Figure of Louis XVI and Benjamin Franklin by Charles-Gabriel Sauvage (Wikimedia Commons)

The Real Heroes of the Founding

Diplomats like Benjamin Franklin and John Adams won the war of words.
Painting "T. R. in Panama," showing dirty, tired workers and headstones in darkness, and Roosevelt wearing white and bathed in light.
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A Roosevelt Corollary for the World

Donald Trump didn’t bring back the Monroe Doctrine. That was the work of the 26th president — and many of the presidents who succeeded him.
A bookseller in Bydgoszcz’s market square, Poland, 1967

Idea Smugglers

When the CIA distributed banned books behind the Iron Curtain.
Uncle Sam pointing covetously to map of Panama and Colombia.

The Ghost of the Roosevelt Corollary and the Lies Behind Intervention

U.S. justifies Latin American intervention by distorting realities, linking 1902 Colombia actions to 2026 Venezuela controversy.
Black and white photograph of a town destroyed by firebombs.

A Man-Made Disaster

There has never been a moral and historical reckoning with the horrors inflicted by the Allied firebombing of Japan during World War II.
1956 map of global petroleum production and trade.

Imperial Decline in the Straits of Hormuz

The Iran War as America's very own Suez crisis.
Trita Parsi

The Hidden Influences Behind the Pointless War in Iran

Why the conflict strengthens Israel, weakens the United States, and devastates ordinary Iranians.
Side-by-side images of Cherokee Trail of Tears and Palestinian forced migration.

First the Cherokee, Now the Palestinians

Revisiting U.S. attitudes toward the Cherokee shows how the rhetoric of oppressors stays consistent. The rationalizations for ethnic cleansing do not change.
Silhouette of a military fighter plane drawn cut out from a piece of graph paper.

An Air-Campaign Primer

The United States has seldom waged the sort of campaign now under way in Iran.
Shahran oil depot in Tehran, Iran on March 8, 2026

Middle East Wars Are Still About Oil and Empire

How oil, US power, and regional rivalries have shaped decades of conflict in the Middle East — and why the confrontation with Iran fits a long imperial pattern.
A U.S. soldier in Iraq

The Iraq War Was Not About Oil

Over two decades later, the Iraq War appears driven less by oil and more by U.S. ambitions to project geopolitical power in the Middle East.
A street fair during Somali Week in Minneapolis, 2016.

From Mogadishu to Minneapolis

The Trump administration’s crackdown on Somalis in Minnesota ignores decades of US intervention that helped produce the violence and displacement Somalis fled.
An indigenous man and woman (with baby on her back) stand beside a bison.

We Could Scarce Distinguish Our Friends from Our Foes

A review of the fifth episode of Ken Burns’s American Revolution series.
Fires raging after Israeli air strikes hit a solar farm in Tyre, Lebanon, on the fifth day of the US–Israeli war with Iran.

The Lie of ‘Preventive’ War

Never has Donald Trump’s willful blindness to legal limits been more evident than in his decision to start a war with Iran.
Under the Shadow
Podcast
Under the Shadow

Trump’s War on Cuba: Crisis Made in the USA

This episode examines the history of the U.S. embargo on Cuba and argues that recent Trump administration policies have intensified the island’s economic and humanitarian crisis. Through interviews with journalists, historians, and policy experts, it explores how sanctions affect daily life in Cuba, debates over regime change, and the broader role of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America.
The Japanese troopship Asama Maru.

After Pearl Harbor, Americans Living in Japan Endured Torture and a Lengthy Battle to Return Home

A new book chronicles the tense negotiations that secured the return of nearly 3,000 Allied civilians held by the Japanese during World War II.
Men inspect the ruins of a police station in Tehran, Iran.

CIA Agents Successfully Executed a Plan For Regime Change in Iran in 1953

A covert US campaign in the mid-20th century helped steer Iran toward the intense anti-American sentiment that has distinguished its government policy.
Vladimir Putin at the World Economic Forum

The Rules-Based Order Is Dead. Good.

The rules-based order was a polite fiction based in a fundamental misunderstanding of contemporary geopolitics.
Zbigniew Brzezinski

Globaloney: Brzezinski’s Cold War

As a Polish émigré and fervent Polish nationalist, Zbigniew Brzezinski focused most of his fear on the Soviet Union.
Mexican people swatting away giant mosquitos.
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There’s No Business Like Coup Business

In 1876, Porfirio Díaz successfully deposed the Mexican government. He couldn’t have done it without the help of powerful Americans.
Map showing the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence.

The Secret Agents of the Cold War Who Claimed Land and Power

On the “Men on the Spot” responsible for colonial expansion.
Cartoon of Teddy Roosevelt with a bat titled "The New Diplomacy"

Giving the Monroe Doctrine a Bad Name

Hemispheric aggression was not the fifth president’s vision, nor has it proved a particularly effective tactic.
The rivals: Frederick Cook (left) and Robert Peary (right) both claimed to have reached the North Pole first. (Library of Congress; National Archives/ Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary Family Collection)

True North: Scandal and Subterfuge in the Race to Reach the North Pole

The two men who claimed to have reached the North Pole first would stop at nothing to hold the coveted title.
Navassa Island

An Empire Built on Excrement

Guano imperialism kicked off an age of exploitation.
Painting of an attack by Seminole fighters on an American fort during the Second Seminole War.

All of America’s Colonial Evils at Once: The Early 19th-Century Subjugation of Florida

The forgotten history of the US government’s war against the Seminole.
Trump turns his back to look out the window in a meeting with oil and gas industry executives.

Accelerating American (and Planetary) Decline

A Talmudic tale of an attempt to cheat death is a metaphor for the Trump's attempts to portray U.S. empire as alive and well.
Donald Trump sitting next to a Gulf of America poster.

Trump Gets the Monroe Doctrine Wrong. He Should Take a Page From Bad Bunny

The US president has twisted the 1823 doctrine to suit his quest for domination. It originally had a very different vision for the Americas.
Roman centurions attacking civilians.

The Clash of Civilizations Was an Inside Job

After 9/11, Samuel P. Huntington’s big idea was everywhere. But he missed the coming war within.
American soldiers and helicopters in a field of poppies.

Guns, Money and Opium

There is an undeniable symmetry between surges in drug use in the US and the country’s covert operations overseas.
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The Bad Bunny Doctrine

The Superbowl LX halftime show tapped into a 200-year old tradition of elevating hemisphere over nation in the struggle against imperial rule.