fled to Gaza and were forbidden from returning to their homeland after the war, turning them into permanent refugees. In this episode, Middle East expert Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania discusses the throughline from 1948 to 2023.

Haiti is collapsing under gang-fueled lawlessness. The central government has lost control of most of the capital, Port-au-Prince. The de facto prime minister Ariel Henry has agreed to resign under pressure. Ordinary citizens are being kidnapped by gangs and held for ransom. They have been gunned down in wild shootouts, and are desperate for basic necessities. Caribbean neighbors have agreed to create a transitional council to fill the power vacuum, but it faces internal opposition from rival factions within Haiti. In this episode, Keith Mines of the U.S. Institute of Peace discusses the sources of anarchy in a country that once appeared headed for a brighter future after the Duvalier dictatorship more than 30 years ago.  

We might need a new lexicon to describe the threats to liberal democracy. At a time when some notable scholars are referencing the 1930s -- the decade of Hitler and Mussolini -- to argue that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, to name two, are fascists, historian Roger Griffin contends fascism is too malleable and unhelpful a concept. Today's autocrats and wannabe authoritarians do not fit into a single category or share the same political ideology. Rather, Griffin argues, nationalistic leaders, many of them democratically elected, are rejecting liberalism and humanism by bending their nation-states in on themselves. What should we call this? Incurvation. 

At a campaign rally in Ohio, Donald Trump said some things that, depending on your perspective, were either appalling or patriotic. He defended the Jan. 6 rioters as "hostages," called some migrants crossing the southern border "animals," and warned there would be a "bloodbath" if he isn't elected in November -- although his defenders pointed out he was referring to the U.S. auto industry which, according to Trump, needs tariff protection from Chinese imports. Whatever one thinks of Trump's latest demagoguery, it wasn't illegal. One-hundred-six years ago in Ohio, an antiwar speech delivered by Eugene V. Debs did break the law -- by violating the Espionage Act. Debs was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Yet Debs still ran for president as the Socialist Party candidate in 1920. If Trump were to find himself in a similar situation come November (if any of his pending criminal trials are held by then), he too could campaign from behind bars. But this is where the similarities between Trump and Debs end. In this episode, Michael Kazin, a distinguished historian of political and social movements at Georgetown University, discusses the other reasons Eugene V. Debs is an American worth remembering. 

In every war, there is a battle over its origins. In this episode, historians Michael Kimmage and Mark Galeotti discuss Kimmage's new book, "Collisions," which seeks to explain why the excessive optimism of the early 1990s about Russia's path toward democracy and market economics never materialized. Moreover, Kimmage's narrative explains what led to each major collision between Russia and Ukraine; Russia and Europe; and Russia and the larger "rules-based order" led by the United States. Russia under Putin -- and for a brief period, Dmitry Medvedev -- and the United States under five presidential administrations could not overcome a fundamental dissonance in how each viewed the other's role in the world. Institutions such as NATO and the E.U., seen in the West as bulwarks of democracy, human rights, and economic prosperity, were viewed with hostility by Putin, who believed an independent Ukraine had no right to join them. ((Note: This conversation was recorded before the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka fell to Russian forces))

In the face of government repression and censorship, a number of brave Chinese citizens -- some are activists, others ordinary folks -- are using basic technologies to disseminate the truth about the country's history. Since taking power in 2013, President Xi Jinping outlawed criticism of Mao and rewrote China's modern history to erase the Communist Party's sordid record from the Great Leap Forward to Tiananmen Square and beyond. In this episode, journalist Ian Johnson discusses how the "underground historians" are fighting for China's future by accurately portraying the past.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died 20 years ago. A generation later, his people appear no closer to achieving their national aspirations than they did during his lifetime. Arafat was reviled by some for PLO terrorism; others celebrated him as a freedom fighter. For years he tried violent resistance; in the 1990s he signed the Oslo Accords. Neither produced Palestinian statehood. His legacy also raises the question, still relevant today, of whether violence is legitimate or even effective at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this episode, Omar Rahman of the Middle East Council on Global Affairs discusses Arafat and the Palestinian cause some 60 years after the founding of the PLO.

In 1968 the antiwar left punished Vice President Hubert Humphrey for supporting his boss Lyndon Johnson's war in Vietnam. Many young activists either withheld their votes from or gave reluctant support to the Democrat who ultimately lost to Richard Nixon. Then Nixon prolonged the Vietnam War four more years. The distinguished Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin says young leftists today who are considering not voting for President Joe Biden because he refuses to chastise Israel for the war in Gaza, may want to absorb the lesson of '68 or risk helping Donald Trump return to the White House. Kazin, who was a self-described radical in the 1960s, explores the parallels between '68 and the 2024 election cycle with a focus on the genuine dilemma faced by the antiwar left.

How old is too old to run the country? Donald Trump will turn 78 in June. The incumbent Joseph Biden will turn 82 shortly after the November election. Biden is already the oldest president in U.S. history, succeeding Trump who had been the oldest (70) at inauguration in 2017. Rarely have age and mental fitness been such prominent issues in a presidential campaign. But past candidates for the White House successfully dealt with questions about their health and wits. Dwight Eisenhower, then in his mid-60s, suffered a major heart attack the year before he won re-election in 1956. Ronald Reagan faced questions about his age as early as the mid-1970s. Getting old can be either an asset or liability depending on the candidate, as can youth. JFK, Clinton, and Obama all parried accusations they lacked the experience to handle the job. In this episode, presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky tells us which politicians handled the age question the best -- and how they did it.

Since achieving its independence in 1948, Burma – now Myanmar – has spent decades under military rule, its people joining ethnic armies at war with the state. With the current war now in its fourth year, pro-democracy activists are being jailed, tortured and murdered. The junta toppled a democratically-elected government in 2021, yet the war doesn’t receive as much attention in the U.S. as other wars where democracy is said to be on the line. In this episode, Priscilla Clapp of the U.S. Institute of Peace discusses Burma's history of military rule and democratic activism, and whether any reasons for optimism exist as the country fragments into autonomous statelets ruled by armed groups opposed to the central government. Clapp served as chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Burma (1999-2002).

What is Hezbollah, a name that translates to Army of God? These militant Shia led by the cleric Hassan Nasrallah are expected to retaliate for Israel's assassination of one of their military commanders in Beirut. Hezbollah, considered a terrorist organization by Western governments, is the strongest military force in Lebanon and holds seats in the country's dysfunctional parliament. It has been at odds with Israel for more than 40 years. But where did they come from? In this episode, the Middle East Institute's Randa Slim, a native of Lebanon who witnessed the Israeli invasion of 1982, explores the group's origins. 

Throughout his long political career -- as a diplomat, Likud party leader, or Israeli prime minister -- Benjamin Netanyahu has obsessed over his country's security while vehemently opposing Palestinian statehood and U.S.-Iran rapprochement. He promised his people they could be safe, have settlements, and co-exist with Palestinians marooned in permanent statelessness. Now 74 years old and fighting for his political survival, Netanyahu is prosecuting a war of immense destruction after Israel's "mowing the grass" strategy in Gaza was destroyed by the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7.  In this episode, the Middle East Institute's Nimrod Goren looks back on Netanyahu's time as soldier, statesman, and political survivor.

Taiwanese voters handed the Democratic Progressive Party an unprecedented third consecutive presidential term in the face of Chinese intimidation. The party is promising to defend Taiwan's autonomy, rebuffing Beijing's claims of sovereignty. The election had global implications, too, as The Washington Times reporter Andrew Salmon and U.S. Institute of Peace senior expert Carla Freeman discuss in this episode. At a time when democracy is said to be in retreat, Taiwan's ruling party says it will stand up against the forces of authoritarianism.

The origins of the populist backlash against free trade and Wall Street hegemony may be traced to the excessively optimistic 1990s when breaking down trade barriers with Mexico and China was seen as essential to America's long-term prosperity. The decade also saw figures such as Bob Rubin and Alan Greenspan exert their influence to deregulate financial markets, putting ideological faith in banks and hedge funds to regulate themselves, and in the potential of technological innovation to solve societal problems. In this episode, labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein discusses his important new book, "A Fabulous Failure," which charts the Clinton administration's drift away from outdated policies of New Deal, Keynesian liberalism to a neoliberal order prioritizing the free flow of capital, open markets, the decline of labor power, and smaller government. Was the Clinton boom built on sand?

Former President Donald Trump claims he is absolutely immune from criminal charges as he tries to stop Special Counsel Jack Smith from prosecuting him. Trump is to stand trial for attempting to overturn the 2020 election, an effort that culminated in the Jan. 6 riot attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Supreme Court will hear arguments in Trump's immunity claim on April 25. In an amicus brief filed with the court, fifteen founding-era scholars contend there is no historical basis for Trump's claim. In this episode, historians Jack Rakove and Joseph Ellis discuss the founders' fears of unaccountable monarchs and the possible consequences for American democracy should the Supreme Court validate Trump's claim.

This is the sixth episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The most recent episode, Election of 2000, was published on July 11.

If you believe American society has never been as politically polarized as it is now, you may not be familiar with the late 1790s. Federalists and Republicans viciously attacked each other, trading accusations of frittering away the Constitution and imperiling the legacy of the American Revolution. The incumbent president John Adams was beset by a crisis with France verging on war. His vice president, Thomas Jefferson, was the leader of the political opposition. In this episode, historian Alan Taylor takes us back to a crazy time: the XYZ Affair, the Alien and Sedition Acts, and Aaron Burr! The election of 1800 had to be decided in the House of Representatives amid scheming to deny Jefferson the presidency. Jefferson's victory brought on the first peaceful transfer of power in the new republic, an important tradition that lasted until the election of 2020.

Donald Trump's election victory probably means Hitler comparisons won't go away, even if they make little sense. Still, there are lessons to learn from the collapse of the Weimar Republic in 1933, the year Adolf Hitler was levered into power by conservative elites who wrongly assumed that they could control the "Bohemian corporal." The question is which lessons are the right lessons? In this episode, historian Christian Goeschel of the University of Manchester explains how Hitler achieved power in Germany to avoid facile comparisons to the America of 2024. Our problems today bear little resemblance to the crisis of Weimar democracy.

Russia invaded Ukraine in an act of naked aggression more than 900 days ago. Both sides have lost at least tens of thousands of their soldiers, yet the 750-mile front has not moved much in the past two years. Neither side appears close to military victory, but they also appear far apart on a possible negotiated settlement. As Ukrainian forces invade the Russian territory of Kursk, and as Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy prepares to show his peace plan to the Biden administration, is a ceasefire possible? In this episode, Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft discusses what's at stake as Ukraine pulls off a stunning foray into Russia.

Further reading:

How the Russian Establishment Really Sees the War Ending by Anatol Lieven in Foreign Policy

The death of Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi has left a power vacuum to be filled in snap elections in less than 50 days. The death of the man once called the "butcher of Tehran" comes at low point in U.S.-Iran relations, and as the theocratic regime's legitimacy at home is under severe stress. In this episode, historians Gregory Brew of Eurasia Group and John Ghazvinian of the University of Pennsylvania discuss Raisi's legacy and how his death may influence the regime's stance on nuclear weapons development.

Before U.S. leaders would compare Saddam Hussein to Hitler, they cynically helped him in his war against Iran. Before the U.S. would wage a decades-long war on Iraq in the form of sanctions and a pre-emptive invasion, multiple White House administrations sought better relations between Washington and Baghdad. During periods of cooperation and conflict, each side misread the other. Yet "forever war" was avoidable. In this episode, investigative journalist Steve Coll, the author of "The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq," discusses new source materials, including audio tapes of Saddam's internal deliberations, that allow us to understand the dictator's decision-making in illuminating ways.

During the Cold War it was taken for granted that Soviet foreign policy was driven by the tenets of Marxism-Leninism toward imperial expansion and subversion. Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and even Gorbachev were viewed as ideologues bent on leading their Third World clients to resist U.S. hegemony. In this episode, historians Sergey Radchenko and Vladislav Zubok weigh the role of ideology versus other, more "realist" factors, such as the quest for security and the recognition of the legitimacy of the Kremlin's interests. The focus of the discussion is Radchenko's latest book "To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid For Global Power." 

Additional reading:

Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav Zubok

Future historians who write about the 2024 campaign might puzzle over how the Republican nominee, four years earlier, egged on a mob to attack Congress, the futile culmination of a months-long scheme to steal the 2020 election. But rather than end his political career, he would survive to champion the rioters as victims of the same nefarious forces arrayed against him and, by extension, the American people. So it should come as no surprise that the felony conviction against Donald J. Trump for falsifying business records in a hush-money scheme with a porn star may not dent his support very much. What is Trumpism today? Is there more to it than the man's grievances against prosecutors, judges, and his political foes? In this episode, the National Review's Dan McLaughlin discusses the sources of Trump's ongoing dominance of the Republican Party. 

This is the second episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The first installment, The Election of 1980, was published on March 4.

A Republican incumbent faced a Democratic challenger trying to end 12 years of GOP control of the White House. A right-wing insurgent and a Texas businessman tried to upend the status quo by appealing to populist grievances against "the establishment." The election of 1992 was the first of the post-Cold War period, making it the first presidential contest of the era we live in today. In this episode, historians Jeffrey Engel and Jeremi Suri discuss and debate its enduring significance.

In power for nearly a quarter century, Vladimir Putin, 71, is a modern-day tsar -- an autocrat largely unaccountable to his people -- except he has no known successor. Whether the Russian president rules for another week or another decade, there will come a time when he’s gone. Who might replace him is a mystery. Also unclear is how Putin might be replaced: by a violent coup? Some legal way under the Russian constitution? In this episode, Liana Fix of the Council on Foreign Relations and Maria Snegovaya of the Center for Strategic & International Studies use the Soviet past as a guide to understanding possible scenarios under which a successor may emerge -- and what new leadership in the Kremlin means for Russia, Europe, and the United States.

Campus antiwar protests are disturbing some Jewish students, administrators, and politicians by chanting an Arabic word meaning uprising, intifada. Since Israel began its military occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, Palestinians have waged two uprisings: in 1987 and 2000. Both were crushed by the IDF. In this episode, Khaled Elgindy of the Middle East Institute delves into the history and meanings of intifada, as some Israel supporters say the word is antisemitic and threatening.   

Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon is evoking comparisons to 1982, the year Israel tried to rout an enemy on the other side of the border, leading to a catastrophe for Palestinian civilians. What happened at Sabra and Shatila sparked international outrage and a rebuke from Washington. Forty-two years later, Israel is risking falling into a Lebanese abyss once more. In this episode, historian Ahron Bregman, who was an IDF soldier during the siege of Beirut, discusses the causes of the carnage in 1982, why Israel may get stuck in Lebanon again as it fights Hezbollah, and the U.S. role in de-escalating the crisis.