Advanced search

Stephanson–Kennan Correspondence

An inter-generational exchange between one of the Cold War’s originating thinkers and a young Marxist scholar studying his work. Problems of American foreign policy, definitions of the national interest, the Soviet Union and the containment doctrine and the independent development of political discourse among the subjects under consideration.

Looking Back

“George kennan was an inescapable presence in post-war American foreign relations, intellectually as well as politically. Having been identified early on, invariably, as the father (alternatively ‘architect’) of ‘containmentʼ, master signifier of what the us was supposedly about in the Cold War, he became in the last . . .” read more

Neo-Impressionist Hegemon?

Anders Stephanson on Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire. A reading of America’s global power through its territorial possessions, from ocean archipelagos to military bases.

Road to Globalism

Anders Stephanson on John A. Thompson, A Sense of Power. Rise of American globalism, from Wilson to Truman.

Empire Edgemanship

Anders Stephanson on Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Volume IV: Globalizations, 1945–2011. Strengths and frailties of the climax to a unique macro-sociological enterprise, as it reaches the theoretical sands of the contemporary world.

A Monument to Himself

Anders Stephanson on George Kennan’s Diaries. Reflection and self-flagellation from the strategist of the Cold War.

The Toughness Crew

Anders Stephanson on Peter Beinart, The Icarus Syndrome. American foreign policy from Wilson to Obama, through the spectacles of Niebuhrian realism.

An Odd Couple

Anders Stephanson on Scott Miller, The President and the Assassin. McKinley meets his nemesis amid labour crackdowns at the dawn of the US imperial age.

The Philosopher’s Island

Anders Stephanson on Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti and Universal History. Did the Weltgeist drop anchor in revolutionary Saint-Domingue?

Simplicissimus

Anders Stephanson on John Lewis Gaddis, Cold War and Surprise, Security and the American Experience. Diplomatic history as mirror for presidents, with postwar geopolitics recast as morality tale.

Rethinking International Relations

“Geopolitics has never found a congenial place within the Marxist tradition, let alone been properly theorized. Consider the exemplary Nicos Poulantzas, originator of the best Marxist works on the state in the 1960s and 1970s. His focus is on class and structure in a domestic setting, as though . . .” read more