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War and national security

Politics

When Democracy Ails, Magic Thrives

West German witchcraft trials after World War II reveal how political rupture can fuel magical thinking. What lessons might we draw for our own age of QAnon conspiracies, anti-vaccination, and strange COVID-19 cures?

Samuel Clowes Huneke

Politics

Why Is America the World’s Police?

A new book tells the history of how U.S. political elites sold the United Nations to the public as a route to global peace, while all along wanting it as a cover for militarization.

Sam Lebovic

Global Justice

Letter from Beirut

In the wake of the devastating explosion, civil society has shown the way forward—filling the void of a nonexistent and incapacitated state.

Joelle M. Abi-Rached

Global Justice, War & Security

The Beirut That Was

The explosion was only the latest tragedy in the city’s long decline.

Helena Cobban

Politics, War & Security

The Conceit of American Indispensability

As both politicians and historians mine the 1940s for alternate visions of international order, we must guard against the presumption that the United States remains the benevolent center of global politics.

Sam Klug

War & Security

The Death and Rebirth of American Internationalism

As the 2020 presidential election nears, internationalists are plotting their return. But they still haven’t learned from the failure of liberal universalism.

Edward Fishman

Global Justice, War & Security

The Racist Foundation of Nuclear Architecture

On the seventy-fifth anniversary of Hiroshima, it is increasingly clear that white supremacy sustains the U.S. nuclear arsenal, while the country's approach to nuclear weapons reinforces racism at home. 

Elaine Scarry

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

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