A veteran correspondent’s memoir reveals the humanity and misjudgment of the Soviet leader who sparked the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Cold War
Posted inPolitics
As Ukraine Fights, Echoes of Historic Meetings in Yalta and Helsinki Abound
Some 80 years ago, Roosevelt and Churchill were at their meeting with Stalin. Thirty years later, the Helsinki Accords helped doom the Iron Curtain. Here’s what we can learn on their anniversaries.
Posted inMagazine
Why Can’t America Build Enough Weapons?
The debasement of the U.S. defense industrial base began, ironically, under Ronald Reagan, and won’t be reversed until we abandon the free-market fundamentalism he introduced.
Posted inJuly/August 2023
The Judge Who Sentenced the Rosenbergs
It was the most high-profile espionage trial of the Cold War, and Irving R. Kaufman and his liberal and controversial legacy remain a source of debate.
Posted inBooks
The Courage and Compromises of George P. Shultz
When he died, at the age of 100, in 2021, George P. Shultz was widely hailed as a consummate pragmatist who represented a type of sober conservatism that has been almost entirely eradicated in the modern Republican Party. A charter member of the foreign policy establishment, he occupied four cabinet positions, including secretary of labor […]
Posted inBooks
Neoliberalism Is Dying. What Comes Next?
History shows that the period between the end of one political order and the beginning of another is a time of maximum danger.
Posted inPolitics
No, Russia’s Ukraine Invasion Isn’t “Our Fault”
Russia’s aggression stems from its history and political culture, not NATO expansion or the post–Cold War settlement.
Posted inPolitics
Adam Kinzinger’s Warning to His Fellow Republicans on January 6 and Ukraine
An interview with one of the last remaining anti-Trump conservatives in Congress.
Posted inPolitics
How America’s Broken Promises May Lead to a New Cold War
As he threatens to invade Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is citing 1990s-era assurances that NATO would not expand to Russia’s borders.
Posted inPolitical Animal
David Brooks Establishes the #NeverSanders Group
If the he can’t choose between Bernie and Trump, maybe Brooks can just take the rest of this election cycle off.
