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SHAFR Opinion

Visions of War

by Susan Brewer

On December 15th President Barack Obama welcomed home U.S. troops from a war he once had called “dumb.” His speech avoided the reasons why the Iraq War was fought and focused instead on honoring the American servicemen and women who fought it.  Inspiring words–“extraordinary achievement,” “honor,” “sacrifice,” “finest fighting force,” “unbroken line of heroes,” “progress [...]

Newt Gingrich and the (ab)Uses of History

by Andrew Johnstone

It is an honor to join the SHAFR blogging team for 2011-12.  While SHAFR is (as the name makes perfectly clear) a society that focuses on the history of American foreign relations, there is no doubt that we are as well placed as anyone to make connections between historical events and contemporary issues in American [...]

Issues for the 2012 Presidential Election

by Nick Sarantakes

The United States of America is about to enter a presidential election year.  Actually, it already has entered the political season.  The election of 2012 will most likely turn on economics, but as Andy Johns pointed out in his blog, foreign policy is always important and next year’s contest will be no different.  In addition, [...]

W(h)ither the Bilateral Study?: what of the History of U.S. Foreign Policy can tell us about the Emergent Multilateral World

by James Siekmeier

Back during the Cold War, bilateral studies were common. Indeed the proliferation of bilateral studies seemed to be almost a natural process—it was thought that we humans were seemingly biologically hard-wired to separate things in to this/that, either/or,  good/evil, etc.
Recently, however, the genre of “United States and …[insert country name here] “ studies seem to [...]

Rising Isolationism, A Renewed Danger?

by Christopher McKnight Nichols

It is an honor to be kicking off the blog for the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations for the fall of 2011. I thank Andrew Johns, Brian Etheridge, and the officers of SHAFR for the invitation, and I look forward to an excellent year of diverse debates and dynamic discussions.
For this column, which [...]

A Note from Europe: The End of the World is Nigh

by Michaela Hoenicke Moore

The mid-July headline of the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) commenting on the two debt crises in Europe and the United States reads “The End of the World Is Near – But Only for You.” The article cleverly illustrates the deepening transatlantic gap when it comes to political and economic frames of reference. Americans are [...]

Moving Beyond (and Before) the Cold War

by David Ekbladh

I’ll take up the point raised by Shane Maddock’s recent post on moving beyond the Cold War.  I share his feeling that the focus on the conflict has imposed its own “interpretive framework” on scholarship in U.S. foreign relations and international history generally and that this scaffolding can limit our understanding of a slew of [...]

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Weekly Digest – 11/9/09

November 9th, 2009

Since coming to office ten months ago, Panetta’s boss, Barack Obama, has authorized as many aerial attacks by C.I.A.-operated drone bombers in Pakistan as George Bush did in his final three years.  What does international law say about the death of civilians? [more]

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday urged Iran to accept a U.N.-drafted proposal to have uranium for a medical reactor enriched abroad. [more]

When President Barack Obama meets Japan’s new prime minister in Tokyo on Friday, he will face a government that appears uncertain about how to resolve the major issue complicating ties between the two allies. [more]

On Nov. 3, the House of Representatives voted to discredit a U.N. report that accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes in the three-week war last January. The House reflexively backed Israel by a vote of 334-36, with 22 abstentions. [more]

Hundreds of miles from Baghdad, the United States and Iraq are making a major push to fight arms smuggling and infiltration from Iran in the run-up to national elections here in January.  The Iran-Iraq border in Maysan Province is straddled by more than 150 miles of desert and marshland that the US and Iraqi militaries allege to be a vital support corridor for Iraqi Shiite militants with ties to Iran. [more]

Honduras sunk into further disarray after President Manuel Zelaya, ousted in a military-backed coup, said a US-brokered deal to end the nation’s four-month crisis had collapsed. [more]

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About Nick Ducote
Nick is an undergraduate at Louisiana Tech University studying political science and history.

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