Articles

In recent years, a concerted effort has been made to build up and delineate a discipline of applied history. But there has been little discussion about what applied history is, how the discipline navigates a range of epistemological problems, and how applied history is distinct from other disciplines that use historical data and attend to matters of policy—particularly political science. This article considers some of these questions with respect to two common methods of applied history: analogy and genealogy.

Jay Mens asks: Why won't the U.S. admit that Iran's proxies, which include Hamas, are acting in concert?

In an interview for The Times of London, Calder Walton recounts the history of the Concorde SST and the role that Soviet espionage played in it.

Calder Walton says both seek to topple the United States from atop world stage, with China's blend of money, influence, all-hands-on-deck approach posing the greater threat.

Calder Walton recounts how Russia and China are using their intelligence agencies to reverse the outcome of the Cold War

Many accounts of the formation of American and British grand strategy during World War II between the fall of France and the Pearl Harbor attacks stress the differences between the two sides’ strategic thinking. These accounts argue that while the Americans favored a 'direct' Germany-first approach to defeating the Axis powers, the British preferred the 'indirect' or 'peripheral' method. However, a review of Anglo-American strategic planning in this period shows that before official U.S. wartime entry, both sides largely agreed the British 'peripheral' approach was the wisest grand strategy for winning the war.

Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy Grant H. Golub discussed the World War II–era expansion of the now-defunct U.S. Department of War during a virtual International Security Program seminar on October 13, 2022.

Hostile foreign states are using weaponized information to attack the United States. Russia and China are disseminating disinformation about domestic U.S. race relations and COVID-19 to undermine and discredit the U.S. government. These information warfare attacks, which threaten U.S. national security, may seem new, but they are not. Using an applied history methodology and a wealth of previously classified archival records, this article uses two case studies to reveal how and why a hostile foreign state, the Soviet Union, targeted America with similar disinformation in the past

In his review of The Saigon Sisters by Patricia D. Norland, Nathaniel L. Moir writes, "In this informative collection of oral histories, nine women provided Norland with their personal stories and comprehensive thoughts; the author conducted the interviews in French, beginning in 1989.

Protests against racism erupt in cities across America. A White House, under siege, believes a vast conspiracy is at work, and, to uncover it, instigates a policy to spy on Americans. This is not the United States in 2020, but half a century earlier. Using a wealth of declassified records, this article explores a domestic intelligence collection program (CHAOS) instigated by two  successive US administrations and conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency in the late 1960s and early 1970s.