Stay ConnectedDiscover how the past shapes the present with the best historians in the world. Everything happening today comes from something, somewhere. History As It Happens features interviews with today’s top scholars and thinkers, interwoven with audio from history’s archive.
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A special tribunal in The Hague convicted a hero of Kosovo's independence struggle of war crimes. Hashim Thaci was sentenced to 25 years for the crimes of arbitrary detention, torture, and murder. Three other former Kosovo Liberation Army figures were also convicted for targeting ethnic Albanians whom they suspected of collaborating with the Serbian invaders in the late 1990s.
The wheels of justice turn slowly, and in the arena of international law, successful war crimes prosecutions are difficult. So, what happened in Kosovo as the U.S. bombed Serbian targets — as ethnic Albanians were expelled by the hundreds of thousands?
Alex Whiting is our guest. He teaches at Harvard Law School and is an expert on international criminal law. He worked at the Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor’s Office in The Hague and once interviewed Hashim Thaci as part of an investigation.
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Vladimir Putin and the Russian foreign policy establishment's goal is not to outlast the West only in Ukraine, but to create an alternate world order of anti-Western countries, a world where Russia can evade sanctions, throw around its influence, and disseminate its propaganda to receptive audiences. This is according to political scientist Hanna Notte, the author of 'We Shall Outlast Them: Putin's Global Campaign to Defeat the West.'
Is it working? Moscow's global efforts have produced mixed results while, says Notte, doing long-term damage to Russia itself. For starters, the war in Ukraine remains a grinding stalemate.
Hanna Notte is the director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Her expertise is in Russian foreign policy, the Middle East, and arms control.
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The Constitution created what were supposed to be three coequal branches, and only Congress was given the authority to declare war. Yet we are living in the age of the imperial presidency — of endless war, executive orders, government secrecy, and a lack of accountability. These are all fit for a monarchy instead of a republic.
How did we get here? What structures led to the rise of the imperial presidency? What decisions led to this unintended consequence undermining the American democratic experiment?
Our guest is Jeremi Suri, who teaches history at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s the author of The Impossible Presidency and co-host of This is Democracy podcast.
Suri also writes the Democracy of Hope newsletter.
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New developments in Yemen bode poorly for global oil flows or a peaceful settlement of the Greater Middle East's raging conflicts. The Associated Press reports the Houthi rebels have seized two strategic islands in the southern Red Sea, bolstering their ability to control a critical maritime shipping route.
The Houthis’ latest gains in their ongoing conflict with Saudi Arabia follow the seizure of the Red Sea port of Mokha and a strategic island last week. The fighting is putting even more upward pressure on global oil supplies and prices.
Here to untangle events in Yemen is Annelle Sheline, a research fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. She’s an expert on Yemen. Her book “Weaponizing Tolerance: Arab Monarchies and American Support for Moderate Islam” will be published by Cambridge University Press next year.
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History As It Happens is "on location" in this episode. Host Martin Di Caro visits Thomas Jefferson's historic Monticello estate in Virginia to talk to Brandon Dillard, its director of historic interpretation and audience engagement. Their conversation covers Monticello's new America250-related exhibits and the challenge of interpreting the past in hyper-partisan times.
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Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, 2001, nineteen al-Qaeda hijackers working for Osama bin Laden killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington, and a Pennsylvania field. The U.S. responded by launching a poorly defined war across the Greater Middle East that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the displacement of millions more, and the destruction of U.S. credibility and prestige. The war would be defined by the failures that flowed from long-term occupations and a preemptive invasion, the use of torture, and official lies.
Did the GWOT — the global war on terrorism — accomplish anything? Is it over? In this episode, Peter Bergen discusses his new book, All the Presidents’ Wars, which covers the past quarter-century.
Peter Bergen is a journalist, documentary producer, and vice president for global studies at New America, a D.C. think tank. He’s a national security analyst for CNN and professor of practice at Arizona State University.
Further listening:
Who Was Osama bin Laden? (podcast w/ Peter Bergen)
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Maybe U.S. presidents need to read a how-to manual on avoiding quagmires. Or maybe it wouldn't make much difference anyway. To understand why the United States keeps being sucked into protracted conflicts in the Greater Middle East, we must look beyond individual decision-making, says Emma Ashford of the Stimson Center in Washington. Instead, we must weigh the structural causes and incentives that have led one administration after another into battle in the name of protecting U.S. interests.
Emma Ashford is a Senior Fellow in the Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center and the author of First Among Equals: U.S. Foreign Policy in a Multipolar World.
Further reading:
America's Fatal Attraction to War by Emma Ashford in Foreign Affairs
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Since the aftermath of the Second World War and the establishment of an independent Jewish state of Israel in 1948, U.S. foreign policy has been in the "grip of a foreign power," according to the authors of "Israel's Lobby."
Authors Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick contend that the lobby has successfully pressured generations of U.S. leaders to set aside American interests in favor of Israeli interests, even though the two are often not aligned. Today the lobby — which consists of dozens of organizations and wealthy individuals with billions in financial resources — is wielding its influence to silence criticism of Israel as it destroys Palestinian society in Gaza.
How did "the Lobby" become so powerful? And is AIPAC's influence waning as Americans sour on unconditional support for Israel?
Eli Clifton is a cofounder and senior advisor at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Ian Lustick is a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Recommended reading:
Israel's Lobby by Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick
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Since the New York real estate developer-turned-realty TV star Donald Trump entered politics a decade ago, his personality has dominated Americans' lives. Where did Trump's malignant charisma come from? Where did he learn the art of the deal and how to master the media? And what about the ways of the liar, the cheat, and the bully? From his mentor, Roy Cohn.
Our guest is Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer Kai Bird, the author with Susan Goldmark of 'American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump.'
Further reading:
The Age of Cohn by Martin Di Caro (book review)
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Sixty years ago, in late August 1966, a remarkable film premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo's 'The Battle of Algiers' portrayed the brutal realities of the Algerian war for independence against colonial France. It has inspired revolutionaries fighting for national liberation ever since. Historian Martin Evans, an expert on empires at the University of Sussex, explores why Pontecorvo's masterpiece has endured and still resonates.
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