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George F. Kennan’s Cold War

When historians discuss American actions in the Cold War, usually the first texts they cite are the Long Telegram, which Kennan composed in February, 1946, and the so-called X article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” which he published, in Foreign Affairs, a year and a half later. Vietnam seems the lineal offspring of those pieces. Was Kennan misunderstood? The question is at the heart of any assessment of his career.

Read Menand’s review of Gaddis’ bio of Kennan

OAH October 2010

Cold War Edition. Contents:

7. A Literature So Immense: The Historiography of Anticommunism
Marc J. Selverstone

13. The Cold War and the Struggle for Civil Rights
Jeff Woods

19. History and Haggar Pants: the Cold War on Tape
Mitchell Lerner

25. “I am too young to die”
Donna Alvah

The Paradox of the New Elite

It’s a puzzle: one dispossessed group after another — blacks, women, Hispanics and gays — has been gradually accepted in the United States, granted equal rights and brought into the mainstream.

At the same time, in economic terms, the United States has gone from being a comparatively egalitarian society to one of the most unequal democracies in the world.

The two shifts are each huge and hugely important: one shows a steady march toward democratic inclusion, the other toward a tolerance of economic stratification that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.

It’s a surprising contradiction. Is the confluence of these two movements a mere historical accident? Or are the two trends related?

China's Communist party: Searching for its softer side

In the past several days, China has been doing much soul-searching. More than 300 of the Communist Party’s most powerful leaders met in Beijing and discussed ways of boosting the nation’s “cultural soft power”: an admission that for all the country’s economic prowess it lacks the magnetic draw of a country like America. Ordinary Chinese, however, have been more preoccupied with a hit-and-run accident that caused the death of a two-year-old girl. A dearth of what one Chinese newspaper commentary called “moral soft power” has been widely blamed for her demise and the seeming cold-heartedness of passersby.

Guess Who! Vladimir Putin will return to the Kremlin


Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, told a congress of the ruling United Russia party that Vladimir Putin would return to the Kremlin after a presidential election in March 2012, and Mr Putin informed them that Mr Medvedev would stay on as prime minister and leader of United Russia. The applause from bureaucrats whose only concern is to stay close to the rent-distributing centre grew louder when Mr Putin and Mr Medvedev told them that they had agreed this arrangement several years ago.

Revisiting the Hoover Dam: A great feat of engineering, but no panacea for modern ills

As to whether America could build the dam today, Michael Hiltzik, its modern historian, says in his book “Colossus” that it probably could not. It was hard enough back then to overcome the rivalries of the seven states involved, but at least nobody gave a fig for the down-river rights of the south-western Indians, let alone the Mexicans, or the creatures whose habitats were eradicated when the river was dammed. Today a rampart of federal legislation, such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, would block the way.

The Audio Book Club on The Killer Angels

In this week’s audio book club, Yale historian David Blight talks about the significance of the hit novel The Killer Angels with Emily Bazelon and David Plotz. Published in 1974, the book won a Pulitzer Prize but didn’t become a best-seller until two decades later. What’s its enduring appeal? Is it pro-war or anti-war? Did it rehabilitate the reputation of Confederate commander James Longstreet at the expense of the beloved Robert E. Lee?

Lessons for Occupy Wall Street

Take a cue from the only social movement that has ever made a real dent in the nation’s extremes of wealth and poverty.

As they sort out what to do next, the Occupiers might take a page from the history of American labor, the only social movement that has ever made a real dent in the nation’s extremes of wealth and poverty. For more than half a century, between the 1870s and the 1930s, labor organizers and strikers regularly faced levels of violence all but unimaginable to modern-day activists. They nonetheless managed to create a movement that changed the nation’s economic institutions and reshaped ideas about wealth, inequality, and Wall Street power. Along the way, they also helped to launch the modern civil liberties ethos, insisting that the fight to tame capitalism went hand in hand with the right to free speech.

Read the whole article at Slate

21st Century Slavery

Today, 27 million men, women and children are held, sold and trafficked as slaves throughout the world. In Slavery: A 21st Century Evil, Rageh Omaar embarks on a worldwide journey to uncover the truth about the flourishing 21st century slave trade. Episode by episode, his investigation will expose the brutal reality of modern slavery and unpick the reasons why this age-old evil persists.

Check out this series and the accompanying web archives from Al Jazeera

The Reckoning Blog: The Future of American Power

Thanks to a catastrophic series of decisions by presidents of both parties that radically deregulated our financial system and arrogantly dismissed the “lessons of Vietnam” as dusty, irrelevant history, the United States has shortened the period during which it will remain the dominant power in the 21st century. I know, I know, all the presidential candidates say we’re still the best! And so we are, in almost every economic and military measure. But measurements of power are like the altimeter of an aircraft: It’s not the altitude that matters, it’s the trajectory, and by now most Americans finally understand that Captain America is trending downward.

Michael Moran’s Slate Blog about The Future of American Power