Samuel Moyn, "Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War" (FSG, 2021)
Is it possible that efforts to make war more humane can actually make it more common and thus more destructive? This tension at the heart of this query lies at the heart of Samuel Moyn's new book Hu...
6 Dec 202157min
Michael S. Neiberg, "When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance" (Harvard UP, 2021)
According to US Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the "most shocking single event" of World War II was not the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but rather the fall of France in spring 1940. Michael Neib...
3 Dec 202131min
Rethinking China's Humanitarian Diplomacy before and during Covid-19
As the Covid-19 pandemic spread to Europe and other parts of the globe in spring of 2020, the Chinese government started reporting donations of Personal Protective Equipment as well as other medical s...
3 Dec 202128min
Shawn F. McHale, "The First Vietnam War: Violence, Sovereignty, and the Fracture of the South, 1945-1956" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
When people think of the “Vietnam War” they usually think of the hugely devastating and divisive conflict between North Vietnam and a United States-backed South Vietnam that finally ended in 1975. We ...
1 Dec 202144min
Raymond C. Kuo, "Following the Leader: Alliance Design, Security Strategies, and Institutional Emulation" (Stanford UP, 2021)
Nations have powerful incentives to ensure that their military alliances are well-structured. Successful military alliances set long-lasting foundations for global and regional order, while unsuccessf...
29 Nov 202152min
Robin J. Hayes, "Love for Liberation: African Independence, Black Power, and a Diaspora Underground" (U Washington Press, 2021)
During the height of the Cold War, passionate idealists across the US and Africa came together to fight for Black self-determination and the antiracist remaking of society. Beginning with the 1957 Gha...
26 Nov 20211h 6min
Daniel Lee, "The Right of Sovereignty: Jean Bodin on the Sovereign State and the Law of Nations" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Sovereignty is the vital organizing principle of modern international law. Daniel Lee's book The Right of Sovereignty: Jean Bodin on the Sovereign State and the Law of Nations (Oxford UP, 2021) examin...
24 Nov 202159min
Christopher Coker, "The Rise of the Civilizational State" (Polity Press, 2019)
In recent years the resurgence of great power competition has gripped the headlines, with new emerging powers (such as Russia and China) seeking to challenge the American and Western hegemony that has...
23 Nov 202129min
