war

The "Great" Powers are Seeing Remarkably Diminished Returns from War

by Tom Englehardt

The legacy of the victory culture engendered by World War II has been a string of costly defeats and stalemates against theoretically overmatched foes and the destructive subordination of the economy and democracy to "national defense" and militarism. 

The Iraq Invasion Turns 20

Historians comment on the consequences of the invasion and efforts to control the narrative about how and why the US invaded. 

Don't Forget the Private Sorrows of Ukraine

by Walter G. Moss

In Ukraine, as with all wars, statistical accounts of death and destruction risk depersonalizing the killing and obscuring the humanity of the victims. 

Ukrainian Civilians' Experience of Violence

by Anne Applebaum and Nataliya Gumenyuk

Russian soldiers exposed to propaganda that Ukrainians were unwilling subjects of their local governments expected civilian support to capture political leaders; when this expectation was confounded, they unleashed violence. 

Russia's Courageous War Resisters

by Lawrence Wittner

While most Russians have chosen silence in the wake of Putin's harsh anti-dissent measures, and many military-aged men have opted to leave the country, a core of protesters have braved violence and imprisonment to denounce the Ukraine invasion. 

Can the World Stop Imperialist War?

by Lawrence Wittner

It's past time to finish the halting progress made a century ago to rally international cooperation against imperial aggression. The stakes are too high to leave peace in the hands of individual nations. 

Ukraine Isn't Munich, Berlin, or Vietnam: The Limits and Dangers of Historical Analogies

by Christopher David LaRoche

Analogies are vital cognitive shortcuts that enable us to comprehend complexity. But their usefulness means we risk transposing biases and fallacies about the past onto how we understand the present. 

What Does Dante Tell Us About the End of the Ukraine War?

by Tad Daley

In "On Monarchy" Dante offered the first proposed solution in literature to the problem of war – a world government. 

DoD's Plan to Reduce Civilian Casualties Will Humanize Endless War

by Samuel Moyn

Reducing the brutality of war while tolerating its existence will entrench war as a permanent feature of global politics. 

Guernica Was a Dress Rehearsal for Horrors to Come

Journalist George Lowther Steer broke the news that the German Luftwaffe had provided the aerial destruction of the town, in what became a training ground for future Nazi attacks. 

Is International Cooperation Possible?

by Tiziana Stella and Campbell Craig

The United Nations system, based on the sovereignty of nations, is increasingly inadequate to the global problems facing humanity. There are other international traditions that can guide a better world order. 

A Historical Feast of Death and Destruction—from the Peloponnesian Wars to Late Tomorrow Night

by Tom Engelhardt

Anyone shocked by the eruption of violence in "peaceful" Europe should pull the lens back to encompass centuries of war and slaughter before 1945.

Ukraine's Next Enemy: Disease

by Max Brooks, Lionel Beehner and John Spencer

"If we want to help the Ukrainian resistance, we shouldn’t be sending them only Javelins and body armor. They need emergency supplies — bulk sanitation items such as alcohol-based hand sanitizer, ammonium nitrate to counter food-borne illness, and rat traps and poisons."

Can the US Credibly Condemn Russian Attacks on Civilians?

by Paul Lovinger

Are American military actions different from Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure only in degree? 

More War Crimes Will Follow in Ukraine

by Fred Zilian

To those who believed that war and war crimes in Europe in the 21st century had become unthinkable, Thucydides offers us a simple yet powerful statement: “War is a violent teacher.”

Over a River Strangely Rosy: Reading Poetry in Wartime

by Joan Neuberger

"It’s my job to explain things about Russia and its various incarnations of empire. I know how to do that — I’ve been doing it for a long time. But, in this moment, analysis seems to me to be somehow incomprehensible and profoundly unsatisfying."

Why is the News Media so Hawkish?

by Mark Hannah

Editorial choices made by influential news organizations can push policy in the direction of more aggressive intervention. A media scholar asks why those organizations have consistently chosen to boost the voices of advocates for war.

Nuclear Power Plants Aren't Made to Survive War

by Kate Brown and Susan Solomon

"It is difficult to believe, but in all the decades of imagining nuclear-emergency scenarios, engineers did not design for an event so human and inevitable as war."

Dispatches from Ukraine: “The critical question is: “How is everyone, and are you still alive?'”

by Priscilla Hart

A great deal of the Ukrainian experience can be understood by the efforts of women refugees to keep aware of their families and the progress of the Russian invasion and counterattack. 

The Geopolitics of the Russia-Ukraine War

by Alfred McCoy

Since the Versailles conference in 1919, geopolitical theorists have discussed the potential of anl alliance connecting eastern Europe and central Asia as a potential seat of world domination. Are recent developments in Russian-Chinese relations moving in that direction?