History As It Happens

President Joseph Biden's decision to pause bomb shipments to Israel over its planned invasion of Rafah provoked a curious charge from Republican legislators. They accused Biden of "abandoning" Israel despite his steadfast support of the Jewish state not only for much of the past seven months (since the 10/7 Hamas attack) but also for most of his decades-long career in Washington. The truth is that...

The American diplomat George Kennan was the architect of the Cold War "containment" policy toward the Soviet Union. Writing in the late 1940s, Kennan viewed the USSR as a hostile expansionist enemy, but one that would be willing to compromise if checked by the United States. Containment did not mean the U.S. could or should militarily crush the Soviets. Can Kennan's ideas be applied to Vladimir Pu...

Campus antiwar protests are disturbing some Jewish students, administrators, and politicians by chanting an Arabic word meaning uprising, intifada. Since Israel began its military occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, Palestinians have waged two uprisings: in 1987 and 2000. Both were crushed by the IDF. In this episode, Khaled Elgindy of the Middle East Institute delves into the history a...

This is the third episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The most recent episode, The Election of 1992 , was published on April 4. Audio excerpts of "Civil War" are courtesy A24 Films. Democracy and the Constitution are on the ballot. The fate of the republican is at stake. The potential for violence festers as Americans view their political foes as existe...

Is fascism what's ailing the American body politic today? Are Donald Trump and the Republican Party fascists or has fascism been around much longer, going back to the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow? In this episode, historian Daniel Bessner, the co-host of American Prestige , discusses what has been a preoccupation among public intellectuals and commentators since Trump entered presidential politics in...

Zionism was a national liberation movement developed by European Jews in the late nineteenth century. Their early vision of a national homeland was fulfilled about half a century later with the creation of the independent state of Israel, which turned a majority Arab land into a Jewish state. Today, pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses routinely denounce Zionism as a violent colonial pro...

The Philippines' oldest ally is the United States. Bound by a mutual defense treaty more than 70 years old, the two nations are aligning against China's aggressive behavior in the vitally important South China Sea. If the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte marked a low point in relations, new president Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is renewing the alliance with the U.S. while also courting other nations in the...

After Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982, President Ronald Reagan grew infuriated by Israel's siege of Beirut because of thousands of civilian casualties. His administration cut off some arms shipments to Israel, and Reagan himself tore into Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to convince him to withdraw. Today, President Joseph Biden is being criticized for failing to effectively exert U.S. pr...

Former President Donald Trump claims he is absolutely immune from criminal charges as he tries to stop Special Counsel Jack Smith from prosecuting him. Trump is to stand trial for attempting to overturn the 2020 election, an effort that culminated in the Jan. 6 riot attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Supreme Court will hear arguments in Trump's immunity claim on April 25. In an amicus brief filed wit...

By focusing our attention on only what's happening at the U.S.-Mexico border, we cannot hope to understand the causes of migration or its full consequences. U.S. authorities are encountering record-shattering numbers of migrants crossing into the United States because their home countries continue to lack political and economic stability. The origins of the crisis can be found in decades of politi...

The Islamic State-Khorasan is forging a reputation for ferocious terrorist violence. Its gunmen massacred 137 people at a Moscow concert hall in March. In January, the group's jihadists slaughtered dozens at a memorial service in Iran. In August 2021, ISIS-K was behind the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. soldiers and 170 Afghan civilians. Who are these guys? Who is their l...

The U.S. invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein more than 21 years ago, yet the U.S. is still at war there. Why? Against whom? Will American forces ever leave the country U.S. leaders claimed was liberated way back in mid-2003? In this episode, Chatham House analyst Renad Mansour talks about the armed groups that have attacked U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, triggering tit-for-tat retaliatory airst...

This is the second episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The first installment, The Election of 1980, was published on March 4. A Republican incumbent faced a Democratic challenger trying to end 12 years of GOP control of the White House. A right-wing insurgent and a Texas businessman tried to upend the status quo by appealing to populist grievances again...

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died 20 years ago. A generation later, his people appear no closer to achieving their national aspirations than they did during his lifetime. Arafat was reviled by some for PLO terrorism; others celebrated him as a freedom fighter. For years he tried violent resistance; in the 1990s he signed the Oslo Accords. Neither produced Palestinian statehood. His legacy also...

How old is too old to run the country? Donald Trump will turn 78 in June. The incumbent Joseph Biden will turn 82 shortly after the November election. Biden is already the oldest president in U.S. history, succeeding Trump who had been the oldest (70) at inauguration in 2017. Rarely have age and mental fitness been such prominent issues in a presidential campaign. But past candidates for the White...

As military aid remains stalled in Congress, Ukraine is facing shortages of weapons and ammo as its military forces fight a war of attrition against the Russian invaders. Moscow now has more than 400,000 troops in Ukraine which also faces a manpower shortage. In this episode, Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft argues time is not on Ukraine's side, so Kyiv and its West...

At a campaign rally in Ohio, Donald Trump said some things that, depending on your perspective, were either appalling or patriotic. He defended the Jan. 6 rioters as "hostages," called some migrants crossing the southern border "animals," and warned there would be a "bloodbath" if he isn't elected in November -- although his defenders pointed out he was referring to the U.S. auto industry which, a...

Haiti is collapsing under gang-fueled lawlessness. The central government has lost control of most of the capital, Port-au-Prince. The de facto prime minister Ariel Henry has agreed to resign under pressure. Ordinary citizens are being kidnapped by gangs and held for ransom. They have been gunned down in wild shootouts, and are desperate for basic necessities. Caribbean neighbors have agreed to cr...

Throughout his long political career -- as a diplomat, Likud party leader, or Israeli prime minister -- Benjamin Netanyahu has obsessed over his country's security while vehemently opposing Palestinian statehood and U.S.-Iran rapprochement. He promised his people they could be safe, have settlements, and co-exist with Palestinians marooned in permanent statelessness. Now 74 years old and fighting...

This is the follow-up episode to the one published on Feb. 6 previewing the oral arguments in the Colorado ballot case,  Trump v. Anderson. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state may not disqualify a candidate for federal office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, whose Reconstruction-era framers sought to bar anyone from holding office who had violated their oath by engaging in insurrection...

In power for nearly a quarter century, Vladimir Putin, 71, is a modern-day tsar -- an autocrat largely unaccountable to his people -- except he has no known successor. Whether the Russian president rules for another week or another decade, there will come a time when he's gone. Who might replace him is a mystery. Also unclear is how Putin might be replaced: by a violent coup? Some legal way under...

Hey, 2024 is an election year! This is the first episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The moralistic incumbent expressed anguish over soulless materialism. The optimistic challenger promised Americans they could overcome any and all problems. The election of 1980 pitted Democrat Jimmy Carter against Republican Ronald Reagan as Americans struggled with st...

Alexei Navalny was Russia's most prominent and effective opposition leader, an anti-corruption crusader and democratic politician who entered public life as a provocative blogger around the same time his future persecutor, Vladimir Putin, became Russia's president. Navalny died inside an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16. He was 47. He leaves a legacy, setting an example of how to challenge the regim...

In early 1964, Stanley Kubrick's black comedy Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb premiered in theaters. Sixty years later, it remains one of Kubrick's greatest films, a commentary on the madness of the idea that anyone could win a nuclear exchange. If you watch the film today unaware of the cultural and political milieu in which it was made, you might not get the...

In every war, there is a battle over its origins. In this episode, historians Michael Kimmage and Mark Galeotti discuss Kimmage's new book, "Collisions," which seeks to explain why the excessive optimism of the early 1990s about Russia's path toward democracy and market economics never materialized. Moreover, Kimmage's narrative explains what led to each major collision between Russia and Ukraine;...