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War and national security

Reading Lists

An Anti-Imperialism Reading List

Your fourth of July reading. 

Rosie Gillies, Boston Review

Law & Justice

Policing the World

Since World War II, the United States has spread its style of policing—and police technology—around the world as a way to exert control. This link between modern policing and the national security state means they will have to be democratized together.

Andrew Lanham

Politics, War & Security

The Future of U.S. Global Leadership

The assumption that only the United States can lead the free world increasingly looks imperiled, most recently by the COVID-19 pandemic. What would foreign policy look like without it?

Jeremy Shapiro

Race

Terror and Abolition

At a moment when the call to abolish police and prisons is louder than ever, we should also demand an end to counterterrorism, which functions largely to ensnare people of color.

Atiya Husain

Science & Nature

The Case Against Mars

Contrary to the boosterism of billionaires, the need for space colonization must be argued for, not assumed. And the arguments aren’t good.

Byron Williston

War & Security

The Murderous Legacy of Cold War Anticommunism

A new book reveals how deeply the Washington-backed Indonesian mass killings of 1965 reshaped global politics, securing a decisive victory for U.S. interests against Third World self-determination.

Stuart Schrader

Global Justice, Politics

Sanctions Are Inhumane—Now, and Always

In a world imperiled by global pandemic, it is long past time to put an end to sanctions—including new ones against Iran—and to reconstruct U.S. foreign policy around international solidarity.

Aslı U. Bâli, Aziz Rana

Arts in Society

Painting the New York Times

Nicky Nodjoumi is one of Iran’s greatest artists, but his politics have kept him in exile since 1980.

Nicky Nodjoumi, Daniel Penny

Politics, Race

Missing Zinn

On the tenth anniversary of radical historian Howard Zinn’s death, Cornel West opens up about their friendship and what Zinn would have made of the decade—including whether he would have voted for Bernie.

Cornel West, Mordecai Lyon

Race

The Radical Lives of Abolitionists

History has tended to sanitize the lives of abolitionists, many of whom were involved in other radical movements as well, including Free Love, which promoted women’s independence and an end to traditional marriage.

Britt Rusert

Race

Black Abolitionists Believed in Taking Up Arms

Long before the Civil War, black abolitionists shared the consensus that violence would be necessary to end slavery. Unlike their white peers, their arguments were about when and how to use political violence, not if.

Randal Maurice Jelks

Politics, War & Security

Rambo Politics from Reagan to Trump

In linking the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani to the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, Trump invokes a fantasy of poetic justice—positioning himself as Rambo, the avenger of American humiliation abroad.

Bonnie Honig

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THINKING IN A PANDEMIC

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