History As It Happens

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Democrats trounced Republicans in the midterm elections, winning back control of Congress on a wave of public disgust with President Trump and his party. A major reason for that disgust is the Iran war disaster.
How will the election results influence the Trump administration's approach to resolving the war, if at all? How will Democrats treat their responsibility to end the war in Congress? What is the status of negotiations over ending the blockade and reopening the Strait of Hormuz?
Our guest is Trita Parsi, the co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Further reading:
The Swiss Cheese Solution: How Trump May Walk Away From Iran by Trita Parsi

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Now that Americans have rebuked the president and his party in the midterm elections, is Trumpism a spent force? The Republican Party — and the conservative movement more broadly — have been counted out before: in 1964 when Goldwater crashed and burned, in 1974 because of Watergate, and in 2008 when the Obama wave swept into the White House. Donald Trump is a lame duck whose priorities and policies are deeply unpopular. Will historians mark this moment as the beginning of the end for his populist movement? Our guest is Damon Linker.
Damon Linker teaches political science at the University of Pennsylvania and writes the Notes From the Middleground newsletter.
Recommended reading:
New Top Dog by Damon Linker (Notes From the Middleground)

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When do empires decline and why? Today, the United States is stuck in another unwinnable war in the Persian Gulf, its military and economic might insufficient to force Iran's surrender. This humiliation is part of a pattern: the U.S. fights many wars but wins few. Washington's security commitments sprawl the globe, yet where the U.S. chooses to intervene, legitimate national security interests are often not on the line.
The Iran war disaster has exposed the limits of power, a case of overstretch that historians may compare to past empires that accelerated their own declines. Historian Jeffrey Engel is our guest.
Jeffrey Engel teaches at Southern Methodist University, where he is the founding director of the Center for Presidential History. He's the author of When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War.

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Are the NATO allies in Eastern Europe risking war with Russia over a piece of Russian national territory wedged between Lithuania and Poland? Russia has warned NATO it is prepared to use its entire arsenal, including nuclear weapons, if the Western alliance attempts to cut off the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad.
Once part of East Prussia and home to the beautiful German city of Königsberg, the Soviet Union annexed the territory after WWII, renamed it Kaliningrad, and it was settled by Russians after the German population was expelled. A Soviet strategic foothold on the Baltic Sea, Kaliningrad would be surrounded by the NATO allies after 1991, setting the stage for today's dangerous tensions. Anatol Lieven is our guest.
Anatol Lieven is the director of the Eurasia Program and the Andrew Bacevich Chair in American Diplomatic History at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Further reading:
Slouching Toward Kaliningrad by Anatol Lieven for Responsible Statecraft

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The story of how and why the Biden administration enabled Israel’s genocidal brutality in Gaza and beyond has been written by the journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed, revealing the callousness and incompetence of an enfeebled president and his top aides, who exercised a default deference to Israel — in defiance of U.S. and international law — after the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
The Biden team's failure to restrain Israel from committing mass murder will shadow them for the rest of their lives, as the consequences ripple across a Middle East upended by war and genocide.
Recommended reading:
Crossing the Red Line by Akbar Shahid Ahmed
Biden's Israel Catastrophe by Martin Di Caro (The American Conservative)

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