History As It Happens

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The Cold War began about 80 years ago. It ended more than 35 years ago, leading to triumphalist attitudes in the West. Who started it? Who really "won"? Why are we still debating this? Because Cold War history continues to shape our world — and our minds. Our guests are historians Daniel Bessner and Vladislav Zubok.

Bessner teaches history at the University of Washington. He’s the co-host of American Prestige and the co-editor, with Michael Brenes, of Cold War Liberalism: Power in a Time of Emergency.

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On Tuesday, Oct. 27, Israelis will vote in what some consider the most consequential election in the country's history.

It is the first election since Oct. 7, 2023, the day of the Hamas onslaught in southern Israel, and Benjamin Netanyahu, 77, hopes to remain in power despite having been indicted for war crimes by the ICC. In this episode, Israeli political scientist and leading pollster Dahlia Scheindlin discusses the country's mood and which parties are best positioned to form a new government.

Further reading:

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As inflation fuels a cost-of-living crisis, millions of Americans are getting a bitter taste of what past generations dealt with. From the mid-1960s into the Age of Reagan, high inflation (or stagflation) bedeviled economists, frustrated presidents, and shrank the horizons of middle-class Americans. And not just inflation! Policy-makers' responses also caused pain. In this episode, historian Nelson Lichtenstein delves into inflation's historical causes and pokes holes in the conventional wisdom that interest rate adjustments by an independent Federal Reserve are the wisest way to tame inflation.

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When John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, the United States would have its third accidental president.

The Southern unionist and Democrat Andrew Johnson of Tennessee at first seemed to be an ally of Republicans in the monumental task of Reconstruction, for he agreed that the Southern states could not come back unless they ratified the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. But Johnson's presidency quickly spiraled as he bitterly fought Congress over Reconstruction's control and sought to obstruct all efforts at achieving...

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If any Washington journalist can take us inside President Donald Trump's mind, it's Edward Luce. The Financial Times columnist and astute observer of American politics has frequently talked to Trump over the phone about the Iran war, the U.S. economy, and much else. Does the president have a plan, or is he winging it? Luce explains Trump's thinking as his second term collapses around him.

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On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a powerful address at a New York City church. "Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence" was a searing indictment of a U.S. war on a poor country. King's expansive critique of militarism and violence explained how the war was "devastating the hopes of the poor at home" by draining resources from LBJ's Great Society programs. The cause of civil rights, argued King, was not separate from antiwar activism.

Where are such voices today? Ou...

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The 9/11 families are still awaiting their day in court. In lawsuits, hundreds of victims’ relatives and injured survivors claim that Saudi government employees directly and knowingly assisted Osama bin Laden's hijackers and fueled al-Qaeda’s development by funding Islamic charities that exported a radical strain of Islam to places like Afghanistan.

What did the Saudi government know, if anything, about the plot? Why did Islamic charities export Wahhabism to the Muslim world? Who was Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi intelligence asset who...

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Nicaragua has a dictator for life. President Daniel Ortega, 80, announced the country won’t hold elections anytime soon, underscoring his effort to extend his nearly 20-year rule and dashing the opposition's hopes that he might allow a modicum of democracy, according to the Associated Press. Few expected next year's election to be free and fair, but Ortega won't even uphold the pretense.

Who are Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas, a leftist revolutionary movement founded in the early 1960s? Why is Or...

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Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei remains invisible more than 7 months into an existential war for the regime's survival. He's yet to be seen in public and was reportedly seriously wounded on the war's first day in an air strike that killed his father.

So, who is running Iran? Who is directing the war or making decisions at the negotiating table? Our guest is Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute. He is an expert on U.S...

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When Franklin Delano Roosevelt entered the White House in 1933, the country was paralyzed by the Great Depression and fascist jackboots were trampling democracy in Europe. As the 1930s wore on, the president and the American people came to see fascism as not only a threat to societies on the other side of the Atlantic, but as a danger to the American way of life, too. But what to do about it?

How did FDR prepare the country for what...

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The Middle East is undergoing transformative changes. It's difficult, if not impossible, to see where things will end up. What is clear, however, is that political Islam — what the scholar Mohammed Ayoob says was "the dominant ideological challenger to the region’s authoritarian political systems" — is declining. Public confidence that Islamist movements, whether radical or pragmatic, can affect positive change for their societies is low. What might emerge instead?

Our guest is Nathan Brown, who teaches political science and intern...

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Scientists sequenced Thomas Jefferson’s genome from three strands of his hair for a project led by the Smithsonian Institution to prove that Jefferson fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings.

According to The New York Times, researchers used cutting-edge techniques to extract and sequence the DNA, then compared it with DNA samples from 13 living Hemings and Jefferson family descendants.

This story is, in some ways, old news. The allegations that Jefferson had an enslaved mistress appeared when he was pr...

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In leafy Meridian Hill Park in Washington, D.C., there stands a bronze statue of the fifteenth president of the United States. Only an inscription etched in the surrounding marble identifies its subject: BUCHANAN.

Yes, a statue to the terrible James Buchanan, who interfered in a notorious Supreme Court ruling, consistently took the side of the Southern Slave Power, and barely lifted a finger to save the Union after seven states seceded on his watch.

Is it fair to lambast this...

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As some Israeli government ministers call for the "voluntary migration" of all Palestinians from Gaza, the term ethnic cleansing is back in the news. Before the 1990s, international institutions and mainstream political figures seldom used the term. Then came the Serb atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia, and ethnic cleansing gained wide acceptance.

What does it mean? Does it have a legal grounding? Or is it a euphemism for genocide? Our guest is sociologist Martin Shaw, a leading gen...

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A special tribunal in The Hague convicted a hero of Kosovo's independence struggle of war crimes. Hashim Thaci was sentenced to 25 years for the crimes of arbitrary detention, torture, and murder. Three other former Kosovo Liberation Army figures were also convicted for targeting ethnic Albanians whom they suspected of collaborating with the Serbian invaders in the late 1990s.

The wheels of justice turn slowly, and in the arena of international law, successful war crimes prosecutions are difficult. So, what happened in Kosovo as the...

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Vladimir Putin and the Russian foreign policy establishment's goal is not to outlast the West only in Ukraine, but to create an alternate world order of anti-Western countries, a world where Russia can evade sanctions, throw around its influence, and disseminate its propaganda to receptive audiences. This is according to political scientist Hanna Notte, the author of 'We Shall Outlast Them: Putin's Global Campaign to Defeat the West.'

Is it working? Moscow's global efforts have produced mixed results while, says Notte...

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The Constitution created what were supposed to be three coequal branches, and only Congress was given the authority to declare war. Yet we are living in the age of the imperial presidency — of endless war, executive orders, government secrecy, and a lack of accountability. These are all fit for a monarchy instead of a republic.

How did we get here? What structures led to the rise of the imperial presidency? What decisions led to this unintended consequence undermining the American democratic experiment?

...

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New developments in Yemen bode poorly for global oil flows or a peaceful settlement of the Greater Middle East's raging conflicts. The Associated Press reports the Houthi rebels have seized two strategic islands in the southern Red Sea, bolstering their ability to control a critical maritime shipping route.

The Houthis’ latest gains in their ongoing conflict with Saudi Arabia follow the seizure of the Red Sea port of Mokha and a strategic island last week. The fighting is putting even more upward pressure on gl...

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History As It Happens is "on location" in this episode. Host Martin Di Caro visits Thomas Jefferson's historic Monticello estate in Virginia to talk to Brandon Dillard, its director of historic interpretation and audience engagement. Their conversation covers Monticello's new America250-related exhibits and the challenge of interpreting the past in hyper-partisan times.

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Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, 2001, nineteen al-Qaeda hijackers working for Osama bin Laden killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington, and a Pennsylvania field. The U.S. responded by launching a poorly defined war across the Greater Middle East that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the displacement of millions more, and the destruction of U.S. credibility and prestige. The war would be defined by the failures that flowed from long-term occupations and a preemptive invasion, the use of torture...

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Maybe U.S. presidents need to read a how-to manual on avoiding quagmires. Or maybe it wouldn't make much difference anyway. To understand why the United States keeps being sucked into protracted conflicts in the Greater Middle East, we must look beyond individual decision-making, says Emma Ashford of the Stimson Center in Washington. Instead, we must weigh the structural causes and incentives that have led one administration after another into battle in the name of protecting U.S. interests.

Emma Ashford is...

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Since the aftermath of the Second World War and the establishment of an independent Jewish state of Israel in 1948, U.S. foreign policy has been in the "grip of a foreign power," according to the authors of "Israel's Lobby."

Authors Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick contend that the lobby has successfully pressured generations of U.S. leaders to set aside American interests in favor of Israeli interests, even though the two are often not aligned. Today the lobby — which consists of dozens of or...

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Since the New York real estate developer-turned-realty TV star Donald Trump entered politics a decade ago, his personality has dominated Americans' lives. Where did Trump's malignant charisma come from? Where did he learn the art of the deal and how to master the media? And what about the ways of the liar, the cheat, and the bully? From his mentor, Roy Cohn.

Our guest is Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer Kai Bird, the author with Susan Goldmark of 'American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark...

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Sixty years ago, in late August 1966, a remarkable film premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo's 'The Battle of Algiers' portrayed the brutal realities of the Algerian war for independence against colonial France. It has inspired revolutionaries fighting for national liberation ever since. Historian Martin Evans, an expert on empires at the University of Sussex, explores why Pontecorvo's masterpiece has endured and still resonates.

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Some 23 years after the U.S. invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein, the country's stability and sovereignty remain compromised.

Washington continues to demand that Baghdad disarm powerful, Iran-backed Shia militias — a promise the new Iraqi prime minister Ali al-Zaidi made during his July visit to the Oval Office. The war over the Strait of Hormuz is exerting even more pressure on Iraq's delicate balancing act.

Here to explain Iraq's di...

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Myanmar is not a country. It is a place of endless violence and ethnic strife, with its 50 million people trapped in another civil war, now in its fifth year, with no end in sight. Since its independence from Great Britain after the Second World War, Burma (now Myanmar) has been ruled mostly by military juntas. Every generation or so, a better future has seemed possible, but democracy and economic prosperity have never been allowed to blossom.

Our guest is historian Maitrii Aung-Thwin...

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Since returning to the White House in 2025, President Trump has threatened to annex Greenland by force, mused about making Canada the 51st state, claimed he was ready to retake the Panama Canal, and turned Venezuela into a vassal by kidnapping its leader. Trump is trying to turn the clock back to a time when annexation (or territorial expansionism) was a norm in international relations. Since its birth, the United States has been expansionist, but its conduct has taken on different forms over time.

In this episode, author...

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The Oslo Peace Process seems like ancient history. Today, a truly just and durable peace between Israel and the Palestinians appears impossible, as Gaza has been destroyed and Jewish settler-terrorists rampage through the West Bank with the support of their state. President Trump's vision for Gaza may render any surviving Palestinians as second-class citizens.

A quarter-century ago, in the summer of 2000, President Bill Clinton brought Israeli and Palestinian leaders together at Camp David to try to resolve the most difficult problems standing in the way of peace. To this day...

This special episode features an exclusive interview with United States Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat and potential 2028 presidential candidate.

Congress' attempts to end the Trump administration's Iran war fiasco have thus far come up short. The same goes for the movement to end U.S. weapons and bulldozer shipments to the Israeli government, which has used American military hardware to destroy Gaza and southern Lebanon, killing tens of thousands of people in the process.

In this conversation with Sen. Van Hollen, we cover the War Powers Act and Iran, unrestrained executive power, the...

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The American way of war is broken. Like many of his White House predecessors, Donald Trump is stuck in a stalemate of his own making. In Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq — to name four major wars — the president who went to war was unable to extricate the U.S. from the morass. It was up to his successor to salvage something from the wreckage of U.S. credibility and prestige.

Our guest is Will Walldorf, who teaches in the Department of Politics and...

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The Trump administration is attempting to topple Cuba's government through economic warfare.

An oil embargo and other punitive measures have led to severe consequences, including massive blackouts and water shortages. Ordinary Cubans are suffering, yet both they and their communist government are persevering — at least for now. The New York Times reports the CIA has established a secret task force to increase the pressure. The Cold War may be over, but U.S.-Cuba relations are frozen in time.

What explains more than six decades of ho...

The world is aflame with endless wars and racial strife. Some societies are tearing themselves apart as mass migration fuels a nationalist backlash. Since the nineteenth century, ethnic nationalism has been a potent force, galvanizing peoples — imagined nations — around shared myths and historical truths.

Our guest is Sune Haugbølle, an expert on global political sociology. He specializes in social memory, the history of radical movements, and transnational solidarity at Roskilde University in Denmark.

He is the author of War and Memory in Lebanon (Cambridge Middle East Studies).

Further listening:

The Nakba...

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This is the 70th year of Sudanese independence, but there is little to celebrate and much to lament as the country continues to tear itself apart. Three major civil wars have consumed 43 years of Sudan's seven decades, not counting the many years of violence and genocide in Darfur from 2003.

The current war has entered its fourth year with no prospect of peace. Recent fighting has drawn the world's attention to the central Sudanese city of El Obeid, where thousands...

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The precarious international consensus on nuclear non-proliferation is cracking. The Trump administration announced a civilian nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia — long sought by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — which experts fear could lead to the Saudis pursuing nuclear weapons in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The deal allows for the kingdom to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium on its own soil.

In this episode, Joe Cirincione explains the potential danger to the U.S.-led nuclear order.

Recommended reading:

Tr...

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President Trump seems helpless. All the bombs and missiles he flings at Iran cannot solve his problems — problems he created by attacking Iran on the magical belief that the Islamic regime would crumble and be replaced by people whom Trump could control. It was a fantasy, and now, as the war enters its sixth month, Iran maintains a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz. The situation is in limbo, floating somewhere between war and peace — with little hope that a new nuclear accord with Iran is p...

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Was it possible for the leaders of the new American republic to end slavery entirely? Was the violent dispossession of Native peoples inevitable? These questions are integral to the eminent historian Joseph Ellis' new book about what he calls the two major failures of the revolutionary generation, "The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding."

Other questions to consider while listening are whether the Constitution consisted of compromises over slavery or capitulations to Southern slave interests. Also, whether Native Americans' views of...

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Is Congress irreparably broken or temporarily stuck as it fails to act as a co-equal branch of government willing to check a rogue executive? And how did it get this way? In the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, the winds of political change swept young, ambitious reformers into the halls of Congress, and they left an important legislative legacy. But in the decades since, Congress' potential to affect meaningful change — and prevent unnecessary wars — has been whittled away. Maya Kornberg is here to explain why.

Maya...

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Have too many liberals and leftists given up on patriotism? Have they forgotten the tradition of social movements striving for equal political and economic rights as expressed in the country's founding ideals? Historian Michael Kazin says these ideals can be used "as both a benchmark against which to measure how far we have fallen short and a means of articulating the Constitution's vision of a more perfect union."

Michael Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University and is the author of "...

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Now well into its fifth year, Russia's invasion of Ukraine appears to be a stalemate on the ground while the combatants seek a decisive edge in the air with drones and missiles. Diplomacy to end the war seems to be going nowhere. No one can say with any certainty how or when the war may end. Do the war's origins point toward an exit? Anatol Lieven is our guest.

Anatol Lieven is Director of the Eurasia Program and the Andrew Bacevich chair in American Diplomatic...

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Herman Melville's masterpiece Moby-Dick has something to teach us about democracy, citizenship, and the rule of law. A flop when published in the mid-nineteenth century, Moby-Dick has long been considered a quintessential American novel — an epic adventure story layered with allegory. In this episode, historian Michael Kimmage revisits the novel with a focus on the character Starbuck, the first mate who clashes with Captain Ahab over his mad pursuit of the white whale.

Recommended reading:

Citizen Starbuck, or Democracy and the Whale by Mi...