Founded in 1967 - Incorporated in 1972
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, [...]
Crossposted from Michael Hunt’s Washington and the World blog. There is good reason to pity the poor historian, who has been tested especially severely during the recent McChrystal-Obama imbroglio as the eruption of historical parallels and lessons have ranged from the wrong-headed to the off-kilter. Henry Kissinger is a good example of the wrong-headed. This [...]
In Afghanistan at the moment (February 2010), U.S. Marines, allied troops, and Afghan government soldiers are embarked on an offensive at a town called Marja in Helmand province. American commander-in-chief General Stanley A. McChrystal here makes the first expression of the strategy that underlies the appeal for reinforcements that led to the Obama administration “surge” [...]