The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist reveals the inside story behind events that shaped America: how he uncovered the truth about the Kennedy assassination; searched for Nazis in South America; broke the savings and loan scandal; discovered the Iran "arms for hostages" scandal; and uncovered the mystery of Howard Hughes' death.

During a television broadcast in 1959, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower remarked that "people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days our governments had better get out of the way and let them have it." At that very moment international peace organizations were bypassing national governments to create alternative institutions for the promotion of world peace and mounting the first serious challenge to the state-centered conduct of international relations. This study explores the emerging politics of peace, both as an ideal and as a pragmatic aspect of international relations, during the early cold war. It traces the myriad ways in which a broad spectrum of people involved in and affected by the cold war used, altered, and fought over a seemingly universal concept. These dynamic interactions involved three sets of global actors: cold war states, peace advocacy groups, and anti-colonial liberationists. These transnational networks challenged and eventually undermined the cold war order. They did so not just with reference to the United States, the Soviet Union, and Western Europe, but also by addressing the violence of national liberation movements in the Third World. As Petra Goedde shows in this work, deterritorializing the cold war reveals the fractures that emerged within each cold war camp, as activists both challenged their own governments over the right path toward global peace and challenged each other over the best strategy to achieve it. The Politics of Peace demonstrates that the scientists, journalists, publishers, feminists, and religious leaders who drove the international discourse on peace after World War II laid the groundwork for the eventual political transformation of the Cold War.

"This essay was originally entitled 'Present-mindedness revisited: anti-radicalism as a goal of American historical writing since World War II.'" Includes bibliographical references.

Gathering together essays by some of the most influential modern political philosophers and theorists, War, Peace, and International Political Realism reveals the twentieth-century roots of the realist tradition and demonstrates the enduring relevance of realist insights for current international relations scholarship and foreign affairs. These essays, all of which were published in The Review of Politics, the majority during the 1940s and 1950s, reflect four major tenets of the classical realist tradition: an obligation to confront large and difficult questions about international politics, a recognition of the fundamentally tragic nature of relations among humans and states, a rejection of historical optimism, and a belief in practical morality. Keir A. Lieber provides an excellent introduction emphasizing the importance of political realism as defined by the contributors. "Political realism is a distinguished intellectual tradition that illuminates the tragic aspects of the human condition. This wide-ranging collection of essays highlights the philosophical depth and topical breadth of postwar realist thought and illustrates both the continuities and divisions that continue to shape that tradition. Readers will gain considerable insight from revisiting these classics, or from discovering them for the first time." --Stephen Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University "This collection of outstanding essays by such intellectual giants as Hannah Arendt, Herbert Butterfield, George Kennan, and Hans Morgenthau shows why conflict has long been at the heart of international politics and why there will never be world peace." --John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago "This volume of essays that were originally published in The Review of Politics provides a unique perspective on the early history of both International Relations and political realism. All of the contributors, including luminaries such as Kennan, Morgenthau, and Thompson, asked profound questions about the nature of man, society, and politics, and should encourage readers to reconsider the purpose of contemporary political science. By focusing on the work of some of the leading realist thinkers who were writing in the 1940s and 1950s, Lieber clearly demonstrates that realism remains extremely relevant to understanding current debates on international politics and American foreign policy." --Brian C. Schmidt, Carleton University

A three-thousand year history of the world that examines the causes of war and the search for peace In three thousand years of history, China has spent at least eleven centuries at war. The Roman Empire was in conflict during at least 50 per cent of its lifetime. Since 1776, the United States has spent over one hundred years at war. The dream of peace has been universal in the history of humanity. So why have we so rarely been able to achieve it? In A Political History of the World, Jonathan Holslag has produced a sweeping history of the world, from the Iron Age to the present, that investigates the causes of conflict between empires, nations and peoples and the attempts at diplomacy and cosmopolitanism. A birds-eye view of three thousand years of history, the book illuminates the forces shaping world politics from Ancient Egypt to the Han Dynasty, the Pax Romana to the rise of Islam, the Peace of Westphalia to the creation of the United Nations. This truly global approach enables Holslag to search for patterns across different eras and regions, and explore larger questions about war, diplomacy, and power. Has trade fostered peace? What are the limits of diplomacy? How does environmental change affect stability? Is war a universal sin of power? At a time when the threat of nuclear war looms again, this is a much-needed history intended for students of international politics, and anyone looking for a background on current events.

For the last thirty years Somalia has experienced violence and upheaval. Today, the international effort to help Somalis build a federal state and achieve stability is challenged by deep-rooted grievances, local conflicts and a powerful insurgency led by Al-Shabaab. Consisting of forty-four chapters by conflict resolution specialists and the world's leading experts on Somalia, this volume constitutes a unique compendium of insights into the insurgency and its impact. War and Peace in Somalia explores the legacies of past violence, especially impunity, illegitimacy and exclusion, and the need for national reconciliation. Drawing on decades of experience and months of field research, the contributors throw light on diverse forms of local conflict, its interrelated causes, and what can be done about it. They share original research on the role of women, men and youth in the conflict, and present new insight into Al-Shabaab--particularly the group's multi-dimensional strategy, the motivations of its fighters, their foreign links, and the prospects for engagement. This ground-breaking volume illuminates the war in Somalia, and sets out what can and should be done to bring it to an end. For policymakers and researchers covering Somalia, East Africa, extremism or conflict resolution, this is a must-read.

Chapter Introduction: Strategic history -- chapter 1 Themes and contexts of strategic history -- chapter 2 Carl von Clausewitz and the theory of war -- chapter 3 From limited war to national war: The French Revolution and the Napoleonic way of war -- chapter 4 The nineteenth century, I: A strategic view -- chapter 5 The nineteenth century, II: Technology, warfare and international order -- chapter 6 World War I, I: Controversies -- chapter 7 World War I, II: Modern warfare -- chapter 8 The twenty-year armistice, 1919-39 -- chapter 9 The mechanization of war -- chapter 10 World War II in Europe, I: The structure and course of total war -- chapter 11 World War II in Europe, II: Understanding the war -- chapter 12 World War II in Asia-Pacific, I: Japan and the politics of empire -- chapter 13 World War II in Asia-Pacific, II: Strategy and warfare -- chapter 14 The Cold War, I: Politics and ideology -- chapter 15 The Cold War, II: The nuclear revolution -- chapter 16 War and peace after the Cold War: An interwar decade -- chapter 17 9/11 and the age of terror -- chapter 18 Irregular warfare: Guerrillas, insurgents and terrorists -- chapter 19 War, peace and international order -- chapter 20 Conclusion: Must future strategic history resemble the past?.