History As It Happens

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The Middle East is undergoing transformative changes. It's difficult, if not impossible, to see where things will end up. What is clear, however, is that political Islam — what the scholar Mohammed Ayoob says was "the dominant ideological challenger to the region’s authoritarian political systems" — is declining. Public confidence that Islamist movements, whether radical or pragmatic, can affect positive change for their societies is low. What might emerge instead?

Our guest is Nathan Brown, who teaches political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He's an expert on religion and politics, authoritarianism, constitutionalism, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Further reading:

The End of Political Islam? Not Quite by Mohammad Ayoob (The National Interest)

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Scientists sequenced Thomas Jefferson’s genome from three strands of his hair for a project led by the Smithsonian Institution to prove that Jefferson fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings.

According to The New York Times, researchers used cutting-edge techniques to extract and sequence the DNA, then compared it with DNA samples from 13 living Hemings and Jefferson family descendants.

This story is, in some ways, old news. The allegations that Jefferson had an enslaved mistress appeared when he was president in 1802. Books written decades ago by Fawn Brodie and Annette Gordon-Reed delved into their relationship. Yet the story still fascinates, and now has a new chapter for us to talk about.

Our guest is Alan Taylor, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Chair, Emeritus, in the Department of History at the University of Virginia.

He’s the author of Thomas Jefferson’s Education and the new Tower Hill: A Plantation on the Edge of Rebellion.

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In leafy Meridian Hill Park in Washington, D.C., there stands a bronze statue of the fifteenth president of the United States. Only an inscription etched in the surrounding marble identifies its subject: BUCHANAN.

Yes, a statue to the terrible James Buchanan, who interfered in a notorious Supreme Court ruling, consistently took the side of the Southern Slave Power, and barely lifted a finger to save the Union after seven states seceded on his watch.

Is it fair to lambast this hapless figure? What could Buchanan have done differently to avert the Civil War? Historian James Oakes is our guest.

Recommended reading:

Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865 by James Oakes

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As some Israeli government ministers call for the "voluntary migration" of all Palestinians from Gaza, the term ethnic cleansing is back in the news. Before the 1990s, international institutions and mainstream political figures seldom used the term. Then came the Serb atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia, and ethnic cleansing gained wide acceptance.

What does it mean? Does it have a legal grounding? Or is it a euphemism for genocide? Our guest is sociologist Martin Shaw, a leading genocide scholar and professor emeritus of International Relations and Politics at the University of Sussex.

Further reading:

The Genocide that Changed the World by Martin Shaw (Journal of Genocide Research)

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A special tribunal in The Hague convicted a hero of Kosovo's independence struggle of war crimes. Hashim Thaci was sentenced to 25 years for the crimes of arbitrary detention, torture, and murder. Three other former Kosovo Liberation Army figures were also convicted for targeting ethnic Albanians whom they suspected of collaborating with the Serbian invaders in the late 1990s.

The wheels of justice turn slowly, and in the arena of international law, successful war crimes prosecutions are difficult. So, what happened in Kosovo as the U.S. bombed Serbian targets — as ethnic Albanians were expelled by the hundreds of thousands?

Alex Whiting is our guest. He teaches at Harvard Law School and is an expert on international criminal law. He worked at the Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor’s Office in The Hague and once interviewed Hashim Thaci as part of an investigation.

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Vladimir Putin and the Russian foreign policy establishment's goal is not to outlast the West only in Ukraine, but to create an alternate world order of anti-Western countries, a world where Russia can evade sanctions, throw around its influence, and disseminate its propaganda to receptive audiences. This is according to political scientist Hanna Notte, the author of 'We Shall Outlast Them: Putin's Global Campaign to Defeat the West.'

Is it working? Moscow's global efforts have produced mixed results while, says Notte, doing long-term damage to Russia itself. For starters, the war in Ukraine remains a grinding stalemate.

Hanna Notte is the director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Her expertise is in Russian foreign policy, the Middle East, and arms control.

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The Constitution created what were supposed to be three coequal branches, and only Congress was given the authority to declare war. Yet we are living in the age of the imperial presidency — of endless war, executive orders, government secrecy, and a lack of accountability. These are all fit for a monarchy instead of a republic.

How did we get here? What structures led to the rise of the imperial presidency? What decisions led to this unintended consequence undermining the American democratic experiment?

Our guest is Jeremi Suri, who teaches history at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s the author of The Impossible Presidency and co-host of This is Democracy podcast.

Suri also writes the Democracy of Hope newsletter.

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New developments in Yemen bode poorly for global oil flows or a peaceful settlement of the Greater Middle East's raging conflicts. The Associated Press reports the Houthi rebels have seized two strategic islands in the southern Red Sea, bolstering their ability to control a critical maritime shipping route.

The Houthis’ latest gains in their ongoing conflict with Saudi Arabia follow the seizure of the Red Sea port of Mokha and a strategic island last week. The fighting is putting even more upward pressure on global oil supplies and prices.

Here to untangle events in Yemen is Annelle Sheline, a research fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. She’s an expert on Yemen. Her book “Weaponizing Tolerance: Arab Monarchies and American Support for Moderate Islam” will be published by Cambridge University Press next year.

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History As It Happens is "on location" in this episode. Host Martin Di Caro visits Thomas Jefferson's historic Monticello estate in Virginia to talk to Brandon Dillard, its director of historic interpretation and audience engagement. Their conversation covers Monticello's new America250-related exhibits and the challenge of interpreting the past in hyper-partisan times.

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Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, 2001, nineteen al-Qaeda hijackers working for Osama bin Laden killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington, and a Pennsylvania field. The U.S. responded by launching a poorly defined war across the Greater Middle East that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the displacement of millions more, and the destruction of U.S. credibility and prestige. The war would be defined by the failures that flowed from long-term occupations and a preemptive invasion, the use of torture, and official lies.

Did the GWOT — the global war on terrorism — accomplish anything? Is it over? In this episode, Peter Bergen discusses his new book, All the Presidents’ Wars, which covers the past quarter-century.

Peter Bergen is a journalist, documentary producer, and vice president for global studies at New America, a D.C. think tank. He’s a national security analyst for CNN and professor of practice at Arizona State University.

Further listening:

Who Was Osama bin Laden? (podcast w/ Peter Bergen)

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