Description:

The Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy continues the Spring 2025 Book Series with a discussion of Alan McPherson’s The Breach: Iran-Contra and the Assault on American Democracy (UNC Press). In this gripping blow-by-blow account of the 1980s efforts to trade arms with Iran illegally, fund rebels in Central America despite a congressional prohibition, and dodge political and legal consequences once the truth emerged, McPherson argues for the salience of six democracy-degrading behaviors throughout the fiasco. At the time, many warned of the broad attack on democratic norms, yet no one paid a real price or learned a lesson. Those failures left the country more divided than ever before, and ill-equipped for more severe assaults to come.

McPherson is Freaney Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy at Temple University. He specializes in the history of U.S.-Latin American relations. He has been a fellow at Harvard University and twice a Fulbright Fellow. McPherson will be in conversation with Michael Brenes, co-director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and lecturer in history.