"The 'Putinization of US Foreign Policy'"

"Trump's fear of foreign wars seems to be waning. He was clearly thrilled by the drama of the Maduro operation, and the efficiency of the American soldiers who carried it out. For an ageing president, growing more petulant, irascible and incoherent with every day in office–facing diminishing popularity and desperate to distract attention from the Epstein child-trafficking scandal–a tightening embrace of military power is an ominous development."

Julian Borger at The Guardian reacts to Donald Trump's invasion of Venezuela.

As does Jan-Werner Müller.

As does Mona Charen at The Bulwark.

"We Presume We Understand It as Long as We're Not Asked to Explain It, but It Becomes Inexplicable as Soon as We're Put to the Test"

"As with climate change, however, the only thing more difficult than such an effort would be trying to live with the alternative. Whiteness may seem inevitable and implacable, and Toni Morrison surely had it right when she said that the world 'will not become unracialised by assertion'. (To wake up tomorrow and decide I am no longer white would help no one.) Even so, after 350 years, it remains the case, as Nell Irvin Painter argues, that whiteness 'is an idea, not a fact'. Not alone, and not without much work to repair the damage done in its name, it still must be possible to change our minds."

In a 2021 Guardian article, Robert P. Baird explores the "invention of whiteness."

"Exploited in the Extreme, and Getting Nothing in Return"

"Imperial-colonial relationships are not limited to those between European empires and colonies elsewhere in the world but occurred extensively within Europe itself. Irish and Ukrainian historians explore these intra-European examples in a forthcoming book which argues that understanding this better undermines the usual normative distinction between good western European civic and bad eastern European ethnic nationalisms. Post-colonial and othering relationships apply in Europe too."

Paul Gillespie at The Irish Times compares Ukraine and Russia to Ireland and Britain.

Burmese Daze

"Orwell may have felt he ought to be on the other side of the prison bars, but he did not seek penance by surrendering himself to the police or prison for his sins; those institutions had no moral legitimacy. Rather, he felt he would find expiation in understanding and giving voice to an oppressed community. What if all police officers heeded the pangs of conscience as Orwell did? It is time for us too to recover the cooperative values that policing seeks to suppress and find community-based forms of moving forward, of redeeming the past and keeping societies safe and just."

At Slate, Priya Satia discusses George Orwell's experience with policing.

"Less a Contradiction Than an Example of the Unintended Effects of American Foreign Policy Rhetoric"

"Wilson was undoubtedly a racist—even by the standards of his time. His administration resegregated several federal agencies; he wrote sympathetically about the Ku Klux Klan; and he described Southern Black people as an 'ignorant and inferior race' who couldn't be trusted with political power.
"At the same time, his advocacy of 'self-determination' unintentionally inspired people fighting colonialism and European imperialism around the world."

At Slate, Joshua Keating calls Woodrow Wilson the "Accidental Anti-Imperialist."

Imperialist or Nationalist?

"To make empire the dominant story in British history is to misunderstand the nature of Britain, its elite and its exploitative power, and its persistent racism. The racism of Oswald Mosley and Enoch Powell, for all its roots in the past, was a self-consciously post-imperial nationalist one. Imperialism reluctantly granted British Caribbean people UK citizenship. These rights were stripped away by nationalists, right down to Theresa May–this was the essence of the Windrush scandal. People voted for Brexit not because they were imperialists, but because they were nostalgic for a national Britain. They were certainly not voting for the return to free immigration from the old imperial territories. The history that seems to matter most to Brexiteers is a particular account of the second world war, one that is decidedly nationalist."

David Edgerton at The Guardian writes that the British "should not admit the framing of the debate about history as a question of a dark imperial history sullying a bright national story."

"We Should Probably Remember Jamestown at Least Once a Year"

"The story of Jamestown portrays the United States as a runaway business venture fueled by the greed of capitalists, the desperation of the poor, and the misery of slaves. Jamestown shows that the United States, from its very inception, has treated natural and human resources as equally inexhaustible, and equally expendable. It shows the arrogance of distant elites whose knowledge of their own incompetence is rendered painless by their indifference to human consequences. It's obvious from the historical record that many of the ordinary people involved in this enterprise did not like where it was going, but did not know how to stop it."

Brianna Rennix at Current Affairs argues that Americans should focus on 1607 more than 1620.

"That Opened Up a Whole New Way of Looking at the Industrial Revolution"

"Satia couldn't understand the apparent contradiction between Quaker tenets and the gun-making Galtons, who strived in the industry for decades without incurring the church's disapproval. When the church did object at the local level in Birmingham, in 1795, Galton argued that two were compatible, that living at the heart of manufacturing made his involvement with the violence of war unavoidable. Galton's arguments wouldn't prove strong enough for the church; eventually he was disowned by the religious group. As Satia dug deeper into Galton's history, her book became a much larger story of how warfare and firearm production was a hidden force in the Industrial Revolution, reshaping the British economy, the Empire, and the world."

Lorraine Boissoneault at Smithsonian interviews Priya Satia about Satia's new book, Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution.

"'Coffee Cultivation Merely Extends The System Of Colonial Oppression,' Recite Nation's 180,000 Radicalized Starbucks Employees After 3-Hour Anti-Bias Training"

"'Don't feel pressured to buy anything, though. You're welcome to just sit at a table or use the bathroom to wash the blood of the working class off your hands.'"

From The Onion.

"It Cannot Be Blindly Quoted, as a Visionary Paean to Simple Virtues"

"And yet it's easy to forget that Democracy in America was not written under President Lincoln, but under President Jackson, in the America of the Trail of Tears, and it can only feel strange that a book from this moment in time is the one frequently hailed as capturing some of America's finest characteristics. True, Tocqueville, an abolitionist, both condemned African-American slavery and Native American dispossession, and did so eloquently. Yet his democracy stops long before them, in his elegiac passages of the happy slaves at work in the fields, or in his conviction that 'the Indians will never civilize themselves, or that it will be too late when they may be inclined to make the experiment.' One would happily toil, one would quietly vanish—that was Tocqueville's shrug."

Ben Judah at The American Interest questions blithe understandings of Alexis de Tocqueville.

"In Conversation With Each Other"?

"Squanto and Pocahontas were raised in different regions possessing distinct cultural and historical traditions, languages and politics. The colonists who established the first permanent English settlements in America did not encounter some undifferentiated, unsophisticated, inarticulate Natives, but specific historic actors who must be viewed in the context of their own times, places, and individual life experiences. They were multi-lingual, politically and culturally aware, and they reacted in different ways, alternatively embracing and rejecting distinct elements of European tradition."

E. M. Rose at The Junto wonders if Squanto and Pocahontas met in London in 1616.

The Roots of D'Souza's Rage

"Hart's brand of imperial nostalgia pervades the wider National Review conservatism that shaped D’Souza’s worldview. A foundational text in this weltanschauung is James Burnham's Suicide of the West (1964), which D'Souza cited in his book What’s So Great About America (2002). Thematically, Burnham pioneered many of the themes D'Souza has expanded upon in books like The Roots of Obama's Rage (2010) and Obama’s America (2012): the insidiousness of white liberal guilt in disarming the West, the underappreciated virtues of imperialism and manifest destiny, the need to affirm the unequivocal cultural superiority of Western civilization. Among the founding editors of National Review, Burnham was second only to William F. Buckley in importance. His book is key to understanding the contradictions of D'Souza's role in the conservative movement as a non-white advocate for 'the West.'"


In The New Republic, Jeet Heer investigates Dinesh D'Souza's pro-colonialist mindset.


And in New York, Jonathan Chait investigates Rudolph Giuliani.


As does Ezra Klein at Vox.


William Saletan in Slate argues that Obama's real enemies are Republicans.

James K. Romney?

"Romney, of course, isn’t planning to expand the continental United States, but there is an underlying similarity between Polk’s approach and his own. There are two kinds of nationalism that American administrations have promoted. One kind, practiced by Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, has stressed national unification through the elimination of invidious differences of wealth or power. The other kind, practiced by Polk, Reagan, and George W. Bush, has stressed national unity through patriotic achievements abroad. The latter kind of nationalism has either ignored or tolerated or even exacerbated internal differences among Americans."

John Judis in The New Republic explores why Mitt Romney's advisors have been comparing their candidate to President James K. Polk.

As does Tom Chaffin at The Atlantic.

"A Bizarre Model to Follow for Fostering Stability in Today’s World"

"While it is true that colonial policy was often formulated in London, it is equally true that Britain could become the greatest power on earth only by delegating power—either to Britons who served as imperial representatives or to local forces intent on doing the empire’s bidding. But Kwasi Kwarteng, in this fine book, argues that the empire granted far too much authority to the wrong people. 'Accidents and decisions made on a personal, almost whimsical, level have had a massive impact on international politics,' Kwarteng writes."

Isaac Chotiner in The New York Times reviews Kwasi Kwarteng's Ghosts of Empire: Britain’s Legacies in the Modern World.

Some Men Worked while Others Snored

"A second tragedy in the immediate background of the 1892 Columbus celebration took place in New Orleans. There, on March 14, 1891–only 10 weeks after the Wounded Knee Massacre–11 Italians were lynched in prison by a mob led by prominent Louisiana politicians. A trial for the murder of the New Orleans police chief had ended in mistrials for three of the Italians and the acquittal of the others who were brought to trial. Unhappy with the verdict and spurred on by fear of the 'Mafia' (a word that had only recently entered American usage), civic leaders organized an assault on the prison to put the Italians to death. This episode was also troubling to the U.S. Government. These were legally innocent men who had been killed. But Italians were not very popular, and even Theodore Roosevelt was quoted as saying that he thought the New Orleans Italians 'got what they deserved.' A grand jury was summoned, but no one was charged with a crime. President Harrison, who would proclaim the Columbus holiday the following year, was genuinely saddened by the case, and over the objections of some members of congress he paid reparations to the Italian government for the deaths of its citizens."

William J. Connell in The American Scholar defends Columbus Day.

An Unbroken Agony

"Haiti's chronic impoverishment began at its birth in 1804, when, having overthrown its French rulers in a bloody, 12-year slave revolt, the newborn nation was subjected to crippling blockades and embargoes. This economic strangulation continued until 1825, when France offered to lift embargoes and recognize the Haitian Republic if the latter would pay restitution to France—for loss of property in Haiti, including slaves—of 150 million gold francs. The sum, about five times Haiti's export revenue for 1825, was brutal, but Haiti had no choice: Pay up or perish over many more years of economic embargo, not to mention face French threats of invasion and reconquest. To pay, Haiti borrowed money at usurious rates from France, and did not finish paying off its debt until 1947, by which time its fate as the Western Hemisphere's poorest country had been well and truly sealed."

Tunku Varadarajan in The Daily Beast argues that France owes Haiti reparations.