Roundup: Historians' Take

Harold James: Is China the New America?

[Harold James is a professor of history and international affairs at Princeton University.] The Great Depression made the United States the world's unquestioned financial leader. The current crisis can do the same for China. In the Great Depression, as in the current economic crisis, the downturn was particularly severe because of a lack of leadership in the international order. The dominant financial power of the 19th century, Britain, was financially exhausted by the

Juan Cole: Lieberman and Wiping Countries off the face of the Map

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.]Avigdor Lieberman, the Moldovan night club bouncer, is now foreign minister of Israel. The world has had a lot of fun laughing at the pronouncements of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who stands falsely accused of threatening to wipe Israel off the face of the map. But

Julian E. Zelizer: Big risks if Obama acts boldly on budget

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book, "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security -- From World War II to the War on Terrorism," will be published this fall by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely on current events.] Americans are usually uninterested in legislative procedure. The technical rules that govern the House and Senate are of little concern to average citizens exce

Bernard Lewis: Israel's Election System Is No Good

[Mr. Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton, is the author of "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East" (Oxford University Press, 2004).] On Feb. 10, Israel elected a new Knesset (or parliament) -- the 18th since the establishment of the state in May 1948. Like its predecessors, it consists of a hodgepodge of 12 different parties. The two largest parties, Kadima and Likud, won 23% and 21% of the vote, giving them 28 and 27 seats respectively -- a long way sho

Robert Dallek: Can Obama Be a Majority of One?

Perhaps the biggest surprise the Obama administration has faced in its first 100 days has not been the dismal state of the economy or the difficulties abroad with Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, but rather the grudging cooperation of the Democratic Congress. Lyndon Johnson could have warned Barack Obama that winning the support of the 535 senators and representatives, even if a majority of them share your party affiliation, wouldn’t be easy. This is especially the case after eight y

Daniel Pipes: Arabs, Israelis, and Underdogs

[Mr. Pipes is the director of the Middle East Forum. His website address is http://www.danielpipes.org. Click here for his blog.] "Who, a century back, would have imagined Jews making the better soldiers and Arabs the better publicists?" I asked back in 2005.A foremost example of the Arabs' p.r. prowess lies in their ability to

Kate Williams: History's not just for the boys, Dr Starkey

[Kate Williams is the author of 'Becoming Queen: How a Tragic and Untimely Death Shaped the Reign of Queen Victoria' (Hutchinson).] David Starkey has hit the headlines again, this time protesting against the "feminisation" of history. We women writers, he says, have caused problems. Our enthusiasm for writing about women has distracted readers from what really matters: the men. It is "bizarre", claims Dr Starkey, that so many books focus on women an

Jonathan Zimmerman: What John Hope Franklin could teach Ward Churchill

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University.] Should the University of Colorado have fired Ward Churchill, the fiery ethnic-studies professor and Native American advocate who is suing to get his job back? I really don't know. But here's what I do know: By playing fast and loose with historical truth, Churchill harms the same racial minorities he claims to defend. To see why, take a quick look at the long career of John Hope Franklin. Frankl

Stanley I. Kutler: We’re Paying Congress for This?

[Stanley Kutler is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and other writings.] Great crises and problems often have become the subjects of extensive congressional investigation and oversight. Congress has made prominent inquiries into, for example, the Civil War, the Reconstruction, the “money trust” in the Progressive Era, the banking follies of the 1920s and the Great Depression, the prewar defense preparations at Pearl Harbor, the oversight of military contracts during World War I

Juan Cole: The president sounds like he's channeling Cheney or McCain

President Barack Obama may or may not be doing the right thing in Afghanistan, but the rationale he gave for it on Friday is almost certainly wrong. Obama has presented us with a 21st century version of the domino theory. The U.S. is not, contrary to what the president said, mainly fighting "al-Qaida" in Afghanistan. In blaming everything on al-Qaida, Obama broke with his pledge of straight talk to the public and fell back on Bush-style boogeymen and implausible conspiracy theories.

Tom Engelhardt: The Great Afghan Bailout

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso,

Daniel Pipes: America's Desultory Religious Reporting

Of all the reporting on radical Islam in the United States, some of the least competent comes from precisely those reporters who should do the most outstanding job – those specializing in religion. I don't recall a single one of them producing a serious analysis of the Islamist groups that dominate Muslim communal life – the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim American Society, and the like. Instead, they inva

Andrew Roberts: Gordon Brown's assault on the traditions of the monarchy is preposterous

[Andrew Roberts is a British historian.] The news that Gordon Brown has opened talks with Buckingham Palace over altering the 1701 Act of Settlement, which bars members of the Royal family from succeeding to the throne if they marry Roman Catholics, has profound implications for the long-term future of this country. For the Act of Settlement is not the bigoted, irrelevant and obsolete law that Downing Street presents it as – it is one of the key pieces of legislation that has define

Tristram Hunt: Lessons about the war are history (UK)

[Tristram Hunt is a lecturer in modern British history at Queen Mary, University of London.] Behind the headlines about Wikipedia replacing the second world war and vlogging ousting Queen Victoria, Sir Jim Rose's new plans for the primary school curriculum aren't all bad. Indeed, if delivered intelligently, they might even begin to chip away at the nefarious "Hitler and the Henries" approach to history teaching in the classroom. Of course, the mature-in-years

Rick Perlstein: Our American Common Sense

[Perlstein is the author most recently of "Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America."] Our pundits worry that a populist rage is loose in the land—pitchforks everywhere! My first reaction upon hearing that was to dismiss the word "populist" as a distraction, an epithet meant to recall episodes in which mass rage made sound policy deliberation impossible. Think of dispossessed 19th-century farmers letting their righteous rage at bankers tum

Neve Gordon: Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's shame

[Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. Read about his new book Israel’s Occupation at www.israelsoccupation.info] Imagine a country that appoints someone who has been found guilty of striking a 12-year-old boy to be its foreign minister. The person in question is also under investigation for money-laundering, fraud and breach of trust; in addition, he was a bona fide member of an outlawed racist party and currently leads a political party that espouses fascist idea

Mark Selden: China’s Way Forward? Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Hegemony and the World Economy in Crisis

[Mark Selden’s recent books include China, East Asia and the Global Economy: Regional and Global Perspectives and The Resurgence of East Asia: 500, 150 and 50 Year Perspectives. He is a senior research associate, East Asia Program, Cornell University and a coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal. ] 2008—Annus Horribilis for the world economy—produced successive food, energy and financial crises, initially devastating particularly the global poor, but quickly extending to the command

Philip Jenkins: Will the Obama years see another militia scare?

[Philip Jenkins is a professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University and the author of The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died.] Since the New Deal, fears of terrorism and subversion have played a central role in U.S. political life. But the ways in which government and media conceive those menaces can change with astonishing speed. Such tectonic shifts usually occur

Niall Ferguson: This financial crisis does have a Conservative solution

[Niall Ferguson is Laurence A Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. This is an abridged version of a lecture to be delivered tonight to the Centre for Policy Studies.] ... Suppose that a government can have any two of the following things, but not all three: globalisation, in the sense of openness to international flows of goods, services, capital and labour; social stability; and a small

Stephanie Coontz: The Real Marriage Revolution

[Stephanie Coontz teaches history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and is Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families, which she chaired from 2001-04. She is the author of Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage , (Viking Press, 2005), The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (1992 and 2000, Basic Books), The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with Americ