by William Glenn Gray
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the idea of creating new structures for a post-Cold War world is still quite radical. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s approach represents a familiar way of doing business, one that continues to bank on the essential unity of “the West.” But is it effective?
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by Kimber Quinney
“Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Tho’ your dreams be tossed and blown.Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone,
You’ll never walk alone.”
—Rogers and Hammerstein, 1945
I confess to be a diehard Liverpool FC fan. The mantra of the football club is “you’ll never walk alone.” One year after Barack [...]
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by Laura Belmonte
With Congress poised to revisit the delicate issue of immigration reform, there are 36,000 bi-national lesbian, gay, and bisexual families in the United States whose love and lives hang in the balance. In the absence of policy changes allowing Americans to sponsor their same-sex partners for residency, these families will continue to face the threat [...]
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Featured this month
by William Stueck
Any political historian will tell you that government decisionmakers frequently use historical analogies in making up their minds and that, more often than not, they do so badly. And Kimber Quinney reminded us in her thoughtful November 9 commentary that historians are not immune to employing such analogies either, or in doing so badly.
Courtesy of the Truman Presidential Library
Yet as one who in another life spent considerable time analyzing U.S. policy toward China during the early Cold War, I cannot resist the temptation to suggest a parallel between the dilemmas facing the Obama administration in Afghanistan and those of the Truman administration in the fall of 1947 regarding China. In both cases U.S. decision-makers faced a civil war in which an ally appeared to be losing ground; in both cases the United States had made considerable effort to assist the ally, but with poor results; in both cases a decision had to be made–and soon–as to whether or not to substantially increase aid already given; in both cases a major concern was that, without broad reforms in the allied government, American aid would be ineffective and, in any event, would drain U.S. resources at a time when they were/are in high demand elsewhere.
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Posted in Afghanistan War: 2001-present, Barack Obama administration: 2009-present, Central Asia, George W. Bush administration: 2001-2008, Harry Truman administration: 1945-1953, Imperialism/Colonization, Op-Eds, Uncategorized | No Comments »
by Dustin Walcher
After three months in office, Barack Obama traveled to Trinidad and Tobago in April 2009 to attend the Fifth Summit of the Americas. Already his presidency had been consumed by issues of major importance, both at home and abroad; Obama no doubt spent his days thinking about the global economic crisis, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and consequential domestic priorities such as the upcoming push for health reform. On that future day when the Obama presidential library opens its archives, we should not be surprised to learn that top policymakers were not poring over Latin American affairs during their first weeks in office. Read more…
Posted in Americas, Barack Obama administration: 2009-present, Central America & Caribbean, International Economic Relations, International Trade and Economics, Op-Eds, Policymaking--International, Post-9/11: 2001-present, Public Opinion, South America, World Trade Organization | No Comments »
by Mary Dudziak
Cross-posted from Balkinization
Originally posted on September 27, 2009
In my west coast copy of the New York Times today, two stories are side-by-side: one on disagreements within the Obama Administration about Afghanistan, and one titled 
“U.S. Drone Strikes Office of Sunni Party In Iraq’s North.” These stories are related, for the politics of war, necessarily at issue in presidential decisionmaking about Afghanistan, are affected by the technologies of warfare. Drones are a technological step that further isolates the American people from military action, undermining political checks on contemporary warfare. And the isolation of the people, historians of war have argued, helps enable on-going, endless war.
When contemplating the scope and limits of presidential war power, constitutional scholars tend to focus on the relationship between the branches and the impact of public opinion. But the existence of drones, the reliance on private contractors, and the absence of a draft are part of a shift in the political structure of American warfare, enabling presidential power.
The role of drones might cause us to believe that an inevitable march of technology, together with strategies of contemporary warfare, have led to the disconnect between most Americans and the wars their nation is engaged in. But military historian Adrien Lewis suggests that these developments were not at all inevitable, and that a fundamental shift in the political structure of American warmaking has occurred since Vietnam, resulting in an isolation of the people from their wars. Read more…
Posted in Afghanistan, Afghanistan War: 2001-present, Barack Obama administration: 2009-present, Iraq, Op-Eds | No Comments »
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