Beyond

How a celebrated corporate lawyer named Elihu Root became the driving force behind some of the worst U.S. atrocities ever perpetrated abroad.

The initial promise of Mexican factories in the 1960s gave way to impoverished communities and capital flight in search of higher profits.

The plight of Poland and the limits of America's revolutionary legacy in Jacksonian foreign policy.

A set of revered stone deities stolen from a temple in northwestern India can tell us much about our current reckoning with antiquities trafficking.

The right—and wrong—lessons of the Iraq War.

Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy publicly apologized after restaurants refused to serve Black representatives of newly independent nations.

Russia’s recent nuclear threats have revived Cold War animosity with roots in the Cuban missile crisis.

In 1908, Korean nationalists assassinated a pro-Japanese American diplomat in front of the Ferry Building.

Many groups who identify as Indigenous don’t claim to be first peoples; many who came first don’t claim to be Indigenous. Can the idea escape its colonial past?

When it comes to protecting our personal privacy, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

He fell from favor after the disaster of the Iraq War. But he was always biding his time.

In this case, freaking out makes even less sense because spy balloons are historically a sign of weakness.

Covert U.S. intrusions into Chinese airspace were common for decades.

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

China’s balloon, whatever its purpose, became a physical and observable reminder of the often-invisible work nations do to keep tabs on one another.

The government of Guam has appointed a Commission on Decolonization, but U.S. control means that all of the island’s options have substantial downsides.

In 1947, the United States sacrificed for the sake of a starving Europe.

Japan sent nearly 10,000 bomb-bearing balloons toward the U.S. during World War II. One killed six people.

Signed February 2, 1848, the treaty compelled Mexico to cede 55 percent of its territory, bringing more than 525,000 square miles under US sovereignty.

U.S.-Iranian relations, the interrelationship between Iranian development and the global oil market, and the future of economic warfare.

Melvyn Leffler’s book on the roots of the Iraq invasion demonstrates the pitfalls of excessive trust in one’s sources, especially when they're top policymakers.

How the Caribbean colony contributed to America's fight for independence.

Ambition, insecurity, and the perils of independence.

A new book reverses the narrative of the Age of Discovery, which has long evoked the ambitions of Europeans looking to the Americas rather than vice versa.

Similar bars have been marshaled against Central Americans since the late 1980s — severely undermining access to asylum.

When Hollywood went down Argentine way.

A fatal combination of fear, power, and hubris.

Americans helped spread a right-wing version of evangelical Christianity in Brazil. Now it has played a role in an insurrection.

“National security” and the history of US export controls.

To most 21st century Americans, Hawaii is a tropical paradise. But how that paradise became part of the United States is a long, complex, and often dark story.