Roundup: Historians' Take

Arthur Herman: The Perils of Looking Weak

Arthur Herman’s latest book is “Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II.”On June 4, 1942, a battle off Midway Island marked the dawn of the United States Navy as the most powerful sea force in the world. Seventy years later, a civilian “battle” may doom its reach and power for good.Then the enemy was imperial Japan. Today, it’s the administration and Congress, who seem unable or unwilling to stop defense cuts that will leave America vulnerable and the world more dangerous. We’re fast approaching the point where the US Navy can no longer guarantee the safety of the world’s sea lanes, on which our economic future depends....President Obama took office with a Navy reduced from a Reagan-era peak of 594 active ships in 1987 to 285 in 2009 — a US fleet smaller than before World War I.Most naval experts agree we need a minimum of 320 to 350 ships — barely one for every 400,000 square miles of ocean — to police the sea lanes on which international trade depends and to protect our strategic interests. But Obama wants to retire another 11 ships....

J. Spencer Fluhman: Why We Fear Mormons

J. Spencer Fluhman, an assistant professor of history at Brigham Young University, is the author of the forthcoming book “ ‘A Peculiar People’: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in 19th-Century America.”MOCKERY of Mormonism comes easily for many Americans. Commentators have offered many reasons, but even they have found it difficult to turn their gaze from Mormon peculiarities. As a result, they have missed a critical function of American anti-Mormonism: the faith has been oddly reassuring to Americans. As a recent example, the Broadway hit “The Book of Mormon” lampoons the religion’s naïveté on racial issues, which is striking given that the most biting criticisms have focused on the show’s representations of Africans and blackness.

Jill Lepore: Death, Sex and Vampires

Jill Lepore is professor of American history at Harvard and the author of “The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death.”[On the upcoming film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter]...Ever since Dracula was published in 1897, and for a long time after that, when it was difficult to find much to read about sex, reading about vampires was a way to read about sex without having to check titles like “The Big Book of Porn” out of the library....Every vampire story has its day or, I guess, its night. But there’s a longer history here, too. In the 18th century, when Barnabas Collins and Lestat became vampires, the shape and length of life were different. So was death. When Abraham Lincoln was born, the average age of the United States population was 16, and life expectancy was under 40. Two centuries later, the average American can expect to live to nearly 80. Living longer hasn’t made dying any easier; arguably, it’s made it harder.Dread of death, not love of sex, is why the dead keep rising. And no Lincoln can defeat that, not even Babe.

Sean Vanatta: History Offers Ugly Precedent for Greek Euro Exit

Sean Vanatta is a graduate student in history at Princeton University. The opinions expressed are his ownLooking over the precipice of national default and an untimely exit from the international monetary system, the Greek leader issued a somber warning to Europe’s economic leaders: “Bear in mind that if you leave the small states without assistance, a black future awaits Europe.”Delivered by Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos on April 15, 1932, less than two weeks before his nation would suspend loan repayments and exit the gold standard, the prescient remark and the trials that followed offer urgent lessons for the current Greek crisis.Before the euro bound the continent’s disparate economies into one monetary system, European governments relied on the gold standard to direct international monetary flows. This promised stability, but also required the vigorous coordination of each country’s central-bank policy. The turmoil of World War I disrupted the international order, pushing Greece and the rest of Europe off the standard, a blow from which the monetary system would never fully recover....

Gian Gentile: Why Is General McChrystal Teaching an Off-the-Record Course at Yale?

Gian Gentile is a serving army colonel, a former Iraq War commander, and an associate professor of history at West Point. ...Enter retired four-star Army General Stanley McChrystal. McChrystal, who formerly led special operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and later became a senior American commander in Afghanistan, now teaches a class at Yale's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs*, where he integrates his military experience with his studies on leadership. In the New York Times, McCyrstal is quoted as saying "the only reason I'm here to teach," compared with "somebody who's got a Ph.D., is because I've been through it."McChrystal must have been through something ominous because, according to Elisabeth Bumiller's  Times article, Yale University imposes restrictions on students who sit in McChrystal's classes, demanding that they take notes on an "off the record" basis -- i.e., not for attribution.

Gil Troy: Content Section Exaggerating the Refugee Problem

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and a Shalom Hartman Engaging Israel Research Fellow in Jerusalem. His next book, “Moynihan’s Moment: The Fight against Zionism as Racism,” will be published by Oxford University Press this fall.The situation in the Middle East is complicated enough without inflammatory oversimplifications. Lara Friedman’s post “Legislating the Refugee Problem,” should be called “Exaggerating the Refugee Problem.” Unfortunately, supposedly pro-Palestinian discourse is rife with such destructive distortions, which undermine the push for a two-state solution.

Julian Zelizer: How Political Ads Can Elect a President

Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter" (Times Books) and of the new book "Governing America" (Princeton University Press).Princeton, New Jersey (CNN) -- The wars over campaign spots have begun.Last week, American Crossroads, Karl Rove's nonprofit operation that was highly effective in 2010, launched a blistering ad charging that President Barack Obama has failed to help American families.A woman described as the mother of two grown children without jobs says to the camera, "I supported President Obama because he spoke so beautifully. He promised change. But things changed for the worse."...

Asher Kaufman: Only Russia, China Can Stop Carnage in Syria

Asher Kaufman is associate professor of history and peace studies and the director of doctoral studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Kaufman's research and writing focus on the history of conflict, national identity and society and culture in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. His latest book, "Contested Frontiers: Cartography, Sovereignty, and Conflict at the Syria, Lebanon, Israel Tri-Border Region," will be published in the spring of 2013 by the Woodrow Wilson Center Press.(CNN) -- Some observers have been careful not to name the violence in Syria a civil war, lest it become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Well, the child has to be called by its name.The violent turmoil has turned into an asymmetric civil war, where the Syrian military and pro-government militias on one hand and opposition forces on the other are using extreme violence, not only against each other but also against civilians suspected of being sympathetic to one camp or the other. The civil war is asymmetric because government forces are far better equipped, organized and mobilized than the opposition....

Juan Cole: For Egypt in 2012, Read the United States in ’60s?

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. It now seems clear that the run-off in the Egyptian presidential election will be between Muhammad Mursi of the Freedom and Justice Party (Muslim Brotherhood) and Gen. Ahmad Shafiq, former Aviation Minister in the Mubarak government and the deposed dictator’s last prime minister. This outcome is a polarizing one and promises a rocky road ahead for Egypt’s attempt to transition to democracy. Shafiq was at some points on Friday in the third place, but he pulled ahead later in the day as Cairo and some rural votes came in

Victor Davis Hanson: Culture Still Matters

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author most recently of The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.

Conrad Black: The "End of History" was a Sobering Farce

Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, and, just released, A Matter of Principle. He can be reached at cbletters@gmail.com.

Garry Wills: The Mormon Constitution

Garry Wills is Professor of History Emeritus at Northwestern. His most recent book, Font of Life: Ambrose, Augustine, and the Mystery of Baptism, was published in April 2012.Some years ago I had a brilliant student in several of my classes—the only student, in fact, I ever recommended for a Rhodes Scholarship. In the first class he took, we were discussing the Declaration of Independence, and I argued that the Continental Congress was wise in deleting Jefferson’s attack on the King of England for keeping open the slave trade. Jefferson’s original draft claimed that the King did this against colonial efforts to restrain the trade. I pointed out that some colonies (South Carolina and Georgia, for instance) were for keeping that traffic open. Virginia, it is true, had tried to put limits on the importation of slaves—but mainly because the state was suffering a surplus of them, with consequent reduction in their value. Congress was therefore eliminating an inconsistent and hypocritical attack on the King, one that falsely suggested he was foisting slavery on a people opposed to it.

Jonathan Zimmerman: Don’t Repeat Biases of the Past

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth.Let’s suppose I wrote a column claiming that human intelligence was fixed and immutable, so we should accept individual cognitive differences instead of trying to change them. I’d be flayed alive, especially by my fellow liberals.Now let’s imagine another column, where I made the same statement about sexual orientation: It’s set at birth, and nothing can alter it. Most of my liberal friends would nod approvingly.Why do we regard one trait as changeable, while the other one is supposedly cast in stone? The question came back to the news this month, when prominent psychiatrist Robert Spitzer renounced his famous 2001 study claiming that some gays could become straight via so-called "reparative therapy."...

Fouad Ajami: Egypt's Next Leader Won't Be A Creature of Tahrir Square

Mr. Ajami is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. His newest book, The Syrian Rebellion, will be released by Hoover Institution Press at the end of this month. The prevalent view that this week's presidential election is Egypt's first experiment with the ballot box is only partly true. Egyptians of a certain age knew parliamentary life and the competition of political parties. This was during the liberal interlude between 1923, when the country became independent from British rule, and 1952. In that year a cabal of young military officers led by Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser upended the old order, abolished the monarchy—and delivered Egypt into six decades of authoritarianism. The new men in charge disdained parliaments and political parties and banished the resident foreigners—Italians, Greeks, Armenians, Jews—who had been the driving force in the nation's economic life. They sequestered property, and they vowed to make Egypt a dominant military power. In the process, they broke their burdened country, thwarting its bid for modernity. "The Revolution has stolen the property of a few and the liberty of all," said a character in "Miramar," a work of fiction by Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz that was published on the eve of the his country's Six-Day War with Israel in 1967.

Richard J Evans: The Death of Celebrity Historians is Much Exaggerated

Richard J Evans is regius professor of history at the University of Cambridge and president of Wolfson College, Cambridge. For about 15 years, history has been experiencing a popularity boom. History books now sell more than 5 million copies a year in the UK and feature regularly in the bestseller lists. You can hardly switch on your television without seeing Simon Schama, David Starkey, Niall Ferguson or their younger, often female rivals holding forth in some exotic or historic location. Natasha's Dance, Orlando Figes' study of 19-century Russian culture, was advertised on huge posters in London's tube stations. The latest volume in Dominic Sandbrook's multi-volume history of postwar Britain is prominently displayed in bookshops across the land. "History," a BBC television producer is said to have remarked, "is the new gardening." Not surprisingly, younger academics are keen to jump on the media bandwagon, given the continuing relative decline in academic pay and the continuing absolute increase in the amount of work they are forced to do by the burgeoning audit culture; continuing cuts in teaching funding; and steep rises in student fees, leading students to make ever-increasing demands on their time.

Victor Davis Hanson: The Power of Cool

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author most recently of The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.

Moshe Dann: The Fundamental Misconception about Arab-Israeli Peace

Moshe Dann is a PhD historian, writer and journalist living in Israel.The “peace process” between Israel and the Arabs, touted as part of a “two state” plan, failed not because of disagreements over settlements and boundaries, but because of a basic false assumption: that Palestinianism could be fulfilled in a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It failed not because Israel did not give enough, but because nothing would have been enough.Paradoxically, the more people urged Palestinian statehood as part of a two-state plan, the less relevant it became. This is because the issue was not about Palestine, but Palestinianism. This explains why all diplomatic negotiations and proposals not only did not work, but could not work.The dispute is not over territory, but ideology – Palestinianism, the basis of their nearly hundred-year war against Zionism and the State of Israel, the national historic homeland of the Jewish People. For Arabs, Palestinians and most Muslims, that struggle is jihad against the infidel....

Trygve Throntveit: Obama and the New Freedom

Trygve Throntveit is assistant director of undergraduate studies in history at Harvard University; he is currently at work on “Power without Victory: Woodrow Wilson and the American Internationalist Experiment.”In evaluating President Barack Obama’s legislative record, historically inclined commentators frequently compare his first term to the early years of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. When it comes to winning re-election, however, the commentators — and Obama — might learn something from the only Democrat besides F.D.R. to win multiple elections in the 20th century on reform platforms: Woodrow Wilson.

Andrew Roberts: Europe’s Hubristic Imperial Overstretch

The writer’s books include The Storm of War and A History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900.

Roderick MacFarquhar: In China, Fear at the Top

Roderick MacFarquhar, a professor of government at Harvard, is a co-author of “Mao’s Last Revolution.”IN the heyday of the Soviet era, Communist leaders were described by the dissident Yugoslav theorist Milovan Djilas as the “New Class,” whose power lay not in ownership of wealth but in control of it: all the property of the state was at their beck and call. There was the apocryphal but appropriate story of Brezhnev’s showing his humble mother around his historic office, his magnificent collection of foreign luxury cars and his palatial dacha with its superb meals, and asking for her impressions — to which she replied: “It’s wonderful, Leonid, but what happens if the Bolsheviks come back?”...But if even a fraction of the stories about the wealth and lifestyles of China’s “princelings” — the descendants of Mao’s revolutionary generation — are to be believed, China’s New Class wants not only control, but also ownership. Few of China’s netizens are likely to believe that Bo Xilai, the Politburo member and party boss of the mega-city of Chongqing who was ousted in March on corruption charges, was an aberration....