Cold War — Bunk History

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Trump and Reagan depicted as two halves of the same face.

The Dark Legacy of Reaganism

Conservatives might be tempted to hold up Reagan as representative of a nobler era. They’d be wrong.

by Kim Phillips-Fein via The New Republic on February 19, 2025

Meeting of delegates to approve the Charter of the United Nations, San Francisco, 1945.

Origins of the UN: The US and USSR

The genesis of the United Nations came from the nations united as Allies against the Axis powers, but who really pushed the institution into being?

by Stephen Wertheim, Matthew Wills, Geoffrey Roberts via JSTOR Daily on February 9, 2025

An illustration of space, with two silhouettes of heads overlapping.

The Fraught U.S.-Soviet Search for Alien Life

During the Cold War, American and Soviet scientists embarked on an unprecedented quest to contact extraterrestrials.

by Sophie Pinkham via The New Yorker on February 6, 2025

ICE officers knock on the door of a residence.

Trump Is Drawing on Cold War–Era Repressive Tactics

A previous, dark period of American history paired ethnic exclusion through mass deportations and ideological exclusion through political repression.

by David Bacon via Jacobin on January 29, 2025

Trump's airplane in Greenland.

Why Trump Wants Greenland—And Why He Probably Won't Get It

He's not the first to set his sights on the island.

by James Patton Rogers, Caroline Kennedy-Pipe via Made By History on January 23, 2025

Ronald and Nancy Reagan smiling and waving at victory celebration.

Honey, I Forgot to Duck

Reagan’s capacity to inhabit and generate legend stemmed from his own impulse to substitute pleasing fictions for inconvenient facts.

by Jackson Lears via London Review of Books on January 15, 2025

A drawing of a Viking ship approaching Greenland.

The Long Struggle for Greenland

Throughout its history, the vast Arctic island has been viewed by competing powers as a strategic prize and geopolitical asset.

by Paul Lay via Engelsberg Ideas on January 8, 2025

1999 Yugoslavian stamp depicting a NATO jet launching a missile at an oil refinery.

Stamps Capture Unchanging Face of U.S. Violence Abroad

Countries have also used their postal systems to fight back against aggression.

by Matin Modarressi via Foreign Policy in Focus on January 6, 2025

Sound waves.

Listening Devices

The veterans of Kagnew Station saw the early growth of the surveillance state. Has the passage of time given them a new understanding of their work?

by Ann Neumann via The Baffler on January 6, 2025

Depictions of possible causes of apocalypse through war, disaster, and climate change.

Apocalypse, Constantly

Humans love to imagine their own demise.

by Adam Kirsch via The Atlantic on December 31, 2024

NASA's administrator shows a model of the space shuttle to President Jimmy Carter.

What Spaceflight Owes to Jimmy Carter: The President's Little-Known NASA Legacy

Jimmy Carter, skeptical of NASA's shuttle, saved it with funding despite delays and opposition. His Voyager message carries hope deep into space.

by Denise Chow via NBC News on December 30, 2024

Bob Dylan playing the electric guitar in 1965.

'A Complete Unknown' Misses a Key Part of 1960s History

The Bob Dylan film forefronts a conflict between acoustic and electric music, while ignoring how the Vietnam War divided folk musicians.

by Nina Silber via Made By History on December 25, 2024

The American flag and the South Korean flag.

Eighty Years of Martial Law

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s declaration of martial law is of little import compared to the American occupation of the country.

by Jason Morgan via The American Conservative on December 24, 2024

Jesus Jones on stage.

Right Here, Right Now: Jesus Jones and the Post-Cold War Moment

For a brief window at the end of the Cold War, British alt-rock band Jesus Jones tapped into global feelings of optimism and hope.

by Dion Georgiou via The Saturday Evening Post on December 24, 2024

CIA memo about LSD use.

CIA Behavior Control Experiments Focus of New Scholarly Collection

Agency sought drugs and behavior control techniques to use in “special interrogations” and offensive operations.

by Michael Evans via National Security Archive on December 23, 2024

William F. Buckley, Donald Trump.

The Modern Conservative Tradition and the Origins of Trumpism

Today’s Trumpist radicals are not (small-c) conservatives – but they stand in the continuity of Modern Conservatism’s defining political project.

by Thomas Zimmer via Democracy Americana on December 16, 2024

Ronald Reagan and Paul Nitze.

A Cold Warrior for Our Time

James Graham Wilson makes a compelling case that the under-celebrated example of Paul Nitze is both instructive and worthy of our emulation.

by Max J. Prowant via Law & Liberty on December 9, 2024

Reagan and supporters at a campaign rally in 1984.

Reagan Resurgent?

Commentary on America’s 40th president often misses how the Gipper blended principles and pragmatism for a truly conservative statesmanship.

by Anthony Eames via Law & Liberty on December 4, 2024

Photo contact sheet from Ronald Reagan speech on Nicaragua in 1986.

Letting the World Scream

The U.S., Nicaragua, and the International Court of Justice in the 1980s.

by Sean T. Byrnes via HNN on November 26, 2024

Barack Obama and Chinese president Xi Jinxing looking away from each other.

The Bipartisan Origins of the New Cold War

Starting with Obama, American presidents embraced the idea of arresting China’s rise, opening the door to Trump’s trade wars and hawkishness.

by Michael Brenes, Van Jackson via Jacobin on November 25, 2024

John Locke

Review of "America's Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life"

We see what we want to see from philosophers such as Locke not because he wrote for our time (or “all time”) but because we imagine he did.

by Raymond Haberski Jr. via American Literary History on November 15, 2024

Protestors after Nixon's Election protesting the end to war.

US Labor and the Gaza War: Historical Perspective

Are we doomed to repetition? It’s something I worry about.

by Tim Barker via Origins of Our Time on November 15, 2024

Photo of 5 skeletons controlling panels.

Notes from the Cold War Underground

The weapons infrastructure of the Cold War is now getting rented out on Airbnb or memorialized as patriotic kitsch.

by Emily Harnett via The Baffler on October 22, 2024

Paper and an ink pen.

Call Me Comrade: Cold War Pen-Pals

The correspondence of Soviet and American women during the Cold War.

by Miriam Dobson via London Review of Books on October 17, 2024

Jimmy Carter and Shah Pahlavi.

The US’s Long History of Destabilizing Iran

Kamala Harris called Iran a “destabilizing, dangerous force.” The appropriate context for this is the US’s own decades-long history of destabilizing Iran.

by Seraj Assi via Jacobin on October 9, 2024

Map of the US Air Force Atlantic Missile Range stations in 1957

Making the American Orbit

The U.S. military operated a Grand Turk missile tracking station for 30 years, with limited local benefits, highlighting American expansionism's impact.

by Andrew J. Ross via Perspectives on History on October 8, 2024

A stylized painting of the United States military commiting a massacre in Korea.

The Jazz Beats of a Coup

How the US State Department used jazz music for its national security aims.

by Esha Krishnaswamy via Historic.ly on October 3, 2024

Phil Donahue.

Phil Donahue’s Cold War Legacy

The late telejournalist was a pioneer of informal diplomacy between American and Soviet citizens.

by Adriel Kasonta via The American Conservative on September 25, 2024

Civil Defense warning.

The Occasion Instant, 1961

What can be learned from how people responded to false alarms about nuclear war in the late 1950s?

by Alex Wellerstein via Doomsday Machines on September 11, 2024

Ronald Reagan

What If Ronald Reagan’s Presidency Never Really Ended?

Anti-Trump Republicans revere Ronald Reagan as Trump’s opposite—yet in critical ways Reagan may have been his forerunner.

by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Yorker on September 9, 2024

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