History As It Happens

This is the second episode in a two-part series, Let's Rank the Presidents! Part one covered the most successful presidents in U.S. history. This episode will discuss the worst presidents (and those who fall somewhere in the middle). We've been lucky to have had some special leaders during difficult times. But our country has also elected some awful presidents, as well as men who might have succeeded if not for unforeseen crises which they wound up badly mismanaging. In this episode, scholars Jeremi Suri of the University of Texas at Austin and Jeffrey Engel of Southern Methodist University return to share their views on the presidents who occupy the bottom rungs of the White House rankings. They also discuss presidents who defy easy judgment, leaders who excelled in one area while catastrophically failing in another.

This is the first episode in a two-part series, Let's Rank the Presidents! Part one covers the most successful presidents in U.S. history. What makes a great president? Americans may agree that intelligence, influence, integrity, communication skills, vision, and successful domestic and foreign policies are among the right qualities to measure a presidential administration. But determining which presidents rate highly in these categories is a matter of endless debate, one that often reflects our own political biases rather than the actual accomplishments (or failings) of an individual leader. In this episode, scholars Jeremi Suri of the University of Texas at Austin and Jeffrey Engel of Southern Methodist University share their views on the presidents who sit at or near the top. FWIW, in its most recent survey, the Siena College Research Institute had George Washington at the top, followed by FDR and Abraham Lincoln.

Is majoritarian rule -- the bedrock of democracy -- in trouble? In this episode, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz discusses the tension between the imperative of majority rule and the necessity of protecting minority rights. The tension dates to our founding in the battle between federalists and anti-federalists. Our current problems also have antecedents in the controversy over nullification in the early 1830s and in the secession crisis of 1860-61. Today, Wilentz warns, Republican officials loyal to former President Donald Trump are deliberately eroding public confidence in the election system. They are falsely claiming the 2020 election was rigged, thereby rendering Joseph R. Biden's electoral majority "invalid." Moreover, the combination of gerrymandering and restrictive voting laws passed in several battleground states, and the threat of the filibuster to thwart voting rights legislation in the Senate, threatens to make permanent a "rule of the minority," according to the Princeton scholar.

The Japanese attack on U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor 80 years ago, the date which will live in infamy in the stirring oratory of President Franklin Roosevelt, brought the United States into a world war from which it would emerge four years later as an unrivaled economic and military power. This new global status achieved in 1945 stood in stark contrast to the state of the nation in the prewar years. In 1940 Americans were still in the throes of the Great Depression, having suffered through a decade of economic and social paralysis. In this episode, military historian Ron Milam discusses the events that placed Japan and the U.S. on the road to war. Conflict was not inevitable, and it would have seemed unnecessary in the 1930s that a dispute over China, where the U.S. had no vital strategic or material interest, should culminate in the events of Dec. 7, 1941.

Amid a national debate over history curricula and the importance of racism and slavery in shaping the American past, The 1619 Project has returned in expanded book form as an immediate bestseller. With its new and longer essays packing sweeping claims about the character of our national origins, the book expands upon the project's initial, central argument: a transhistorical white supremacy defines American society. But this is pseudo-history, according to James Oakes, a preeminent scholar of slavery and nineteenth century U.S. politics. Upon reading the new 1619 Project book, Oakes explains its errors and distortions as well as its larger purpose, which is to advance an interpretation of American history through a cynical, racial lens. This lens distorts the very issues the project purports to shine light upon, namely slavery and its relationship to capitalism.

The massing of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border is raising the specter of war between two countries that share a complex history of ethnic, linguistic, and political conflict and coexistence. Seven years after annexing Crimea and instigating a separatist revolt in eastern Ukraine, Russian president Vladimir Putin may be gambling that he can easily annex further territory -- or he might be bluffing about war to win concessions elsewhere. Whatever Mr. Putin's motivation, the possible incursion is exposing the failure of NATO's post-Cold War eastward expansion. In this episode, the Quincy Institute's Anatol Lieven discusses the deep historical roots of the Russia-Ukraine dispute -- a history lost on U.S. military analysts who advocated pushing NATO into Russia's historic backyard.

Is there an American origin story than evokes more good feelings than the first Thanksgiving? Pilgrims and Indians, having survived a harsh winter, sitting around the table, the cornucopia, and peace and harmony at Plymouth Rock. The story taught to every American school kid is a myth that obscures the nastiness of colonialism and portrays Native Americans as passive players in a sugar-coated version of the past. In this episode, historian David Silverman discusses the significance of that small feast in 1621 -- and how it became linked to the Thanksgiving holiday two centuries later -- and why relations between European settlers and native peoples disintegrated into a "bloody, complex, colonial process" with atrocities committed by all sides.

The Chinese Communist Party elevated president Xi Jinping into the pantheon of revered leaders, alongside Deng and Mao. This means the autocratic Xi is now poised to extend his rule for at least another 5-year term, as he faces no serious opposition. Like all nations and all people, China and Xi are using a revised history to chart the way forward in their rivalry with the United States, drawing on the past to guide policy today. This includes maintaining Mao's historic stature despite his fanatical campaigns that left millions dead. In this episode, Weifeng Zhong of the Mercatus Center takes us inside China's fascinating politics, and offers his analysis on the recent summit between President Biden and Xi.

In the American origin story, King George plays the role of the villain. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson accuses the monarch of establishing "an absolute tyranny" over the thirteen North American colonies. School textbooks uncritically adopted this view, teaching generations of students that George (and Parliament) trampled the colonists' rights before waging a cruel war against them. Two centuries later, newspaper articles and editorials continue to refer to George as a "power-mad little petty tyrant" and America's "last authoritarian ruler." And in the musical "Hamilton," the King is depicted as pompous and comically incompetent. What if almost none of this were true? It could mean America's origin story has more than a few holes in it. Acclaimed biographer Andrew Roberts, author of The Last King of America, says George III was no tyrant or despot, and the colonies were not oppressed under his reign. Why has George III been so badly misunderstood?

The controversy over whether Critical Race Theory is being taught to kids has turned history classes into the front line in the culture wars. While CRT seemingly came out of nowhere to become one of the most divisive issues in America -- one that is deciding the outcome of elections -- battles over history curricula are nothing new. Historian Eric Foner, who has written some of the most important books on the history of racism in the U.S., discusses why the CRT controversy could thwart the necessary teaching of uncomfortable subjects. Long before there was CRT, there was the Dunning School. Listen to learn why it remains relevant in 2021.

It has been two years since the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 entered the human population, and the world has marked another grim milestone: the death toll has surpassed more than 5 million people. That figure includes more than 750,000 Americans, of whom roughly 100,000 have died in the past three months despite the availability of safe, effective vaccines and boosters. Soon, however, Americans may reach the post-pandemic phase of this nightmarish saga. That is because herd immunity may be on the horizon, according to historian John Barry, the author of "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History." In this episode, Barry explains why at least 90 percent of the U.S. population could soon have at least some immunity to the deadly virus, and what "life after COVID" might look like.

One year after watching the Republican Party lose control of the White House and Senate as American voters made Donald Trump a one-term president, conservatives are celebrating again. Not only did Republican Glenn Youngkin defeat Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia's gubernatorial election (in a state where Joe Biden defeated Trump by 10 points), Republicans won decisive victories in other states. Moreover, some conservatives believe Youngkin's campaign may have shown the GOP how to escape Mr. Trump's grip, a necessity if the party wants to win back the White House in 2024, or so the argument goes. In this episode, anti-Trump conservative Barbara Comstock, a former two-term Republican congresswoman in Northern Virginia, shares her thoughts on what Youngkin's victory means for the party, and why she believes the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot must complete its work.

After months of negotiations between the moderate and liberal wings of the congressional Democrats, the fate of President Biden's ambitious safety net, climate, and infrastructure agendas remains in flux. Whatever deal passes, it will not be the most expansive (or expensive) legislative package desired by liberals, and definitely not another New Deal in its depth and scope. Thus, anyone who believed Biden had an FDR-like moment upon taking office, an opportunity to usher in once-in-a-generation reforms to calm the vicissitudes of life in a capitalist society, must be disappointed. In this episode, renowned scholar David M. Kennedy tells us why Biden's agenda is in trouble. It partly has to do with the basic math on Capitol Hill: Democrats have the slimmest of majorities and Republicans are nearly unanimously opposed to expanding the safety net. The more important reason has historical overtones: there have been but a few moments in U.S. history when Congress could push through fundamental reforms or major social welfare bills.

The lessons of Watergate and the story of Richard Nixon's epic fall from power are as relevant as ever. Former President Donald Trump's ongoing campaign to undermine public confidence in our elections, after trying to remain in power despite decisively losing the 2020 race, raises parallels as well as important differences with Nixon's coverup of the Watergate scandal. In this episode, journalist and historian Michael Dobbs, author of King Richard: Nixon and Watergate -- An American Tragedy, discusses what led to Nixon's unraveling. But while Nixon was discredited across the political spectrum as he resigned in disgrace, Donald Trump now rules the Republican Party despite having been impeached (and acquitted) twice.

Thirty-one Octobers ago, Germany suddenly, irreversibly reunited after more than 40 years of separation following the Second World War. The ensuing three decades have been Germany's best years, so it is easy to forget how much apprehension and outright opposition surrounded the move to end the division between West and East Germany, the latter a repressive, single-party satellite state of the USSR. In this episode, acclaimed historian Sir Ian Kershaw looks back at the fascinating series of events that made reunification a reality, and he looks ahead to Germany post-Merkel. After 16 years as chancellor, Angela Merkel is stepping aside after dedicating her career to upholding the values that the EU represents.

Haiti, synonymous with generational poverty, misrule, and human misery, is reeling from a series of calamities as grave as any the island nation of 11 million people has suffered through. In July gunmen assassinated president Jovenel Moise, whom the opposition had accused of attempting to illegally prolong his term. The political crisis remains unresolved. In August a powerful earthquake killed more than 2,000 people and injured 12,000, recalling the devastating 2010 quake and the ensuing failure of donor relief to rebuild the country. And as the year draws to the close, Port-au-Prince is considered the kidnapping capital of the world as armed gangs operate with impunity. The weak central government is unable to control the gangs in a security vacuum caused by the departure of a U.N. lead peace-keeping force in 2019. In this episode of History As It Happens, historian Alan McPherson, an expert in U.S. foreign relations with Latin America and the Caribbean, discusses the roots of Haiti's struggles, which date to its founding as the first free Black republic in 1804.

This episode was recorded live, featuring a conversation between History As It Happens host Martin Di Caro and American Historical Association executive director James Grossman at the Washington Times studios. It will appear on C-SPAN's American History TV in November. They discussed the current controversies over history curricula at America's schools: are children really being indoctrinated? Why did certain historical narratives come to dominant scholarship, such as the Dunning school's interpretation of Reconstruction? Di Caro and Grossman also covered the state of civics education in the U.S.

The death of the soldier-statesman Colin Powell threw into relief his remarkable public career and historic times, from his humble origins in the Bronx to his place in the halls of power at the transformative close of the Cold War era. When a major figure dies, historians have to weigh the person's influence on events, or how events shaped the individual. They must also weigh accomplishments against failures. In this episode, historian Jeffrey Engel reflects on the legacy of a man who once was one of the most respected, admired, and trusted figures in American life. Powell's legacy, however, was marred by his false and misleading presentation to the United Nations in 2003 about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction -- weapons that did not exist.

Today the Reserve Officers' Training Corps is considered an important pillar of the U.S. military establishment. ROTC programs are offered at approximately 1,700 colleges, providing enrollees a path of upward mobility in exchange for their military service and good citizenship. Yet its prosaic presence in American life hides its controversial origins. In this episode, a sliver of an important story -- the rise of militarism in early 20th century America -- illuminates a larger dilemma. For when the ROTC was proposed as part of the National Defense Act of 1916, antiwar activists joined critics of imperialism in what would amount to a failed attempt to convince Congress to kill the bill. An organized and vocal peace movement once existed in the U.S. It warned that "Prussianism" would harm the country's youth and the education system. In extensive congressional hearings, these voices clashed with powerful forces behind the Preparedness Movement, who argued the U.S. was unready to join combat in Europe because of the desultory state of its armed forces. In this maelstrom was born the ROTC and with it a marriage between two great American institutions: the military and academia.

In 1990 the U.S. possessed one military base in the Middle East, a small naval installation in Bahrain. In August of that year Iraq invaded Kuwait, and the U.S.-led response in the Gulf War would lay the foundation for the "forever wars" of our own time. The United States would establish dozens of permanent army, air, and naval bases from which it would launch attacks across the region over the next three decades. The U.S. military presence in the Greater Middle East is now so prosaic that it is easy to forget the time when our leaders avoided sending large forces into that volatile region, which was viewed as strategically less important than Europe and Asia in the early years of the Cold War. But that started changing in the late 1970s and culminated in a key decision by the Reagan administration in 1983: to establish CENTCOM. Andrew Bacevich, the president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, discusses the importance of creating CENTCOM, whose imperium covers 21 nations from Egypt east to Afghanistan.

China's wave of military exercises over Taiwan, which is raising the possibility of armed conflict, is overshadowing the development of the Biden administration's soft power approach to confronting China's coercive economic measures in the Indo-Pacific. In late September the White House hosted the first in-person meeting of "the Quad" leaders, where the prime ministers of Australia, Japan, and India met President Biden to coordinate action on a number of fronts. Vaccine diplomacy, climate change, infrastructure, and education were on the agenda; notably absent was any talk of military action or agreements. Following the humiliating U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the alignment of the Quad is signaling a different approach to global power dynamics, at least in East Asia, even as China's posturing toward Taiwan threatens to suck the U.S. into a potentially calamitous military confrontation. The U.S. Institute of Peace's Daniel Markey and Andrew Scobell, experts on U.S.-China relations, discuss why the U.S. cannot escape the past when it comes to Taiwan.

Christopher Columbus, a Genoese navigator, never knew America existed. He did not step foot in North America; until his death he believed he had reached the outskirts of China. Yet Columbus became an American hero, the story of his voyages woven into the U.S. origin story by historians in the early nineteenth century. Today, his public image may be at its lowest point since Americans began celebrating the anniversary of his first trans-Atlantic voyage. Since the summer of 2020, dozens of Columbus statues were removed by local officials in cities and towns nationwide. This anti-Columbus sentiment flowed from the massive protests against racism and police brutality that broke out after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Thus, if the story of America were one of racial oppression and genocide, then it began with Columbus in 1492. His history-changing accomplishments now seem to matter little in light of his failures and faults, especially at a time of highly racialized politics and Woke culture wars. In this episode, acclaimed biographer and historian Laurence Bergreen discusses the many faces of Christopher Columbus as well as the myths, good and bad, that continue to cloud our modern understanding of his life.

What comes to mind when you think of the 1770s? The Revolutionary War, probably. As the war for independence from Great Britain raged, so did the worst epidemic in colonial American history. From 1775 through the early 1780s, more than 130,000 people -- European colonists, enslaved African-Americans, Native American tribes -- died from smallpox as the virus spread across the continent. The outbreak was so terrible it compelled General George Washington to require inoculations of all Continental Army soldiers, even though inoculations carried their own risks. In this episode historian Elizabeth Fenn, the author of Pox Americana, discusses how people coped with the ravages of the disease, and why most people know so little about it today.

In his farewell address 60 years ago, President Eisenhower delivered a warning about the risks of war and the dangers of runaway military and intelligence budgets. Eisenhower himself had overseen the enormous buildup of the nation's nuclear arsenal from fewer than 300 atomic bombs in 1950 to more than 27,000 nuclear weapons by the early 1960s. The former Supreme Allied commander had become a Cold Warrior, and had given the okay for two covert operations by the CIA to topple democratically elected leaders in Iran and Guatemala. But as he prepared to exit public life in January, 1961, Eisenhower lamented some of the consequences of America's rise to global superpower because they threatened the health of democracy. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist," said the 70-year-old statesman in his oft-quoted speech. Why did we ignore Eisenhower? Historian Jeremi Suri discusses Ike's complicated legacy and the forces underpinning the militaristic approach to world affairs.

In the summer of 1971 President Richard Nixon declared "drug use public enemy number one," signaling the dramatic escalation of punitive measures against users, peddlers, and makers of narcotics at home and abroad. Fifty years later, the toll of the all-out effort to criminalize narcotics is staggering. It has cost more than a trillion taxpayer dollars, yet over the past quarter-century more than 700,000 Americans have died of drug overdoses, according to Davidson College scholar Russell Crandall, a specialist in Latin American studies and author of "Drugs and Thugs: The History and Future of America's War on Drugs." In this episode Crandall, who served as a national security aide to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, discusses the drug war's failures at a time when Americans are having an overdue reckoning on a number of fronts, from the war on terrorism to massive income inequality. Yet the drug war drags on without accountability or course correction.

Is it possible for society to forget the Holocaust? As the war during which 6 million European Jews were murdered slowly recedes into history, survivors and their death-camp liberators are dying off. The world is losing its last remaining witnesses. And as far-right leaders in some of the nations where the Holocaust was perpetrated rewrite their national histories, there is an ugly and not unrelated resurgence of anti-Semitism. So although public surveys show most Americans and Europeans know at least something about the Holocaust, this knowledge is often superficial. Moreover, school curricula on both sides of the Atlantic face an array of challenges when education the younger generations about the Nazi persecution of the Jews. In this episode, a former educator in South Carolina, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, and a political scientist based in Europe share their views about the state of Holocaust studies and the never-ending fight against anti-Semitism.

Although no one in the United States could have realized it at the time, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979 was a seminal moment in the life of a young, devout Sunni Muslim whose father was a billionaire construction magnate in Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden, then 22, was "deeply upset" when he heard an "infidel" army attacked Afghanistan, an event that would turn out to be "the most transformative of his life, launching him into a full-time job helping the Afghan resistance," writes Peter Bergen in his new biography, The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden. And few in the West noticed when bin Laden, a decade and a half later, issued his first public declaration of war against the United States, a vow of holy war repeated in 1997 during a television interview produced by this episode's guest. The journalist and al-Qaeda expert Peter Bergen discusses the purpose of his short, comprehensive biography of al-Qaeda's dead leader: to explain why and how bin Laden chose to dedicate his life to mass murder. Among the subjects covered in this episode: Islam at the heart of al-Qaeda; bin Laden's battlefield exploits in Afghanistan; the myth of CIA-bin Laden cooperation; why so few people in the West noticed him prior to 1998; and his escape from Tora Bora in late 2001.

When Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan tweeted "Vaccine mandates are un-American," he immediately received a Twitter history lesson. Commenters pointed out that none other than General George Washington of the Continental Army required smallpox inoculations for all his troops as an epidemic of the dreaded disease killed off thousands of people across the colonies. Washington's mandate worked, even if some soldiers had to be held down against their will to be inoculated. Vaccination mandates, and resistance to them, have been the norm across U.S. history, leading to the eradication or dramatic reduction of as many as 14 diseases that once ravaged humanity. In this episode, Dr. René Najera of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia discusses the history of vaccination and origins of the modern anti-vax movement at a time when President Biden is mandating shots for most of the American workforce. As summer turns to fall, more than a thousand Americans are dying daily from Covid-19, almost all of whom are unvaccinated.

A slew of unsigned opinions from the Supreme Court, made from the "shadow docket" outside its normal procedures, have refocused Americans' attention on the importance of (and controversies over) whom is chosen to lead the judicial branch. With a 6-3 conservative majority after Donald Trump appointed three justices in his single term as president, the court is facing renewed allegations of excessive partisanship and ideological rigidity. SCOTUS expert Lawrence Baum, who has followed the court for more than a half century, discusses whether it is really more partisan and ideological than in past eras. That's because political battles over the federal bench go back to the dawn of the republic.

This is the final part of a three-episode series examining the post-9/11 world for the 20th anniversary of the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks. At least 335,000 civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere "died violent deaths as a direct result of the war on terror," according to Brown University researchers' Costs of War project. The total number of people killed — civilians plus U.S. and allied troops, enemy fighters, contractors, journalists, and aid workers — approaches one million. Close to 40 million humans have been displaced by the ravages of war, and the cost from the destruction of buildings and infrastructure is incalculable. This road to this misery and mayhem was paved with good intentions: after al-Qaeda struck the U.S., the Bush administration, with the assent of Congress and other key American institutions, launched the Global War on Terror with the aim of eliminating terrorists and ending tyranny, as President Bush proclaimed in his second inaugural address in January 2005. In this episode, Brown University anthropologist Catherine Lutz and Southern Methodist University presidential historian Jeffrey Engel discuss how and why U.S. foreign policy took such a disastrous turn.

This is the second part of a three-episode series examining the post-9/11 world for the 20th anniversary of the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks. The law of unintended consequences may explain why jihadists and "freedom fighters," as Ronald Reagan once referred to them, continue to haunt the U.S. in Afghanistan. Counterterrorism experts are warning Afghanistan will once again become a cradle for terrorism because of the U.S. withdrawal. But it is worth remembering how Afghanistan became a cauldron of jihadism in the first place. Anatol Lieven, who as a journalist traveled with the mujahideen during the late 1980s, discusses how foreign policy decisions under Presidents Carter and Reagan continue to cause problems today. In fact, some of the same warlords who benefited from U.S. covert support to fight the Soviets are still around. And it was Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, working with the U.S., who recruited tens of thousands of foreign jihadists to Afghanistan. One of them was Osama bin Laden.

This is the first part of a three-episode series examining the post-9/11 world for the 20th anniversary of the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks. In 1915 one of the most popular songs in America was a somber lament. "I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be a Soldier" inspired a peace movement of socialists, radicals, and civil libertarians in a nation whose people were deeply skeptical of military interventionism. It is hard to imagine such a song climbing to the top of the charts today. The modern notion that America is obligated to dispatch thousands of troops across the oceans, to paraphrase Woodrow Wilson, to make the world safe for democracy, did not drive foreign policy then. Historian Michael Kazin discusses the absence of any major peace movement in the U.S. today compared to the influential antiwar activism of the past century. Unlike the 1960s, when the nation was roiled by massive demonstrations against the Vietnam War, antiwar activism in 21st century America is quiescent, despite the fact the U.S. has been in a state of constant war in multiple countries since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Here comes Labor Day! Where are the unions? At a time when millions of Americans are unsatisfied with their jobs, when about 50 million laborers work in occupations with a median wage of less than $15 per hour (according to Brookings researchers), union membership remains low compared to its historic high reached in the quarter-century after the Second World War. In fact, the labor movement's achievements -- the reason to celebrate on this three-day weekend -- have receded as mega-companies run by billionaires, operating in a global economy, possess enough power to block their workforces from unionizing. Historian Nelson Lichtenstein discusses the economic, political, and cultural forces working against unions in the 21st century.

Thomas Jefferson was our most confounding founder. He personified the contradictions extant at the dawn of the American republic, a man capable of eloquently articulating the Enlightenment ideals of liberty and equality as the primary author of the American creed -- the Declaration of Independence -- while also owning hundreds of slaves over the course of his long life. Moreover, it is widely accepted that Jefferson fathered several children with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, with whom he had a relationship spanning nearly four decades. In this episode, Joseph Ellis, one of the leading scholars of early American history, discusses why Jefferson's complicated legacy remains relevant today. He tackles Jefferson's governing philosophy, his political skills, his views on race and human progress, and why the man means different things to different people, just as he did during his lifetime.

In 2011 uprisings known as the Arab Spring burned across North Africa and the Middle East, toppling autocrats in four countries and igniting protests in several more. Leaders who had been fixtures in the region's political landscape, such as Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, were swept aside. Civil war exploded in Libya, Yemen, and Syria. The scenes were inspiring: public squares teemed with ordinary people demanding freedom in countries bereft of political tolerance and civil liberties during the century following the First World War and the treaties that carved up the Arab lands to the benefit of European colonial powers. With the partial exception of Tunisia, however, representative forms of government and pluralistic civil societies were stillborn, fueling additional grievances about the lack of human rights, corruption, and absence of economic opportunity and social mobility. In this episode, Dr. Elie Abouaoun, a human rights expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace's offices in Tunisia, says the Arab Spring failed to produce fundamental change because the root causes of most grievances were left unaddressed.

The defeat in Afghanistan, punctuated by the chaotic evacuation from Kabul and sudden collapse to the Taliban, is also an opportunity for American leaders to reassess the fundamental assumptions underlying U.S. interventionism. Instead of asking how the nation-building project could have been prolonged or how it might have succeeded, the real question may be why did anyone think it could work at all? After twenty years of war and occupation, at the cost of more than $2 trillion and many thousands of American and Afghan lives, it may be time to face an uncomfortable truth: the project was doomed from the start. In this episode, former U.S. Marine Adam Weinstein, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, discusses the root causes of the dramatic failures to defeat the Taliban and build a democracy in Afghanistan.

Four summers after white nationalists and neo-Nazis marched on Charlottesville, the Confederate statues that they sought to defend were quietly removed. On a Saturday in July, in front of a small, supportive crowd, workers used a crane to remove the figures of Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, a scene dramatically different than the one that unfolded on August 12, 2017. On that day, a 'Unite the Right' rally sparked violent clashes with counter-protesters. It was a defining moment of Donald Trump's early presidency, a source of deepening political division and racial awareness in a nation yet to fully reckon with the legacy of the Civil War and slavery. But on July 10 there were no Confederate flags or swastikas on display in Charlottesville. Instead, city leaders claimed a small victory over racism. Is this progress? James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, discusses why statues matter, when and why they were erected decades after the Civil War, and whether new state laws banning the teaching of critical race theory make sense.

Fox News' host Tucker Carlson's weeklong visit to Hungary to tout the rule of prime minister Viktor Orbán raised some pressing questions. What is it about this right-wing authoritarian that so enthralls some Americans on the right? Since returning to power in 2010, Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party have changed election laws to their own benefit, clamped down on press freedom, rejected Muslim immigrants, enraged the E.U., and -- arguably most unsettling of all -- invoked not the country's escape from Communist authoritarianism in 1989 but its fascist past under Miklos Horthy, an antisemite and Christian nationalist who was directly complicit in Hungary's role in the Holocaust. In this episode, we examine how Orbán uses and misuses history to build a narrative about "true Hungarians." And we discuss where Hungary fits in what is perceived as a larger pattern of backsliding democracy in Central and Eastern Europe.

Seventy-six years ago, in August, 1945, President Harry Truman made one of the most consequential decisions in history. He ordered U.S. warplanes to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and, three days later, Nagasaki, instantly incinerating tens of thousands of civilians. The bombings ended the Second World War while ushering in a new age, where human beings harnessed science and technology to create weapons of previously unimaginable power. In this episode, world-renowned war historian Sir Antony Beevor answers one of the most difficult questions to arise in the aftermath of the war: was it necessary to drop the bomb?

As the Delta variant rages across the United States, hospitals are filling up with unvaccinated patients. Americans are suffering and dying needlessly, because the country has enough doses to vaccinate every eligible person. But the pathogen has allies: right-wing fanatics on cable TV who sow mistrust in life-saving inoculations, social media charlatans pushing quack cures, and plain old stubbornness, laziness, ignorance, or complacency among the citizenry. Historian John Barry, author of 'The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History,' returns to the podcast to talk about Delta and the variants to come, the politics of pandemics, and reasons to be optimistic. Yes, optimistic!

Six years after President Obama tried to usher U.S.-Cuba relations into the 21st century, the two nations -- one a superpower, the other a small, weak island -- seem moored in a bygone era when international Communism consumed Cold Warriors on both sides of the ideological divide. The Biden administration is slapping another round of sanctions on Cuban leaders after they cracked down on protesters who filled the streets in early July, angered by food and power shortages and a botched Covid-19 inoculation program. Moreover, the U.S. embargo remains in place, a punitive measure perpetuated by domestic political pressures. Can the U.S. and Cuba move on from their ugly history? Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute, a scholar of U.S. foreign policy and critic of sanctions, joins the podcast to discuss why Communism endures in Cuba.

The violent decade before the Civil War serves as a warning about the perils of political polarization and the ways we may rationalize violence when it fits our purposes. Americans in 2021 are not careening toward another civil war with armies on battlefields, but the congressional investigation, now underway in the House, into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is a battle over the truth. Emerging narratives are becoming detached from reality, perpetuating a cycle of zero-sum polarization that is further dividing people into opposing camps. Are we reliving the 1850s? Paul Quigley, the director of the Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech, returns to the podcast to discuss how Trumpist narratives about Jan. 6 are distorting reality, a day that evokes the history of the sack of Lawrence, Kansas, in 1856.

Few aspects of the American Revolution are as misunderstood as the role of religion. Current debates usually focus on whether the United States was founded as a Christian nation and, if true, what that would mean for public policy today. The founding documents have become a battlefield for competing claims about the faith, or lack thereof, of their authors, replete with cherry-picked quotes purporting to show that our early leaders did or did not want to privilege one religion over another. It's time to take a fresh a look at this debate. Historian Katherine Carté, author of Religion and the American Revolution reconstructs "the religious world into which the American Revolution intruded," pitting protestant against protestant in what was an "empire of imperial protestantism."

Similar to fascism or socialism, the political ideology of populism has meant different things to different people at different times in history. Figures as diverse as Huey Long, William Jennings Bryan, George Wallace, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump have been described as populists, which may explain why populism defies easy explanation on the right and left. With its American roots planted in the nineteenth century, populism coalesced around the notion that powerful, even conspiratorial, forces were pitted against ordinary people, fueling grievances against elites and outsiders -- cultural, economic, and political elites as well as immigrants. Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin, an expert on social and political movements, joins the podcast to explain one of the most vexing issues of our day.

If a key lesson of the Vietnam War was the United States should avoid fighting guerrilla wars in faraway countries of little strategic importance, whose people, histories, and cultures we do not understand, then the U.S. failed to heed that lesson in Afghanistan. As the final American and NATO troops prepare to exit Afghanistan after 20 years of war and nation-building, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Fredrik Logevall of the Harvard Kennedy School joins the podcast to discuss the similarities and differences between the two lost conflicts. Logevall is a preeminent scholar of the French and U.S. wars in Southeast Asia.

The date upon which Americans celebrate their nation's independence helps explain a curious act of forgetting, a whitewashing of a complicated past in favor of a mythic narrative of heroism and unity. It is on the Fourth of July when we mark the Continental Congress' adoption of the Declaration of Independence, whose opening words have come to embody the American ideal. We do not gather for barbecues or fireworks on, say, October 17. On that date in 1781 Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown, effectively ending the Revolutionary War -- a rebel victory without which the words of the Declaration would have amounted to a footnote in history. By embracing the Fourth of July and celebrating the Enlightenment ideals articulated in Jefferson's magisterial Declaration, we tend to obscure the war part of the Revolutionary War -- the internecine violence, civil war, cruelty, terror, destruction of private property, and outright misery that has accompanied most wars and revolutions. In this episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning University of Virginia historian Alan Taylor discusses why it is important to acknowledge the violence and terror that scarred the revolutionary years as well as tales of heroism and courage and the triumph of freedom and liberty.

As the Chinese Communist Party marks its 100th anniversary, its leaders are using history to explain where the nation has been and where it intends to go. President Xi Jinping, eager to consolidate his authoritarian power, is paying his respects to Mao, conveniently ignoring the decades of violent chaos Mao instigated during his terrible reign. But Chinese youth are also looking to Chairman Mao for guidance -- for different reasons. They feel alienated in a society that is leaving them behind, where economic inequality is rampant and political freedoms scarce. Mercatus Center analyst Weifeng Zhong, an expert on Chinese domestic policy, joins the podcast to discuss China's contradictions and complexities.

It is an iconic Olympic moment that resonates in our current climate of racial activism. At the summer games in Mexico City in 1968, American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner as they stood on the awards podium, the "Black Power salute." If that stands out as the most memorable act of political protest in Olympic history, it was also part of a long tradition of Black activism and sports. Politics and sports have always mixed, and the 2021 summer games in Tokyo will be no different. From Jesse Owens to Jackie Robinson, from Lew Alcindor (who would change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) to Mohammad Ali, athletes have fought for their causes while winning medals and championships.

It is time for fresh thinking about America's place in the world and the meaning of national security. As 2021 reaches its midway point, Americans are still clearing the wreckage of the past year -- a deadly pandemic has claimed nearly 600,000 lives in the U.S., racial protest continues to simmer -- while their government struggles to extricate its military from "forever wars" in the Middle East. U.S. Army veteran and historian Andrew Bacevich, who is currently the president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, says it is long past time to question the fundamental assumptions underlying "American exceptionalism." Our collective belief in the ability to manage history has led to folly, alienation, and national drift.

In 1992 Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel's deputy prime minister, first warned the world that Iran was "three to five years" away from developing a nuclear bomb. In the three decades since, Netanyahu has repeated similar warnings countless times in interviews and speeches, alleging that Iran is led by irrational fanatics who dream of annihilating Israel in a nuclear armageddon. Bibi is out of power now, but his legacy on Iran lives on. No foreign politician had more influence over U.S. foreign policy over the past two decades. But Iran neither has a nuclear bomb nor does it want to produce one, according to historian John Ghazvinian. Was it all a cynical bluff to maintain U.S. support after the Cold War?