History As It Happens

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The Trump administration is attempting to topple Cuba's government through economic warfare.

An oil embargo and other punitive measures have led to severe consequences, including massive blackouts and water shortages. Ordinary Cubans are suffering, yet both they and their communist government are persevering — at least for now. The New York Times reports the CIA has established a secret task force to increase the pressure. The Cold War may be over, but U.S.-Cuba relations are frozen in time.

What explains more than six decades of hostility? Historian Alexander Aviña is our guest. He's an associate professor of Latin American history in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University.

Further reading/listening:

Timeline of U.S.-Cuba relations (Council on Foreign Relations)

Flirting with Armageddon w/ Max Hastings on the Cuban Missile Crisis

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The world is aflame with endless wars and racial strife. Some societies are tearing themselves apart as mass migration fuels a nationalist backlash. Since the nineteenth century, ethnic nationalism has been a potent force, galvanizing peoples — imagined nations — around shared myths and historical truths.

Our guest is Sune Haugbølle, an expert on global political sociology. He specializes in social memory, the history of radical movements, and transnational solidarity at Roskilde University in Denmark.

He is the author of War and Memory in Lebanon (Cambridge Middle East Studies).

Further listening:

The Nakba: 1947-present w/ historian Mark LeVine

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This is the 70th year of Sudanese independence, but there is little to celebrate and much to lament as the country continues to tear itself apart. Three major civil wars have consumed 43 years of Sudan's seven decades, not counting the many years of violence and genocide in Darfur from 2003.

The current war has entered its fourth year with no prospect of peace. Recent fighting has drawn the world's attention to the central Sudanese city of El Obeid, where thousands of desperate civilians are sheltering from a feared onslaught by the genocidal Rapid Support Forces. Alex de Waal returns to the podcast to discuss the driving forces behind the violence and why the world is incapable or unwilling to stop it.

Alex de Waal is the Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation and one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa. He is the co-author of The Sudans: Africa's Search for Peace, Democracy, and Two Viable States.

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The precarious international consensus on nuclear non-proliferation is cracking. The Trump administration announced a civilian nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia — long sought by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — which experts fear could lead to the Saudis pursuing nuclear weapons in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The deal allows for the kingdom to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium on its own soil.

In this episode, Joe Cirincione explains the potential danger to the U.S.-led nuclear order.

Recommended reading:

Trump's Saudi pact could be the worst nuclear deal in history by Joe Cirincione (MS Now)

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President Trump seems helpless. All the bombs and missiles he flings at Iran cannot solve his problems — problems he created by attacking Iran on the magical belief that the Islamic regime would crumble and be replaced by people whom Trump could control. It was a fantasy, and now, as the war enters its sixth month, Iran maintains a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz. The situation is in limbo, floating somewhere between war and peace — with little hope that a new nuclear accord with Iran is possible.

Trita Parsi is co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is an expert on US-Iranian relations, Iranian foreign policy, and the geopolitics of the Middle East.

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Was it possible for the leaders of the new American republic to end slavery entirely? Was the violent dispossession of Native peoples inevitable? These questions are integral to the eminent historian Joseph Ellis' new book about what he calls the two major failures of the revolutionary generation, "The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding."

Other questions to consider while listening are whether the Constitution consisted of compromises over slavery or capitulations to Southern slave interests. Also, whether Native Americans' views of land and property could ever be compatible with those of land-hungry white settlers.

Further listening (America250 series):

Episode 1 w/ Lindsay Chervinsky Episode 2 w/ Kate Carté Episode 3 w/ Alan Taylor Episode 4 w/ Lindsay Chervinsky Episode 5 w/ Jim Oakes Episode 6 w/ Sean Wilentz Episode 7 w/ H.W. Brands Episode 8 w/ Alan Taylor

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Is Congress irreparably broken or temporarily stuck as it fails to act as a co-equal branch of government willing to check a rogue executive? And how did it get this way? In the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, the winds of political change swept young, ambitious reformers into the halls of Congress, and they left an important legislative legacy. But in the decades since, Congress' potential to affect meaningful change — and prevent unnecessary wars — has been whittled away. Maya Kornberg is here to explain why.

Maya Kornberg is a senior research fellow at NYU Law's Brennan Center for Justice, and the author of Stuck: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress.

Further listening:

Iran and the Laws of War w/ Adil Haque

Obama and Libya w/ Jeremi Suri

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Have too many liberals and leftists given up on patriotism? Have they forgotten the tradition of social movements striving for equal political and economic rights as expressed in the country's founding ideals? Historian Michael Kazin says these ideals can be used "as both a benchmark against which to measure how far we have fallen short and a means of articulating the Constitution's vision of a more perfect union."

Michael Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University and is the author of "What It Took To Win: A History of the Democratic Party."

Further reading:

The Left Needs to Rediscover its Patriotism by Michael Kazin (The Atlantic)

Howard Zinn's History Lessons by Michael Kazin (Dissent)

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Now well into its fifth year, Russia's invasion of Ukraine appears to be a stalemate on the ground while the combatants seek a decisive edge in the air with drones and missiles. Diplomacy to end the war seems to be going nowhere. No one can say with any certainty how or when the war may end. Do the war's origins point toward an exit? Anatol Lieven is our guest.

Anatol Lieven is Director of the Eurasia Program and the Andrew Bacevich chair in American Diplomatic History at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

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Herman Melville's masterpiece Moby-Dick has something to teach us about democracy, citizenship, and the rule of law. A flop when published in the mid-nineteenth century, Moby-Dick has long been considered a quintessential American novel — an epic adventure story layered with allegory. In this episode, historian Michael Kimmage revisits the novel with a focus on the character Starbuck, the first mate who clashes with Captain Ahab over his mad pursuit of the white whale.

Recommended reading:

Citizen Starbuck, or Democracy and the Whale by Michael Kimmage (Liberties Journal)

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