Robert Morrison first sailed to Canada’s Maritimes on the USCGC Unimak, then served as a Russian interpreter in the Bering Sea. He taught diplomatic history to Navy nuclear submariners. Morrison was a member of the Reagan administration. He writes from Annapolis.
Peace with Russia, as in Soviet times, has always been unpalatable but necessary.
Robert MorrisonMay 16, 2023
President Kennedy understood the need to counter America’s enemies without precipitating WWIII.
Robert MorrisonApril 17, 2023
The results of the disastrous Versailles Treaty led to war in Europe for a century. Can we finally exorcise the ghosts of Versailles?
Robert MorrisonApril 14, 2023
“Triumph of the Will” serves to show us how attractive demagoguery can be.
Robert MorrisonMarch 2, 2023
In 1945 Americans and Russians met near Torgau, Germany in a rare moment of unity. Can this be repeated?
Robert MorrisonFebruary 16, 2023
Gorbachev was different from all his predecessors. He knew how cruel the Soviet system was.
Robert MorrisonSeptember 1, 2022
When in 1967 the University of Virginia recruited Professor Norman A. Graebner from the University of Illinois to teach diplomatic history, a huge row ensued.
Robert MorrisonJune 23, 2022
We were stirred, never shaken, by our real-life James Bond figure. Sir John Wheeler-Bennett was the picture of an English aristocrat, without a hint of stuffiness. So genial, so approachable, we young University of Virginia students were thrilled by each of his lectures on diplomatic history—especially about anything on England and Germany in the interwar period.
Robert MorrisonJune 13, 2022
What we can gain from the origins of the Great War is that strategic ambiguity played a role in bringing on that cataclysm.
Robert MorrisonJune 6, 2022
We should call for a “Mothers’ March on Moscow.” We should urge no violence, nothing radical, nothing revolutionary. But the idea just might take root among women in the vast Russian heartland.
Robert MorrisonJune 1, 2022