In this episode we talk about the connections between liberal Protestantism, American foreign policy, and the Cold War in mid-20th-century America. We discuss these themes through an examination of the life of former U.S. Secretary of State (1953-1959) John Foster...
foreign policy
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is not allowing Joe Biden to access messages from foreign leaders
Here is CNN’s Kylie Atwood: A stack of messages from foreign leaders to President-elect Joe Biden are sitting at the State Department but the Trump administration is preventing him from accessing them, according to State Department officials familiar with the messages. Traditionally,...
Trump says he moved the US embassy to Jerusalem to please evangelicals
Here is The Times of Israel: US President Donald Trump said Monday that his 2017 decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognize the city as the capital of Israel was done for evangelical Christians. “And we moved the...
What COVID-19 exposed about the United States
All of these points come from Ed Yong’s recent piece at The Atlantic: “How the Pandemic Defeated America.” We under-fund public health. Our health-care system is weak. Too much of what we do spend on healthcare is wasted. We have not...
The World Tells the United States to Stop Using the Phrase “Wuhan Virus”
Here is The Washington Post: Foreign ministers representing seven major industrialized nations failed to agree on a joint statement Wednesday after the Trump administration insisted on referring to the coronavirus outbreak as the “Wuhan virus,” three officials from G-7 countries told The...
A Bolton Bomb Drops on the Eve of the First Full Day of Trump’s Impeachment Defense
I wonder if this will move any GOP Senators to vote for witnesses. It should. Here is Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt at The New York Times: President Trump told his national security adviser in August that he wanted to...
Zakaria: “Trump does not have a foreign policy. He has a series of impulses”
Great insight here from Fareed Zakaria: Three months ago, President Trump suddenly withdrew U.S. forces from northern Syria that were, in part, thwarting Iran’s efforts to dominate the country, declaring, “Going into the Middle East is one of the worst decisions ever made...
The New King Cyrus Wants to Bomb the Old King Cyrus’s Tomb
Back in March 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo compared Donald Trump to Queen Esther, the Queen who persuaded the king of Persia not to destroy the Jews. Watch this: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lZiNeP-6uQ&w=560&h=315] It now looks like the new Queen Esther...
Please, Let’s Stop the “Trump’s Evangelical Base is Fracturing” Articles. It’s Not Going to Happen
A few evangelical leaders were not happy when Trump pulled out of Syria. Most of them, however, have made peace with the decision. Court evangelical Franklin Graham, who originally opposed the move, now says that he respects Trump’s decision and...
Four Historians of Presidential Foreign Policy: “We’ve never seen anything like this”
Here are the four historians: Elizabeth A. Cobbs : Melbern Glasscock Chair in American history at Texas A&M University and a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Kyle Longley: Snell Family Dean’s distinguished professor of history and political science...
The Author’s Corner with David Dzurec
David J. Dzurec is Chair and Associate Professor of History at the University of Scranton This interview is based on his new book Our Suffering Brethren: Foreign Captivity and Nationalism in the Early United States (University of Massachusetts Press, 2019). JF: What...
The Meaning of D-Day
Here is a taste of SMU’s Jeff Engel‘s piece at The Washington Post: Lives were lost every day of the war — in the Soviet Union, one life every four seconds — but D-Day holds a special place in American memory...
Trump Chooses Death Over Life Under the Guise of “America First.” Where are the Court Evangelicals?
In case you haven’t seen it yet, here is the official White House statement on the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and our ongoing U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia America First! The world is a very dangerous place! The country of...
The End of American Exceptionalism?
Today I will be teaching John Winthrop’s sermon A Model of Christian Charity to the teachers in the Princeton Seminar. You may know this as the famous “city upon a hill” sermon. Winthrop’s words have been used by several U.S presidents...
“Narcissism as a Foreign Policy Doctrine”
Here is Michael Gerson at The Washington Post: In the run-up to Helsinki, Trump actively advanced many important national objectives — of Russia. He claimed Crimea to be Russian, credited Putin’s denials of cyberaggression, attacked NATO, called the European Union a “foe,” openly supported Brexit, disparaged...
Will Someone Please Explain to Donald Trump That He Did Not Denuclearize North Korea
Here is Uri Friedman at The Atlantic: Donald Trump got little of substance out of his summit with Kim Jong Un. But that didn’t stop him from making a triumphant, demonstrably false claim about how things went. Trump declared in an early-morning tweet...
Movie Trailer Diplomacy
In case you haven’t seen it yet, here is the video Trump showed Kim Jong-Un the other day: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYsaC2CADs0&w=560&h=315] And then there are these videos: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSDQOyoXsfE&w=560&h=315] [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbkI38Y38Ac&w=560&h=315]...
Will Dennis Rodman be in Singapore for the Summit with the North Koreans?
Former NBA player Dennis Rodman thinks he should get some credit for the upcoming summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. It appears he will be in North Korea for the historic meeting. Here is a taste of political...
I Just Figured Out Why the Donald Trump-Kim Jong-un Summit Failed
From my friend Ron Nash: “President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the United States would “guarantee” Kim Jong Un’s safety at their planned summit meeting…..Kim appears to have seen this movie…” 🙂 [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuWkcKbBQkg&w=560&h=315]...
“The Strategic Implications of American Millennialism”
After reading this post at The Way of Improvement Leads Home, a friend sent me Major Brian L. Stuckert‘s 2008 study of the impact of dispensationalism on American foreign policy. The paper was written as part of Stuckert’s education at...