How Do We Know an Intervention Has Succeeded?

We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation. . . . We’re monitoring that situation very carefully. We have put together a range of contingency plans. – President Obama Back in late August of 2012, President Obama uttered words these in an impromptu press conference. At the time, it represented the most concrete and coherent statement of policy regarding the conflict in Syria. With the latest revelation that the Assad regime used chemical weapons on a small scale, calls …

We’re All the Same Except that We’re Not: A Primer on Multiculturalism

“We are extremely skeptical about ‘multicultural’ education in settings with few or no blacks,” Charles Moskos and John Butler wrote in 1996. “Indeed, without a substantial black presence, such education can detract from blacks’ opportunity by becoming a vehicle for other ‘oppressed’ groups – women, Hispanics, Asian Americans, gays and lesbians, and so on.”[1]  For the two sociologists, blacks endured the longest and most pernicious forms of discrimination, both de jure and de facto, which immigrant groups largely avoided. Moskos and Butler even blamed the rise of multiculturalism for undermining affirmative action programs for African Americans, arguing that once …

Syriana: Responsibility to Protect or Someone Else’s Problem?

If you’ve ever taken an International Relations Theory course then it’s likely that you’ve encountered the ubiquitous naysayer or two of IR Theory. “Why does this even matter in the study of foreign policy?” “Who cares what the Athenians told the Melians (FYI: 'The strong do as they can and the weak suffer what they must')?” “Leaders don’t think about this stuff when formulating foreign policy!” Now, the last accusation may in fact be true. Sure, foreign policy elites are not necessarily thumbing through volumes of Morgenthau, Grotius, Kant, Wendt, and/or Waltz when deciding what to do about North Korea. But, these authors and the IR theories they construct provide useful …

The Suburb and the Sword: Wartime Housing, Integration, and Suburbanization in Alexandria, VA, 1942-1968

For much of the post-WWII period, the tendency to describe housing as the provision of the private sector and as an inherent example of the value of free, unregulated markets  has proven pervasive. Writers like David Freund have compellingly deconstructed such arguments noting that in reality state and federal governments intervened into housing regularly.  “Postwar development politics helped convince a generation of whites that homeownership and neighborhood control rose above issues of class or party affiliation or even personal preference,” reflects Freund. Indeed in an era of “metropolitan fragmentation, restrictive zoning, and federal credit policy” that resegregated …

Double Victory: From WWII to the AVF, African Americans and the U.S. Military

In a recent exchange between right wing town crier Bill O’Reilly and former Secretary of State and Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, Powell appeared irritated at O’Reilly’s insinuation that the former Secretary voted for Obama for racial reasons. “So you basically said to yourself I’m still going to support the guy even though his economic policies haven’t worked for African Americans and pretty much anyone else,” the host argued.   Though some have described Powell’s response as hostile or angry, to this viewer he seemed the same eternally calm presence he’s appeared to be since embedding himself in the national conscience in the early 1990s. “Why do you …

Tropics of Meta’s Best of 2012

It has been a big year for us at ToM, as we rebooted and redesigned the site back in March and welcomed many new contributors.  (Hi, Jude, Lauren, Maryann, Nick, Adam, John, Jonathyne, & co.)  We were also lucky to see several of our pieces circulated more broadly in the online world, such as Alex’s look at the politics of Atlanta’s Beltline, Ryan’s analysis of sexuality in the films of Wes Anderson, and our roundtable discussion of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln.  Meanwhile, the manic, occasionally psychotic antics of the US election cycle prompted both mild laceration from our friend Clement, who covered the presidential conventions and debates, as well as the periodic spike in …

Was the American Civil War the First “Total War”?

“War is simply power unrestrained by constitution or compact.” With words like these General William Tecumseh Sherman helped secure himself and the American Civil War a place in the pantheon of modern conflicts. Few have become more closely associated with the notion of “total war,” and thanks to the horrors of twentieth century battle he has become an icon of modernity. Works on the topic are suffused with a sense of regret and dread, often coming on the heels of deadly conflicts. In The Destructive War, Charles Royster touched on the gloomy anticipation that pervades these histories with a 1934 quotation by James Truslow Adams: “What the horrors of the next war are to be, no one …

Crayons, Fraternities, and Military Historians: The Perception and State of American Military History

During his luncheon talk at the 1997 meeting of the Society for Military History, John Lynn revealed that a colleague of his at the University of Illinois had inquired if military historians write in crayon. Eleven years later, John Shy, professor emeritus of history at the University of Michigan, reported at the 2008 meeting of the American Historical Association that the head of an American history department proclaimed military history “as of interest only to hormone-driven fraternity boys.”   In the world of academia, a common belief among military historians is that non-military historians tend to equate military history with popular narratives focused narrowly on guns, battles, …

Dog Days Classics: Lanny Budd, Upton Sinclair’s Ideal Idler

"It was profoundly true that movements of the spirit came first, and that events of history were consequences thereof." -Upton Sinclair, Wide is the Gate Several years ago I was directed toward Upton Sinclair’s socialist-minded quasi-spy novels about a young man named Lanning Prescott Budd. The 11 books span the breadth of time from the onset of The Great War to the rise of the Cold War, but as I have been able to acquire only the first half of the series, my investigation has followed Lanny only so far as the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. A New York Times reflection on the books gives a decent introduction to the protagonist: Born in 1900, he was the illegitimate child of an …

Richmond City Nights: Part III of the 2012 Policy History Conference

In part III of ToM's coverage of the 2012 Policy History Conference traverses the whole of post WWII 20th century history.  From the efforts of municipal leaders to construct expressways boosting downtown development in the 1940s to the role of 1970s sexual debates and the onslaught of AIDS in reforming health policies to 1990s military activism that pushed back against the Army's long history of discrimination against homosexuals, PHC participants engaged a range of topics and periods.  Here they are. The US Military:  Activism, Rights, and Policy Beth Bailey, Military Exceptionalism, Civil Rights, and the Struggle over Gays in the Military Author of From Front Porch to Back …