Whittaker Chambers’ “Witness”: A Story for the Ages

By |2023-06-02T11:56:58-05:00June 1st, 2023|Categories: Books, Cold War, Western Civilization|

"Witness" is a brief against the “dying civilization” that was the United States of the Jazz Age. The America of F. Scott Fitzgerald, flappers, and general frivolity was dying? The young Whittaker Chambers vaguely thought so at the time. The mature Chambers of "Witness" was convinced of that. Whittaker Chambers “Man without mysticism [...]

Visiting the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site

By |2022-05-24T17:44:42-05:00May 24th, 2022|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Cold War, Military, Nuclear War, Senior Contributors|

The barely-populated area of the Great Plains where the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site is located is beautiful and peaceful—thus adding, in some strange, ironic, and disturbing way, to the surrealism of weapons designed there to end the world as we know it. We got up early, and we drove nearly two hours to see [...]

Making Sense of a Chaotic World: “Red Metal”

By |2020-02-05T23:52:25-06:00February 4th, 2020|Categories: American Republic, Books, Bradley J. Birzer, Cold War, Communism, Politics, Senior Contributors, War|

“Red Metal” fully understands that we live in a post-Communist world, a world of fundamentalisms as well as of nation-states and tenuous alliances. I highly recommend the novel, not only for its entertainment value, but also for its ability to ask all the right questions we Americans need to be asking. Red Metal, by Mark [...]

Litany of the Lost

By |2020-05-12T22:29:09-05:00November 29th, 2019|Categories: Civilization, Cold War, Imagination, Joseph Pearce, Literature, Poetry, Senior Contributors, War, Western Civilization|

Written in the after-shock of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Siegfried Sassoon’s “Litany of the Lost” laments the dehumanizing and destructive effects of technology. If Sassoon emerges as something of a prophet in the lines of this poem, he is something of a prophet at a loss. Who exactly is to deliver us from ourselves? We did [...]

George Kennan’s Diaries

By |2020-03-11T14:36:50-05:00September 4th, 2019|Categories: American Republic, Books, Civilization, Cold War, Europe, Foreign Affairs, Politics, War|

George Kennan was—and remains—an important, even compelling, figure in the early history of the Cold War. But these selections from his diaries reveal him to have been something other than what this honest and calm, but not always detached and cool, professional diplomat took himself to be. The Kennan Diaries, edited by Frank Costigliola (768 [...]

“The End of the Cold War”

By |2019-07-10T23:21:27-05:00November 20th, 2018|Categories: Cold War, Culture, Fiction, George Stanciu, Science|

“Why can’t we eat normal food?” Frank moved the fried tempeh, steamed broccoli, and brown rice around on his plate with his dinner fork, much like the eight-year-old boy he was forty years ago. His wife’s jaw stiffened, and she said, “This is normal food.” “Yeah, if we lived in Jakarta or Calcutta.” Alice refused [...]

1989: A Tale of Three Cities & the End of the Old New World Order

By |2021-11-08T14:15:35-06:00April 22nd, 2018|Categories: Cold War, Foreign Affairs, History, National Security, Russia, War, Western Civilization|

The year 1989 may well be seen by future historians as one of those rare pivotal years of this past millennium—like 1066, 1492, 1793, and 1914—that profoundly altered the direction of Western Civilization. It is, of course, still too early to say for certain that we as a society set ourselves on a dangerous collision [...]

The Marshall Plan: Conservative Reform as a Weapon of War

By |2021-05-26T16:38:50-05:00March 20th, 2018|Categories: Cold War, Conservatism, History, Politics, Russell Kirk, War|

As a weapon in the Cold War, the Marshall Plan contributed to the strategic goal of maintaining a balance of power between East and West and thereby containing the Soviet Empire long enough for it to collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions. If students recall anything about the European Recovery Program (the Marshall [...]

Ronald Reagan & George C. Marshall: A Cold War Affinity

By |2022-03-10T22:15:10-06:00December 20th, 2017|Categories: Cold War, Conservatism, Europe, Featured, History, Politics, Ronald Reagan, War|

Both George C. Marshall and Ronald Reagan were “conservative internationalists”: peace-through-strength realists who did not lose sight of their democratic principles, and who engaged with other nations to achieve not only American security and prosperity, but also a greater measure of freedom and justice in the world. Within this past year occurred both the thirtieth [...]

Van Cliburn, Nikita Khrushchev, and a Lull in the Cold War

By |2022-03-03T08:35:14-06:00July 19th, 2017|Categories: Audio/Video, Cold War, Culture, Music, Russia|

At some point during the 1958 International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, Nikita Khrushchev was asked whether it would be okay to give the prize to the American virtuoso, Van Cliburn. One of the most famous—and unexpected—lulls in the Cold War came when Texan Harvey Lavan Cliburn Jr. stepped off a plane in Moscow in April 1958. [...]

Dear Mr. Putin: Time to Give Up on Better Relations with America

By |2021-02-18T14:21:57-06:00July 17th, 2017|Categories: Cold War, Communism, Donald Trump, Featured, Foreign Affairs, History, National Security, Politics, Russia|

Dear President Putin: It is no use trying any further to accommodate the United States or cooperate with it. We cannot afford any more concessions. It is clear that the United States only respects force and firmness. Dear Mr. President: The below memorandum regarding Russian-American bilateral relations was drafted by my Ministry’s Department of North [...]

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