Highlights of recent publications, press interviews, and other media from ISS researchers and scholars
Sleepwalking Toward War
Foreign Affairs
June 13, 2024
Arne Westad
Will America and China heed the warnings of 20th century catastrophe? Westad compares the current conflict with events that led Europe to war in 1914.
Volunteer programs, empowerment, and life satisfaction in Jordan
Frontiers in Sociology
May 30, 2024
Catherine Panter-Brick
Panter-Brick and co-authors demonstrate that engaging directly with refugee and poor women and incorporating local perspectives significantly reduces bias in understanding how low-resource women participate in their communities and experience life satisfaction.
The Berlin Airlift’s Lesson for Today’s Humanitarian Crises
Time
May 22, 2024
Kaete O’Connell
O’Connell writes that the Berlin Airlift was one of the most successful humanitarian missions ever conducted by the U.S. military — and a lesson for how to address today’s humanitarian crises, offering an opportunity to create an image of the U.S. as a benevolent superpower.
Does volunteering impact refugee women's life satisfaction, empowerment, and wellbeing?
Social Science & Medicine
April 2024
Catherine Panter-Brick
Using systematic methods to evaluate a volunteer-based intervention, Panter-Brick and co-authors find that reading aloud to children through a community-based volunteer program significantly boosted levels of life satisfaction in refugee women.
Roundtable Review of Remaking the World: Decolonization and the Cold War by Jessica Chapman
H-Diplo
April 29, 2024
Mattie Christine Webb
Webb reviews Chapman’s important contribution to the study of two of the most seismic events of the second half of the 20th century: the Cold War and decolonization in the so-called Third World.
U.S. Worker Movements and Direct Links Against Apartheid
Black Perspectives
April 26, 2024
Mattie Christine Webb
Webb highlights the ways in which U.S. workers and unions advocated for Black freedom and human rights beyond the workplace and across borders, challenging apartheid in South Africa.
Henry Kissinger and the Angel of Applied History
H-Diplo | RJISSF Commentary
April 10, 2024
Sean Case
Case reflects on one of Henry Kissinger’s most enduring policy legacies: his self-perception as a historian. Kissinger is thoroughly woven into the warp and weft of how applied history is understood and taught.
Hamilton Fish Armstrong and Yugoslavia: How an Internationalist's Idea of a New State Made Interwar-Era Foreign Affairs—and Foreign Affairs
Modern American History
March 20, 2024
Madelyn Lugli
Lugli explores how the future editor of Foreign Affairs magazine found his way to internationalism by treading through the corners of the newly made Yugoslavia.
When Democracy Breaks
Oxford University Press
March 15, 2024
Arne Westad, with Archon Fung, David Moss
Westad and co-editors explore 11 episodes of democratic breakdown, finding that, in every case, various forms of democratic erosion long preceded the final democratic breakdown.
Rethinking U.S. World Power
Palgrave Macmillan
March 7, 2024
Michael Brenes and Daniel Bessner
The edited volume assembles a diverse group of historians to explore the impact of the U.S. and its domestic history on U.S. foreign relations and world affairs.
Bread Not Bullets: Mobilizing American Farmers for the Postwar World
Palgrave Macmillan
March 7, 2024
Kaete O’Connell
O’Connell’s chapter in Rethinking U.S. World Power examines the relationship between farm policy and foreign policy in the middle of the 20th century. Seeking to advance American interests abroad during and immediately after World War II, U.S. policymakers tapped into the nation’s food power.
Too Sweet a Deal: American “Candy Men” and International Cocoa Negotiations in the 1960s
Palgrave Macmillan
March 7, 2024
Vivien Chang
Chang explores the rise of cocoa commodity policy amid the G-77 countries’ movement for economic sovereignty and the resistance they encountered from the U.S., the leading consumer of cocoa.
Abandoning the Peace Dividend: Bill Clinton and the Political Economy of Defense Conversion, 1989–2000
Palgrave Macmillan
March 7, 2024
Michael Brenes
Brenes posits that the post-Cold War “peace dividend” — the federal monies to be redirected from national defense toward social welfare — failed to materialize due to President Bill Clinton’s domestic agenda.
How to Make Russia Pay to Rebuild Ukraine
Just Security
February 20, 2024
Oona Hathaway
The authors argue that using on legitimate, collective countermeasures to continue to freeze Russian central bank assets until Russia meets its obligation to pay reparations is the way forward.
Uncommon Sense
Yale University Press
February 13, 2024
Ian Shapiro
In his new book, Shapiro lays out a spirited defense of the Enlightenment against assaults from both the left and the right that explains its urgent implications for our contemporary politics.
Saving African Women’s Lives
Wilson Center
January 31, 2024
Bisa Williams
In the Africa Year in Review 2023, Williams argues that deployment of an inexpensive, low-tech strategy to mitigate postpartum hemorrhage should incentivize the U.S. government to recalibrate how it directs resources to support maternal health in Africa.
Coparenting, mental health, and the pursuit of dignity: A systems-level analysis of refugee father-mother narratives
Social Science & Medicine
January 2024
Catherine Panter-Brick
The authors lay the groundwork for developing a relational, agentic model of family caregiving systems among refugees.
Chardell on Lingamfelter, 'Yanks in Blue Berets: American UN Peacekeepers in the Middle East'
H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews
January 2024
Daniel Chardell
Chardell praises L. Scott Lingamfelter’s work for taking seriously the perspectives of peacekeepers in conflict zones.
Navies in the second nuclear age
Orbis
December 2024
Paul Bracken
The growing nuclear context shapes how—and even whether—new nuclear technologies will be used in peace, crisis, or war. Bracken argues the U.S. must avoid a situation where it faces a choice of capitulation or nuclear war.