Unforgettable Fire: The U-2 Incident
Reports on the May 1960 downing of an American U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union offer a case study in Cold War posturing and misdirection.
Military Policing and Militarizing the Police
The use of military strategies inside the borders of the United States has long been connected with racial politics.
How Steelworkers Stopped a Paramilitary Movement
Despite failing to break the Homestead Strike in 1892, the Pinkerton Agency demonstrated the extralegal threat paramilitary agencies created for Americans.
The US Army as a Slaveholding Institution
Until the Civil War, US Army officers relied on enslaved servants even while serving in “free states.”
A Private Coup: Guatemala, 1954
A 1954 coup, backed by the CIA and private citizen William Pawley, installed an authoritarian regime and touched off four decades of civil war in Guatemala.
The Mayaguez Incident: The Last Chapter of the Vietnam War
Reeling from defeat in Vietnam, the US invaded a Cambodian island to rescue a US freighter—just before its crew members, who were elsewhere, were released.
Eisenhower and the Real-Life Nautilus
The voyage of the USS Nautilus under the North Pole in August 1958 was a strategic use of technological spectacle as propaganda under Eisenhower.
As Militaries Adopt AI, Hype Becomes a Weapon
Few things provoke quite the same amount of anxiety as the effect AI could have on warfare.
From Weapons to Wildlife?
While war is an environmental as well as human disaster, readiness and preparation for armed conflict is more ambiguous ecologically.
From Handcuffs to Rainbows: Queer in the Military
The US military has done an about face on LGBTQ+ rights in just over a decade.