George Frost Kennan

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

On the origins of America's hegemonic foreign policy.

For decades, Kissinger kept the great wheel of American militarism spinning ever forward.

Sigmund Freud once applied his Oedipal theory to the leader of the free world.

From the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11, we had relative peace and prosperity. We squandered it completely.

Noam Chomsky discusses the hypocrisies of US empire and why if we really wanted to build a decent society, we’d immediately slash the massive military budget.

My policy was to work for the best, while expanding NATO to prepare for the worst.

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.

Hal Brands urges the U.S. to make China and Russia “pay exorbitantly” for their policies. History shows that has never worked.

Institutions meant to secure peace, from NATO to the U.N., date back to Truman’s Presidency. So do the conflicts threatening that peace.

In ‘The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War,’ Louis Menand explores the poetry, music, painting, dance and film that emerged during the Cold War.

A new history shows how the glut of US military bases abroad has led to a constant state of military conflict.

A new book explains how U.S. political elites sold the UN to the public as a route to global peace, while all along wanting it as a cover for militarization.

Remembering a time when a toxic cocktail of threats, fear, and misunderstanding nearly led us down the path to Armageddon.

In 1967, I was in the middle of one of the world’s buzziest stories.

The ardent but flawed movement against World War I.

Revisiting Holfstadter's "paranoid style" in the era of Trump.

Spies, counterinsurgency campaigns, hippie entrepreneurs, privacy apps funded by the CIA.