Roundup: Historians' Take

Mark LeVine: The Shaping of a New World Order

[Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. His most recent books are Heavy Metal Islam (Random House) and Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books).] I remember the images well, even though I was too young to understand their political significance. But they were visceral, those photos in the New York Times from Tehran in the midst of its revolutionary momen

Fouad Ajami: Demise of the Dictators

[Ajami, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the author of, among other books, The Dream Palace of the Arabs.] Historians of revolutions are never sure as to when these great upheavals in human affairs begin. But the historians will not puzzle long over the Arab Revolution of 2011. They will know, with precision, when and where the political tsunami that shook the entrenched tyrannies f

Jeffrey Herf: American Policy and Radical Islam

[Jeffrey Herf is the author most recently of Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (Yale University Press, 2009). He teaches modern European history at the University of Maryland in College Park.] President Obama is in a tight spot. The 2010 elections have sharply contracted his ability to achieve legislative victories, while his room to maneuver on other issues will be limited by the intrusive investigations which are almost certainly coming his way. Progress will be harder to attain

Garry Wills: Blood Lust and the Super Bowl

[Garry Wills is Professor of History Emeritus at Northwestern. His latest book, Outside Looking In: Adventures of an Observer, was published in October 2010.] ...If we look back at photos from the past—say, the era of the football hero Red Grange in the 1920s—it is surprising to see how little protected the players were, with leather skull-cap helmets and minimal padding of the shoulders. But the players now are bigger, faster, steroid-enhanced, and trained to superhuman feats. The

Walter Russell Mead: The Revolution Wanders From The Script

[Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The-American-Interest.com.] The Egyptian government has survived the first crisis of the revolution and both the government and the protesters are moving to a new trial of strength. Surviving the first blast of popular fury — and of international criticism — is an important milestone for the

Georgy Gounev: Egypt, the United States, and the Ghost of Khomeini

[Georgy Gounev teaches Contemporary Mid-East History and International Relations at two California colleges. He and authored the book The Dark Side of the Crescent Moon. The Islamization of Europe and its Impact on American-Russian Relations, scheduled for publication in March or April.] Are there any similarities between Iran of 1978 and Egypt of 2011? Sadly, yes. To start with, autocratic leaders who gradually managed to alienate the majority of their populations ru

Walter Russell Mead: The Plagues of Egypt

[Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The-American-Interest.com.] The Obama administration is now living through one of the oldest and most difficult recurring problems in American foreign policy: what do you do when revolution breaks out in an allied country? The only clue history offers is not an encouraging one: th

Philip Zelikow: This is not a revolution made in America

[The writer is a professor of history at the University of Virginia. From 2005 to 2007 he was the counsellor of the US Department of State. He was also executive director of the 9/11 Commission.] On the 20th of June 2005, I stood in a packed auditorium in the heart of Cairo as my boss, the then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, gave a deeply considered speech. She and I had worked together during the revolutions in Europe in 1989-1990. That experience informed her pronouncemen

Timothy Garton Ash: If this is young Arabs' 1989, Europe must be ready with a bold response

[Timothy Garton Ash, a contributing editor to Opinion, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of European studies at Oxford University. He is the author, most recently, of "Facts Are Subversive.] Europe's future is at stake this week on Cairo's Tahrir Square, as it was on Prague's Wenceslas Square in 1989. This time, the reasons are geography and demography. The Arab arc of crisis, from Morocco to Jordan, is Europe's near abroad. As a result of decades of mi

Juan Cole: Why Egypt 2011 is Not Iran 1979

[Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History and the director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan. His latest book, Engaging the Muslim World, is just out in a revised paperback edition from Palgrave Macmillan. He runs the Informed Comment website.] Alarms have been raised by those observing the popular uprising in Egypt that, while it is not itself a Muslim fundamentalist movement, the Muslim fundamentalists could take it over as it unf

Jim Sleeper: Egyptian Democracy's False New Friends

[Jim Sleeper is a lecturer in political science at Yale.] David Brooks and Leon Wieseltier, whom I'll politely call"historically neo-conservative" commentators, are singing Kumbaya and shouting whatever is Arabic for"Right on!" to Egyptians pressing for democracy and Hosni Mubarak's departure. At least one might think so, reading Brooks yesterday in the New York Times and

Jill Lepore: “An Horrid Snow”

[Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University where she is also chair of the History and Literature Program. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale in 1995.] This winter, this is nothing. Over nine days in 1717, the Northeast endured what was ever after known as “the great snow.” At the end of February came what first looked to be beastly (“a great storm”) but what, after what followed, appeared no more than a measly, beggarl

Samuel Redman: Preserving Mummies, Preserving Heritage

[Samuel Redman is a PhD candidate in history at UC -- Berkeley] Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, widespread looting occurred across archaeological sites and museums in the region. Most notably, the National Museum of Iraq was heavily pillaged and dozens of irreplaceable artifacts went missing. Although many of the artifacts were eventually recovered, some were permanently lost or destroyed. Scores of other archaeological sites were damaged in the wake of the conflic

Juan Cole: Saad’s Revolution

[Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History and the director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan. His latest book, Engaging the Muslim World, is just out in a revised paperback edition from Palgrave Macmillan. He runs the Informed Comment website.] A largely unheralded hero of the Egyptian revolution is a mild-mannered academic who endured imprisonment and then exile for daring to criticize the Mubarak family’s increasingly dynastic am

Julian Zelizer: Can Republicans Cut Defense Spending?

[Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter," published by Times Books, and editor of a book assessing former President George W. Bush's administration, published by Princeton University Press.] ...In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama reminded Congress that Gates had agreed to cut out billions that "he and his generals believe our military can do without."

Max Boot: Hosni Mubarak, Troublesome Ally

[Mr. Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is completing a history of guerrilla warfare and terrorism.] As Hosni Mubarak teeters on the brink, a lot of wishful thinking is emanating from the West—both from those who want him gone and those who don't. But it does scant justice to the complexity of the situation to claim that Mr. Mubarak was a superb ally, or to imagine that we can manage an easy transition to a post-Mubarak regime. The best that

Victor Davis Hanson: 1979 Redux?

[NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.] The Obama administration’s deer-in-the headlights policy toward Egypt will probably change if and when Mubarak & Co. leave and thereby introduce the risk of a Czar–Kerensky–Lenin or Estates-General–Paris Commune–Committee of Public Safet

Barry Rubin: Obama Must Back Egypt's Regime, or Face a Disaster Like U.S. Did in Iran

[Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are “Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict, and Crisis,” “Conflict and Insurgency in the Contemporary Middle East,” “The Israel-Arab Reader,” “The Truth About Syria,” “A Chronological History of Terrorism,” and “The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East.”] There is no good p

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom: How the U.S.-China Relationship Needs to Change

[Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, the Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies, and the author, most recently, of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know(published in April by Oxford University Press). A co-founder and regular contributor to The China Beat: Blogging How the East is Read, and a co-editor of China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance, he has contributed commentaries and reviews to various newspapers and to maga

Nick Turse: Overkill Future Weapons, Future Wars, and the New Arms Race

[Nick Turse is a historian, essayist, investigative journalist, the associate editor of TomDispatch.com, and currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute. His latest book is The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books).  He is also the author of