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Restoring Russian Support for the War on Terror

by Jeffrey Mankoff

In the hours after the planes struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 the first foreign leader to call President George W. Bush to express sympathy for the victims of the attack was the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Putin's phone call and promise to support the United States in crushing Islamic terrorism appeared to herald a new era in U.S.-Russian cooperation. Now, five years after the terrorist attacks, ties between Washington and Moscow are increasingly frayed

Democracy's Vital Ingredient -- Food

by William Lambers

It was George Marshall, architect of the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe after World War II, who observed that "democratic principles do not flourish on empty stomachs." Marshall's words ring true today as a lesson for the fledgling democracy of Afghanistan, where over eight million people are at risk from hunger and malnutrition.   The Bush administration would be wise to heed Marshall's warning and rally the international community to increase food aid to

The First War Crimes Trial of a Head of State

by Geoffrey Robertson

The trial of Charles I in 1649 secured the historic gains of the English civil war – the supremacy of parliament, the independence of judges, individual freedom guaranteed by Magna Carta and the common law. From a modern perspective, it was the first war crimes trial of a head of state. The arguments in Westminster Hall resonate today in the courtrooms at the Hague and even in the Iraqi Special Tribunal – Saddam Hussein’s opening words to his judge were, in translation, a p

Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminars: Freedom and Slavery in the Atlantic World, 1500-1800

by Susan Bevington

Each summer the Gilder Lehrman Institute holds seminars for public, parochial and independent school teachers "designed to strengthen educators' commitment to high quality history teaching." More than 6,000 teachers have participated in the program through the years. In the summer of 2006 600 participants from 49 states and 6 foreign countries took part. HNN asked partic

Moves toward War with Iran: In the Event of War ... Part 3

by William R. Polk

Editor: This the third in a series: Part 1. Part 2.The Iranians believe that American threats and moves are a bluff.  That is what I have been told authoritatively by a senior official of their government.  But, if they are wrong, something like the following will probably happen. The first step, in fact, has already happened.  Unmanned drones and pr

I Don’t Want Candy: The Uses and Abuses of Marie Antoinette

by Caroline Weber

As a child of the nineteen eighties and a longtime Manolo Blahnik devotee, I expected to adore the MTV-worthy musical shoe shopping sequence in Sofia Coppola’s new biopic, Marie Antoinette. In this scene, Kirsten Dunst’s radiant, irrepressible teen queen chooses to ignore a political briefing from the Austrian ambassador to Versailles, and embarks instead on a buying spree that would have made Imelda Marcos proud. With the infectiously happy anthem “I Want Candy,&rd

Allen Dulles: “I’d have felt much better…if there had been…ten thousand people killed”

by David M. Barrett

In 2003, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified transcripts of certain conversations that the Director of Central Intelligence held in his office during the 1950s. One transcript gives vivid evidence of the DCI’s attitude toward the loss of life by Europeans in the lead-up to Hungary’s 1956 Uprising, in which 2500 died. The document was accessed at the CREST computer terminals in the library at National Archives II, College Park, MD. I came across them by using the searc

Moves Toward War with Iran: Part 1

by William R. Polk

After careful study of recent moves and statements by the Bush Administration, I have concluded that there is at least a 10% chance of an American attack on Iran before the November 7 Congressional elections and about a 90% chance before the administration’s end in 2008. In this and following articles I will explain that prediction, illustrate what moves are now being made the prepare for war, analyze what the results of such actions would be and, finally, discuss what alternatives Amer

The Myth that Low Taxes and Liberty Go Hand in Hand

by Robin L. Einhorn

One might think the record of the Bush administration and Republican Congress -- from domestic spying to Terri Schiavo to a long and expensive war -- would explode the idea that the difference between liberals and conservatives has something to do with the power of government to intervene in our lives. Yet the stereotype of strong-government liberals and weak-government conservatives continues to shape American political debate, especially when the subject is taxes. The Republicans who substitut

Moves toward War with Iran: Part 2

by William R. Polk

In my first article, I set out why I think an American attack on Iran is likely. Now I will show what steps are being taken to prepare for that event. The first step toward war is to prepare the public.  That step was partly taken in the 2005  “National Defense Strategy” which proclaimed that “America is a nation at war” and warned that  “At the direction of the President, we will defeat adver

Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminars: Abraham Lincoln

by John McPherson

Each summer the Gilder Lehrman Institute holds seminars for public, parochial and independent school teachers "designed to strengthen educators' commitment to high quality history teaching." More than 6,000 teachers have participated in the program through the years. In the summer of 2006 600 participants from 49 states and 6 foreign countries took part. HNN asked partic

Should Democrats Pay Attention to All the Advice They've Been Getting?

by Robert Brent Toplin

In the recent years and, especially, in the months prior to this year’s election progressive writers have published a variety of books that advise Democrats on ways to improve their political fortunes. Most of these writers draw lessons for their readers by looking back on American history. Several authors suggest that Democrats can learn from techniques employed successfully over recent decades by the conservatives. Others point to Democratic leaders who provided inspiring leadership i

Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminars: The Colonial Era

by Barbara Markham

Each summer the Gilder Lehrman Institute holds seminars for public, parochial and independent school teachers "designed to strengthen educators' commitment to high quality history teaching." More than 6,000 teachers have participated in the program through the years. In the summer of 2006 600 participants from 49 states and 6 foreign countries took part. HNN asked partic

The Caliph-Strophic Debate

by Walid Phares

It seems that the US is having a hard time winning the hearts and minds of Arabs and Muslims, but an equally serious problem can be observed in the intellectual circles of America where some have had a difficulty coming to terms with the terminology of the War of Ideas. If the educated elite of the United States is incapable of identifying the ideology and the strategy of the Jihadists five years after 9/11, we not only have a problem with handling the War in Iraq, but also with the future of

Debating 9/11: Democrats Break Their Silence

by Robert Brent Toplin

After George W. Bush campaigned for Republican candidates in California earlier this month by claiming that Democrats were leaving the nation vulnerable to terrorist attacks, Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, responded by saying Bush ignored warnings of an al-Qaeda attack “months before 9/11.” Reid countered the President’s charge with a relevant point about recent history, yet it is remarkable that few Democrats have spoken in a similar way when confronting c

Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminars: America Between the Wars

by Jennifer Hellman

Each summer the Gilder Lehrman Institute holds seminars for public, parochial and independent school teachers "designed to strengthen educators' commitment to high quality history teaching." More than 6,000 teachers have participated in the program through the years. In the summer of 2006 600 participants from 49 states and 6 foreign countries took part. HNN asked partic

Global Warming: Life as We’ll Know It

by Matt Chew

“Global warming,” which may regionally include cooling, drying, humidification, or changes in the seasonality of winds and precipitation, is only one dynamic factor among many contributing to the constant flux of the biosphere. Another factor that will inevitably interact with any climate trend is the continuing redistribution of biota. Organisms besides humans are affected by climate change, regardless of its causes. If average temperatures rise in the Arctic Ocean and the

Global Warming: How History Is Being Manipulated to Undermine Calls for Action

by Spencer Weart

Informed people now understand that global warming is perhaps the most severe challenge facing the well-being of human society in the coming century. Only a dwindling minority of Americans now denies this (an even smaller fraction believe that we are regularly visited by space aliens). But those who deny it include powerful people, whose interests or ideology are threatened by government regulation of the fossil fuels that are the main source of the danger we face. History is often use

Global Warming: It’s 1970 All Over Again

by Frank Uekoetter

Once upon a time, it was easy to be an environmentalist. A visible pall of smog hung over many large cities, bringing tears to the eyes of residents on a bad day. Rivers were dirty, some to a point where they could burst into flames. Toxic garbage was dumped in ill-suited places with little thought about the future. And all that, it seemed, was the result of a single cause: the recklessness of industry. What seemed more appropriate, then, than to chastise industry until it faced up to its cor

Why Richard Hofstadter Is Still Worth Reading but Not for the Reasons the Critics Have in Mind

by Jon Wiener

David Brown's biography of Richard Hofstadter has attracted an unusual amount of attention for a revised dissertation, riding the wave of nostalgia that surrounds the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and liberal icon of the 1950s and '60s. At the New York Times Book Review, the book was the subject of the longest review of the year, and one of the most admiring, written by the editor himself, Sam Tanenhaus, who declared Hofstadter"more relevant than ever." The New Republic ran