Roundup: Historians' Take

Jenna Phillips: Why the PM Candidates Should Mention the War

[Jenna Phillips is currently completing a PhD at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University, on 'British policy during the Korean War, 1950-1951'. She also works at Huddersfield University as a research assistant. Jenna was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and was the Fox International Fellow from Sidney Sussex College to Yale University in 2006.] Party strategists may think that tonight's Sky News leaders' debate, focusing on foreign policy - will be less import

Greg Rosen: Should Labour Learn to Love Coalitions?

[Greg Rosen is visiting fellow at Goldsmiths, author of 'Old Labour to New' and editor of the Dictionary of Labour Biography.] It is more than 150 years since Disraeli claimed that England does not love coalitions. And, as any statement of its time, as an observation, it is 150 years out of date. That is not to say that the opposite is true either. A more accurate observation would be to say that England, and indeed the rest of the UK, has fallen out of love with many of its governm

Julian Zelizer: Inaction on Immigration Reform a Travesty

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book is "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security: From World War II to the War on Terrorism," published by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely about current events.] Republicans and Democrats in Congress seem to have found one issue on which they agree. Neither party wants to get near immigration reform, the new "third rail" in A

Peter Clarke: Britain's Third Party Looks to History

[The writer's book, ‘Keynes: The Twentieth Century’s Most Influential Economist’ (Bloomsbury), is out in paperback.] This is the most interesting British election in 10 years – against extremely weak competition, admittedly. In 2001 and 2005, Labour was in control, the Conservatives were in disarray and the Liberal Democrats were in the shade. No longer. We need to go back not 10 but 100 years to gauge the significance of what is happening. All the politicians say it is

Jonathan Zimmerman: AIDS, Sex, and Crime: Why is Darren Chiacchia Facing Jail Time?

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author, most recently, of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.”] In 1943, the National Advisory Police Committee on Social Protection released a report on its wartime efforts to combat venereal disease. Whenever a soldier or sailor was found to have venereal disease, the report explained, he was required to notify officials about “the source of his infection.” The agency w

Bruce J. Schulman: The Costs of Crossing the President

[Bruce J. Schulman, Huntington professor of history at Boston University, is the author of “The ’70s: The Great Shift in American Culture” and “Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism.”] Will the White House punish Democrats who defected on the monumental health care overhaul?... Effective presidents, particularly those with ambitious agendas, need to clarify for members of Congress the benefits of cooperation — and the costs of opposition. But they must

William J. Astore: American Kleptocracy -- How Fears of Socialism and Fascism Hide Naked Theft

[William J. Astore teaches History at the Pennsylvania College of Technology (wastore@pct.edu). A retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), he has also taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism.]Kleptocracy -- now, there’s a word I was taught to associate with corrupt and exploitat

Daniel Pipes: Obama's Approach to American Muslims the Same as Bush's

[Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum, Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, and a columnist for the Jerusalem Post. This article is cross-posted at the National Review Online.]The New York Times ran a story today, "

Tom Palaima: Pre-Empted by the War in Iraq

[Palaima is a professor of classics at the University of Texas.] There are many ways we can begin looking at the likely legacy of what we have done through our pre-emptive use of military force in Iraq. We are in an end game achieved through a temporary upscaling of military force combined with making payments to factional leaders not to unleash violence. This so-called surge of men and money was a temporary measure. It is hard to understand why its success is being tak

Burt Folsom: Can We Get Out of this Economic Mess?

[Burt Folsom is professor of history at Hillsdale College.] The U. S. annual deficits of almost $1,000,000,000,000 per year are hard to comprehend. Think of it this way: One trillion dollars equals about $30,000 per second every second of every day for one full year. That adds up to about $1,800,000 per minute every minute of the year. Last week was tax week–how much of that time did you pay off? Most Americans paid only a fraction of one second’s worth of debt, and almost hal

Moshe Dann: Is Obama Using Israel as a Scapegoat for His Foreign Policy Failures?

[The author, a former assistant professor of history, is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem.]Though needing to handle dozens of difficult issues around the world, President Obama seems obsessed with one: the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.Obama’s administration has been on the warpath with Israel from the beginning, picking fights over issues that have been around for a long time. These include where Jews can live and build in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria (the

Victor Davis Hanson: Why All the Wounded Fawns?

[Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.] Why are charges of racism and political extremism suddenly in the air? Party politics is always the norm, but what is unusual this time around is the juxtaposition between

Raymond Ibrahim: Was Marco Polo an 'Islamophobe'?

[Raymond Ibrahim is associate director of the Middle East Forum, author of The Al Qaeda Reader, and guest lecturer at the National Defense Intelligence College.] If the same exact criticisms being made against Islam today were also made centuries ago, is it reasonable to dismiss them all as "Islamophobic"— that is, as "unfounded fear of

Benny Morris: U.S. Following the Path of the Munich Pact on Iran

[Benny Morris is the author of many books about the Middle East conflict, including, most recently, "1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War."] I take it personally: Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wants to murder me, my family and my people. Day in, day out, he announces the imminent demise of the "Zionist regime," by which he means Israel. And day in, day out, his scientists and technicians are advancing toward the atomic weaponry that will enable

Rashid Khalidi: Bad Faith in the Holy City of Jerusalem

[Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of Sowing Crisis: The Cold War & American Dominance in the Middle East.] The Israeli government’s announcement in March that it would further expand East Jerusalem settlements was just the latest in a decades-old series of calculated slights to the United States. Since 1967, virtually every time a U.S. envoy has arrived to discuss the fate of the West Bank or Gaza, the Isr

Stanley Kutler: A Supreme Court Choice We Can Believe In

[Stanley Kutler is the author of “Judicial Power and Reconstruction” and other writings.] Barack Obama’s forthcoming Supreme Court nomination has unleashed the familiar flood of commentary, much of it revolving around the political context, and hence much of it irrelevant, wrongheaded guesswork. A court vacancy triggers a select list of probable appointments, which usually grows when media pundits “hear” of a new name, often leaked to test the waters. Talk invariably c

Andrew J. Bacevich: Karzai Should Study Chiang Kai-shek to Stay in Power

[Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book, “Washington Rules: America’s Road to Permanent War,” will be out in August.] The American approach to empire has its peculiarities. Prominent among them is a variant of the “Great Man” theory of history. In their efforts to expand the Pax Americana while disguising its existence, U.S. officials are always on the lookout for some prominent local chieftain to help

Alexey Semyonov and Baktybek Abdrisaev: Another Chance for Democracy in Kyrgyzstan

[Alexey Semyonov is vice president of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes democratic development in the former Soviet Union. Baktybek Abdrisaev, a visiting professor of history and political science at Utah Valley University, was Kyrgyzstan’s ambassador to the United States and Canada from 1997 to 2005. This column first appeared in the Washington Post.] Events in Kyrgyzstan have once again seized headlines. Five years ago, in March 2005, the Tulip Revolution b

Harold James: Obama Can Spur Asia to Greater Heights

[Harold James is professor of history and international affairs at Princeton University.] RICHARD Nixon has been dead for 15 years, but he is making another comeback in the US. The 37th US president believed that international monetary relations are unlikely to be transformed by talking. Instead, he thought that radical unilateral action was required. Today pressure is growing for the US Treasury to follow Nixon’s misguided example and issue a finding, due by today, that China is ma

Alan Brinkley: The [Tea] Party of Me

[Alan Brinkley, the Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University, is the author of “The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century,” a forthcoming biography.] The Times/CBS News Poll shows that there is broad unhappiness with the state of the economy and the performance of Congress, but on the whole the participants seem to be responding fairly normally to a weak economy with high joblessness. The 18 percent of those polled who identified themselves as Tea Party acti