Roundup: Historians' Take

Paul Kennedy: Is America Really in Decline?

[Paul Kennedy is a professor of history and director of international security studies at Yale University. He is the author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.] Where on earth is the United States headed? Has it lost its way? Is the Obama effect, which initially promised to halt the souring of its global image, over? More seriously, is it in some sort of terminal decline? Has it joined the long historical list of number one powers that rose to the top, and then, as Rudyard Kip

Benny Morris: Sudan and the Clash of Civilizations

[Benny Morris is a professor of history in the Middle East Studies Department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His most recent book is One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict (Yale University Press, 2009).] Forget Osama bin Laden, forget the security fence between Gaza and Israel, forget—for a moment—the bomb-bound crazies in Iran. Sudan is the place to watch, probably the next combat zone in the ongoing clash of civilizations. For decades t

Max Hastings: Heroism is no substitute for an Afghan strategy

[Max Hastings is a British military historian and contributing FT editor.] President Barack Obama’s year-end review of the Afghan war asserted cautiously that General David Petraeus’s operations are going quite well so far, which caused cynics to say that this is a 20-storey building, and we still have 10 to fall. All parties to the conflict save the Taliban perceive themselves as prisoners of an unhappy predicament. The only issue is whether some outcome can be contrived which is “

George Chauncey: Last Ban Standing

[George Chauncey is a history professor at Yale.] THE debate leading up to the Senate vote on Saturday to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy has focused primarily on developments in the 17 years since its inception under President Bill Clinton. But in fact the exclusion of gays and lesbians from the military has been a crucial issue for the gay movement for 65 years — in part because, during the postwar decades, it served as a model for anti-homosexual

Julian E. Zelizer: The Real Threat to Health Care Reform

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter," published by Times Books, and editor of a book assessing former President George W. Bush's administration, published by Princeton University Press.] When U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson ruled that the mandate to purchase health insurance in the new law was unconstitutional, many people began looking to the Supreme Court for a final determinati

Glenn W. LaFantasie: How the South Rationalizes Secession

[Glenn W. LaFantasie is the Richard Frockt Family Professor of Civil War History and Director of the Institute for Civil War Studies at Western Kentucky University. His most recent book is "Gettysburg Heroes: Perfect Soldiers, Hallowed Ground" (Indiana University Press, 2008).] Secession is making a comeback. Tomorrow is the 150th anniversary of South Carolina’s secession from the Union, a political act that set in motion the events that led to the Civil War, but one needn

Ashley Cruseturner: Real Recovery Will Require Collective Pain

[Ashley Cruseturner teaches American history at McLennan Community College in Waco, Texas.] \Kudos to President Obama for striking a bargain on taxes with the Republicans. As former-President Bill Clinton articulated last Friday, at this moment of extreme economic uncertainty, bipartisan agreement on something (anything) elicits a collective sigh of relief from the American people. Nevertheless, the substance of the compromise is alarming. We find ourselves on the prec

Victor Davis Hanson: In Defense of the Liberal Arts

[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.] The liberal arts face a perfect storm. The economy is struggling with obscenely high unemployment and is mired in massive federal and state deficits. Budget cutting won’t spare education. The public is already angry over fraud, waste, and incompetence in our schools and universit

Conrad Black: Catholicism, and the Oceans, Will Survive

[Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.] The year now ending has been one of immense alarm followed by serenity’s sudden rushes to the head. It is hard now to remember the hysteria generated by the tawdry and often appalling scandal of clerical abuse of young men in the Roman Catholic Church, between February and July. The New York Times appeared to be offering free visits to New York with city tours of all

Victor Davis Hanson: Two Californias

[NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.] The last three weeks I have traveled about, taking the pulse of the more forgotten areas of central California. I wanted to witness, even if superficially, what is happening to a state that has the highest sales and income taxes, the most l

Albert L. Weeks: Why Russia is Warming to the West

[Albert L. Weeks is a professor emeritus of New York University and the author of several books on Soviet politics, including the forthcoming volume, “Assured Victory: How ‘Stalin the Great’ Won the War but Lost the Peace.”] Shortly after his inauguration in 2008 as Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev was asked by The Financial Times whether he was a Westernizer or a Slavophile. His answer was dodgy: “The world has changed,” he said, “so my first priority is Russia’s interests.”

Steve Hochstadt: Defining a 'Christian Nation'

[Steve Hochstadt of Jacksonville is a professor of history at Illinois College. His column appears every Tuesday in the Journal-Courier and is available and on his blog at stevehochstadt.blogspot.com.] Many Americans are saying that America should be a Christian nation. I wonder exactly what they mean. Do they mean a Christian nation like the ones from which the Puritans and most of our early settlers fled? In those countries, the king was also the head of their state c

John Calvert: The Afterlife of Sayyid Qutb

[Dr. John Calvert is the Fr. Henry W. Casper SJ Associate Professor of History at Creighton University and author of the newly released "Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism."] Sayyid Qutb was executed in 1966 for his role in a failed conspiracy against the Nasser regime. Yet his call for Muslims to replace the sovereignty of man with that of God continues to haunt Egyptian state authorities. On Feb. 8, 2010, following a controversial election for the Brotherhoo

Fritz Stern: If Only Holbrooke Had Been in the Balkans in 1914

[Fritz Stern is University Professor emeritus in the history department of Columbia University, and the author of Five Germanys I Have Known.] Richard Holbrooke and I met in 1969 in Princeton, where we were in opposition to the Vietnam War, which we thought was putting a terrible strain on the country. He was 29 at the time (I was somewhat older), but I don't think the gap in our ages ever made any difference. He treated me as a contemporary, and I treated him in the same mann

Jonathan Zimmerman: Americans Think They're Too Smart to Work Hard

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at New York University. He is the author, most recently, of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.”] Are you smart? I mean, really smart? Like, so smart that you don’t really have to work? Then you’re kidding yourself. And your belief in your own intelligence is holding you back. That’s the real story behind the latest piece of bad news in American education, which continues to stac

David Francis Taylor: An attack on the royal carriage by angry protesters. Sound familiar?

[David Francis Taylor is a lecturer in eighteenth-century literature at the university of Toronto. His book on the theatre and politics in Georgian London will be published next year.] Tensions in central London are high. Blundering its way through the streets, seemingly oblivious to the demonstrations, the royal vehicle is soon surrounded. It struggles to push its way through the wall of angry protesters. There is a great deal of shouting. Republican sentiments are expressed. Objec

Daniel Pipes: Pouring Cold Water on WikiLeaks

[ Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.]Of all the WikiLeaks revelations, the most captivating may be learning that several Arab leaders have urged the U.S. government to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. Most notoriously, King

Victor Davis Hanson: Why Not Soak the Rich?

[NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.] ...Who exactly are the “rich”? Zillionaires such as Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and George Soros surely are. But these wealthiest individuals have so much money at their disposal that they don’t care much about income-tax rates. Their tax la

James Ledbetter: What Ike Got Right

[James Ledbetter is the author of the forthcoming “Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex.”] LAST week the National Archives released a trove of drafts and notes that shed new light on President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address, in which he warned America about the “military-industrial complex.” The release comes just in time for the speech’s 50th anniversary next month. And so while scholars and historians use these docum

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: Liu Xiaobo and and the Nobel Peace Prize

[Jeffrey Wasserstrom is chair of the history department at the University of California, Irvine and the author, most recently, of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2010). An essay on protest in China, which he co-wrote with Maura Elizabeth Cunningham, will appear in the next issue Dissent.] THIS YEAR’S Nobel Peace Prize generated an unusual amount of attention, due largely to the bravery and eloquence of the writings of the winner, the