Cold War

American Withdrawal is America Last

Some America First Republicans are nearly indistinguishable from the standard fare retreaters we were served from the “Blame America First” leftists of the Cold War.

Graebner the Great on America’s Power

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.

Christian Realism and Enlightened Self-Interest as the Marshall Plan Emerges
Christian Realism and Enlightened Self-Interest as the Marshall Plan Emerged

The economic aid which is required could not be a matter of pure generosity. Nations as nations are incapable of such generosity.

Post-War Munich and American Housing Requisitions: A Christian Realist Plea
Post-War Munich and American Housing Requisitions: A Christian Realist Plea

“The people of Munich were informed by proclamation of the city administration that the requisition of private homes for army housing was to be carried through, and to a greater extent than had been hitherto feared.”

Five Impressions on Niebuhr and Co., 1945–47

From 1945 to 1947 as the United States and Soviet Union moved toward the Cold War, Christian realists writing for Reinhold Niebuhr’s journal, Christianity and Crisis, responded to global dilemmas. Here are five impressions of those articles, along with lessons for today.

Niebuhr’s Report from Switzerland, 1947
Niebuhr’s Report from Switzerland, 1947

At the end of Reinhold Niebuhr’s travels across Western Europe in 1947, he spent a week at the Ecumenical Institute, a facility near Geneva. He was hopeful of how this project would bless the church life of the world, and he offered observations about discussions there about communism, church-state relations, Christian political parties, and more.

The West Should Remember Cold War-Just War Lessons of Nuclear Deterrence
The West Should Remember Cold War-Just War Lessons of Nuclear Deterrence

In our day it is difficult for some, perhaps many, to recall that the West’s Cold War policy of nuclear deterrence—anchored in traditional just war moral principles of just cause, right intention, proportionality, and discrimination—helped avert war rather than increase the prospects of nuclear conflagration.

Free Speech Healthy Politics House Un-American Activities Committee
Free Speech and Healthy Politics

Now what is here symbolized has been the most fundamental idea in our American democracy. Ours is a government by discussion.

Cold War Strategy for Today: A Review of Hal Brand’s The Twilight Struggle
Cold War Strategy for Today: A Review of Hal Brands’s The Twilight Struggle

Brands offers seven key lessons for his readers about what he terms a “twilight struggle,” a period of high-stakes competition between great powers that occurs between the darkness of war and daylight of peace.