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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Lebanon, a small country on the Mediterranean coast that cannot defend its borders, is once again stuck in a hellacious bind, between Hezbollah fanaticism and Israeli destruction. Since its long civil war (1975-90), sectarian strife and foreign occupation have intermixed with economic mismanagement and political paralysis, leaving Lebanon in a near-permanent state of crisis. In this episode, Maha Yahya of Carnegie Middle East Center joins us from Beirut to explain the causes of the country's deep domestic problems.
Recommended reading:
Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon by Robert Fisk
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A decade before the state of Israel was born, a revolt rocked the British mandate of Palestine. It was an uprising of Arab peasants directed at their colonial overlords, Zionist immigrants, and Arab elites. The Great Revolt of 1936-1939 nearly succeeded before it was crushed by overwhelming force, a setback from which the Palestinian national movement never truly recovered. When you listen to this episode, you'll hear its echoes in today's crisis.
Our guest is Ted Swedenburg, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Arkansas and author of Memories of Revolt: The 1936–1939 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past.
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Subscribe now for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content! HAIH Premium subscribers got this episode (with no ads!) on Monday, May 4.
The United States' failure to defeat Iran in an unprovoked, undeclared war is fueling the notion that the U.S. is in decline. Its security commitments cover the globe. The annual defense budget is approaching $1 trillion. But the Pentagon can neither defend its Persian Gulf bases from low-cost drone attacks nor reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Forty years ago, a Yale historian named Paul Kennedy argued in a best-selling book that the U.S., like all great powers, could not avoid relative decline, especially if it failed to square means and ends. In those days, the national debt was $3 trillion. Today, it's soaring toward $40 trillion. Our guest is one of Paul Kennedy's old students, historian Jeremi Suri.
Jeremi Suri teaches history at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He writes the Democracy of Hope newsletter and co-hosts This is Democracy podcast.
Further reading:
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy
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Shortly after taking office in 1969, President Richard Nixon believed he might intimidate, through military threats, the Soviet Union and North Vietnam into making concessions at the peace table. In Nixon's words, it was "Madman theory." It didn't work. Today, President Trump has tried to bluster and bluff his way to victory over Iran, even threatening to wipe out Iranian civilization. Now the president hopes a naval blockade will force Tehran into surrendering the Strait of Hormuz and its nuclear ambitions. Historian Carolyn Eisenberg is our guest.
Historian Carolyn Eisenberg teaches at Hofstra University. She is an expert on the Vietnam War and the author of Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia.
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In late April 1986, what should have been a routine test at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northeastern Ukraine turned into an epic disaster, the largest ever accidental release of deadly radiation. It contaminated the earth, exposed the rot in the Soviet system, and changed the course of history. To this day, Chernobyl is not only a place on a map. It's a symbol of death, destruction, and the terrible legacy of the USSR. Mariana Budjeryn is our guest.
Mariana Budjeryn is a senior researcher with the Center for Nuclear Security Policy at MIT's Security Studies Program. She is the author of Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine.
Further listening:
When Ukraine Had Nukes w/ Mariana Budjeryn
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Subscribe now for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content! HAIH Premium subscribers got this episode (with no ads!) on Thursday, April 23.
When he took power 25 years ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to turn his country into a Great Power again, after it had endured a decade of poverty and humiliation following the collapse of the Soviet Union. But Russia is on the sidelines as wars and blockades in the Greater Middle East roil the global order. Yes, Russia has reportedly assisted Iran with satellite targeting intelligence, and its economy may benefit from the bump in oil prices. But Moscow is in no position to provide robust military assistance to its "strategic partner" Iran, and none of its representatives have been invited to the peace talks in Islamabad. Historian Sergey Radchenko explains why Russian influence is essentially irrelevant in a region where it once exerted an important presence.
Sergey Radchenko teaches history at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is the author of To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power.
Further reading:
Putin's Persian Problem by Sergey Radchenko (Foreign Policy)
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Subscribe now for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content! HAIH Premium subscribers got this episode (with no ads!) on Monday, April 20.
With Gaza destroyed and Jewish settlers rampaging the West Bank, and with the IDF occupying parts of southern Lebanon and Syria, talk of achieving "Greater Israel" is now commonplace among influential political and media figures in Israel, as well as the settlers who have their eyes set on annexing Palestinian territory. What does this Old Testament idea mean? And what current forces — religious, nationalist, and others — are driving it? Political scientist Ian Lustick is our guest.
Ian Lustick is a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He's the author of many books, including For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel.
His next book, Israel's Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power, will be released in August, co-authored with Eli Clifton.
Further listening:
What is Zionism? w/ Ian Lustick
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Subscribe now for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content! HAIH Premium subscribers got this episode (with no ads!) on Thursday, April 16.
There was an old idea behind President Trump's threats to annihilate Iran's bridges, power plants, and other civilian infrastructure. It's called strategic bombing, and it was devised more than a century ago by an Italian air power theorist with a French-sounding name. Giulio Douhet said air power should be used to destroy the enemy's capacity to make war while terrorizing its citizens to crush their will to persevere. In this episode, historian David M. Kennedy discusses Douhet's ideas and the sinister purposes to which they can be applied.
Recommended reading:
Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 by David M. Kennedy
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After 16 years in power, the self-described illiberal democrat Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz political party were trounced in Hungary's national elections. Critics of Orbán's authoritarian style had long become concerned that he had so tilted the electoral system in Fidesz's favor that he might never be beaten. So, what happened to MAGA darling Viktor Orbán? Political scientist Veronica Anghel of the European University Institute is our guest.
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Great Britain, France, and Israel's secret plan in 1956 to invade Egypt, regain control of the Suez Canal, and force the nationalist strongman Gamal Nasser from power ended in strategic disaster. The Eisenhower administration angrily opposed the surprise attack and pressured the aggressors to withdraw, ensuring Egypt would maintain control of the vital waterway. Today, as the U.S. fights a war of choice against Iran with no easy way to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, some believe the United States is experiencing its own 'Suez moment,' which will accelerate its strategic decline in a region where so many American projects have failed. Historian Salim Yaqub is our guest.
Salim Yaqub is a historian at U.C. Santa Barbara and an expert on U.S. involvement in the Middle East in the postwar era. He's the author of "Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East."
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