Photograph of woman interrogated by soldier at Korean prisoner-of-war camp

A Permanent Battle

A new history draws on recently declassified archives to illustrate how the Korean War was an intimate civil conflict, not just a proxy battle between superpowers.
Illustration of Asian woman surrounded by flowers

Sex, Death, and Empire: The Roots of Violence Against Asian Women

The line from America’s earliest empire in the Philippines to Japan, Korea, Vietnam—and anti-Asian violence at home—is straight, clear, and written in blood.
Photo of Jackie Robinson and Jacki Robinson Jr at the Youth March for Integrated Schools demonstration in Washington DC with Harry Belafonte.

Jackie Robinson, Pioneer of BDS

The Dodgers great didn’t just break Major League Baseball’s color line. He was also an activist whose legacy reaches from Brooklyn to South Africa to Palestine.
Illustration of Spanish slaves unloading ice.

Cuba & the US: Necessary Mirrors

Exponentially more enslaved Africans were forced to the lands that now make up Latin America rather than the United States. Where is their story?
An image of red slave shackles.

Tracing the Ancestry of the Earliest Enslaved Ndongo People

A story born in blood.
MLK giving his Vietnam speech

“Somehow This Madness Must Cease.”

Revisiting MLK Jr.’s sermon against the Vietnam War.
Vladimir Putin with Bill Clinton

I Tried to Put Russia on Another Path

My policy was to work for the best, while expanding NATO to prepare for the worst.
An Afghan child being welcomed by a U.S. soldier.
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How the U.S. Has Treated Wartime Refugees

What obligation does the US have toward people who are uprooted by war?
African-American man holding a medical bag, posing behind horse-drawn carriage.

Doctors Without Borders

On the Black doctors who received their medical degrees and a new sort of freedom in Europe.
Painting of a ship in stormy waters, Thomas Buttersworth, A Topsail Schooner in a Heavy Swell

Insurance For (and Against) the Empire

Marine insurance itself was a business that flourished during periods of war and uncertainty. It had a complex relationship with the British state.
1827 Finley Map of the Western Hemisphere

Land that Could Become Water

Dreams of Central America in the era of the Erie Canal.
Photo of a tank and soldiers with guns raised in forest.

A New History of World War II

A new book argues that the conflict was a battle for empire.
Then-President George W. Bush meets with his father, former president George H.W. Bush, and former president Bill Clinton in the Oval Office in 2005.
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Biden’s Putin Comments Could Warp U.S. Policy

The lesson of the first Gulf War and its aftermath for handling Russia.
US military pilots operating Predator drones from the ground control station.

The Forgotten Crime of War Itself

A new book argues that efforts to humanize war with smarter weaponry have obscured the task of making peace the first goal of foreign policy.
Picture of the many different people that make up the US.

The Right to Leave

Thomas Jefferson was a proponent of open migration. But who qualified as a refugee?
1950s American family watching TV.

How American Culture Ate the World

A new book explains why Americans know so little about other countries.
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.
Soldiers looking out of helicopter near Kabul, Afghanistan

A 20-Year Debacle in Afghanistan

Why the American war was destined for catastrophe and tragedy from the start.
Artwork of Hannah Arendt looking through the outline of a map of Ukraine.

Why We Should Read Hannah Arendt Now

"The Origins of Totalitarianism" has much to say about a world of rising authoritarianism.
Two giant pandas eating bamboo

A Chinese Cigarette Tin Launched D.C.’s 50-year Love Affair With Pandas

Fifty years ago, first lady Pat Nixon admired a tin of Chinese cigarettes. Then China sent the U.S. a pair of giant pandas.
Military facility destroyed by shelling near Kyiv, Ukraine

Was it Inevitable? A Short History of Russia’s War on Ukraine

To understand the tragedy of this war, it is worth going back beyond the last few weeks and months, and even beyond Vladimir Putin.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US secretary of state James Baker in the Kremlin, Moscow, February 9, 1990.

‘A Bridge Too Far’

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.
Checkpoint Charlie, seen from West Berlin in 1960.

The Disastrous Return of Cold War Strategy

Hal Brands urges the U.S. to make China and Russia “pay exorbitantly” for their policies. History shows that has never worked.
BP is trying to divest its share of the Russian state-owned company Rosneft.
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Western Oil Companies Ditching Russia is a New Twist on a Familiar Pattern

For more than a century, Western oil companies have cycled into and out of Russia.
an acrylic painting by artist Charles Waterhouse, was commissioned by the United States Marine Corps to celebrate their role in the capture of Derne.

Fleeing from the Shores of Tripoli: America’s First Messy Retreat from a Foreign War

Studying the aftermath of the evacuation from Tripoli provides perspective on the current fallout from the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Kwame Nkrumah, an anticolonial activist and the first Ghanaian president, pictured John F. Kennedy.

White Malice and the Racist Plunder of U.S. Empire

How American racism, capitalism, and imperialism led the U.S. to sabotage African democracies.
Drapery of a soldier displayed in a barren field.

The Economic Weapon

The fate of the League of Nations provides a stark warning about using sanctions as a tool of modern warfare.
Portrait of George Washington on a horse.

Declaring War

Congress hasn't declared it often. The U.S. has fought a lot of war anyway. How?
The Central Bank of the Russian Federation.

The Modern History of Economic Sanctions

A review of “The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War."
Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia, president of the U.N. Security Council for February and permanent representative of the Russian Federation, at the U.N. headquarters on Feb. 28.

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

American pundits say Putin is undermining the international order. But the ability of great powers to ignore the rules is a lamentable part of the system.