Links to Recent Articles of Interest
“Today, Trump’s Target Was Caracas. What Tomorrow?”
By Stephen Wertheim, The Guardian, posted January 4
Liken’s Trump’s claim of success in Venezuela to his initial “This is genius” response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Now, “Trump has thrown a country of around 28 million people into uncertainty and tossed away the most obvious, hard-won lesson of decades of US foreign policy failures: regime-change wars are easy to start and hard to win, much less to turn into anything resembling genuine success.” The author is a historian and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“Top 5 Mistakes Bush Made in Iraq That Trump Is Making in Venezuela”
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment, posted January 4
A detailed discussion of parallels, focusing on illegality, false pretexts, failure to plan for the next day, unrealistic hopes for oil, and ignoring of polarization in the invaded society, The author teaches Middle East history at the University of Michigan.
By Timothy Snyder, Reader Supported News, posted December 31 (from Substack)
A stark warning that Trump has made a terror attack more likely by downgrading national-security precautions and that, if an attack does come, he will follow historical examples (Hitler and Stalin) by using the crisis as a pretext for attacking democratic freedoms. “Do not fall for it.” The author teaches history at the University of Toronto, specializing in Eastern and Central Europe and the Soviet Union and the Holocaust. Among his books is On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Penguin, 2017).
“Trump’s Takeover of Education Is Taking a Page from the Confederacy”
By Layla A. Jones, Talking Points Memo, posted December 29
Sketches the Trump administration’s multi-pronged effort to shape American history curriculums and shows its parallel with the successful campaign of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the early twentieth century to impose the “Lost Cause” view of the Civil War on US history textbooks. The author is a reporter for Talking Points Memo (TPM), in Washington, DC.
“Whatever Happened to Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ for American Workers?”
By Lawrence S. Wittner, Z, posted December 26
Focuses concisely on the issues of wages, unemployment, occupational safety and health, and collective bargaining rights, depicting a consistently anti-worker US administration. The author is a professor emeritus of history at SUNY Albany.
“Ending the American Dream by 2029? Eye of Newt and Toe of Frog in Trump’s U.S.A.”
By Alfred McCoy, TomDispatch, posted December 23
A big-picture look at the Trump administration’s damage to the US world standing, both as a cooperator and as a competitor, through its foreign and domestic policies. “As Shakespeare’s witches saw the future in their cauldron’s bubbling brew and said of Macbeth, a man who would be king (whatever the cost), ‘Something wicked this way comes,’ they also caught our Trumpian moment so many centuries later. The author teaches US history at the University of Wisconsin.
“Trump Wants to Carve Up the World. It’s a Blueprint for Disaster”
By Greg Grandin, New York Times, posted December 15
Historical background on the Monroe Doctrine and the twist given to it by the Trump administration, whose “ideal of a world organized around a multifront balance of power … with all nations, everywhere, angling for advantage” promises “more confrontation, more brinkmanship, more war.” Quotes the recent warning by NATO’s secretary general: “We must be prepared for the scale of war our parents and great-grandparents endured.” The author teaches history at Yale University.
“Trump’s Immigration Rhetoric and Policies Echo Hitler”
By Alan Singer, Daily Kos, posted December 7
A brief likening of Trump’s diatribes against immigrants to Hitler’s justification for anti-Jewish policies, noting that Hitler claimed to draw inspiration from US immigration laws of the 1920s. The author is a historian who is director of social studies education at Hofstra University.
“Trump’s Pardon of an Ex-Honduran President Is Shocking. So Is the History of US Support for Him”
By Dana Frank, The Guardian, posted December 6
“Presidents Obama, Trump and Biden stood by their man in Honduras for the eight vicious, destructive years he was in power….Hernández was only able to rise to power, and stay there, because of the United States government.” The author is a professor emerita of history at UC Santa Cruz. Among her books is The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup (Haymarket Books, 2019).
“This Is the Kind of Bigotry We Rejected Decades Ago”
By Amanda Frost, New York Times, posted December 5.
A capsule history of country-specific bans in US immigration policy and their repudiation in the Immigration Act of 1965, which President Lyndon Johnson described as correcting “a cruel and enduring wrong,” and the Trump policies that proscribe immigration from a growing list of counties.The author teaches law at the University of Virginia and wrote the book You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers (Beacon Press, 2021).
“Immigration Isn’t an ‘Invasion’ – It’s the Answer to an Invitation”
By Irvin Ibargüen, Made by History – Time, posted December 4
“Mexican immigration flourished with the encouragement – indeed, the insistence of the United States. To pretend otherwise is to feign shock at a harvest it intentionally planted and from which it has continually reaped rewards.” The author teaches US and immigration history at New York University and is the author of Caught in the Current: Mexico’s Struggle to Regulate Emigration, 1940-1980 (U. of North Carolina Press, 2025).
“Operation Condor: A Network of Transitional Repression 50 Years Later”
By Peter Kornbluh, The Nation, posted December 3
Describes an alliance, formed in Chile in 1975, through which the secret police forces of seven South American nations coordinated the assassination of hundreds of leftists in their countries. The US took a passive, approving role but feared embarrassment when some of the assassinations took place in Europe and then in Washington, DC. The author is a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, where he has worked since 1986.
Thanks to Rusti Eisenberg and an anonymous reader for flagging some of the articles listed above and to Roger Peace for valuable consulting. Suggestions can be sent to jimobrien48@gmail.com.