Political History Commons^™

Australia's Lessons, Rhys Crawley

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

This article analyzes Australia’s contribution to the Afghanistan War from 2001 to 2014. It recommends policymakers and practitioners consider applying a whole-of-government approach, embedding personnel in coalition headquarters, and limiting reliance on Special Forces soldiers in future interventions.

Educating Strategic Lieutenants At West Point, Scott A. Silverstone

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

This article argues West Point responded to the changing strategic environment from the end of the Cold War through the post-9/11 period by innovating its curriculum. Over the past several decades, however, the academy’s educational model has remained remarkably stable, rooted in an enduring commitment to a rigorous liberal education as the best preparation for officers confronting the inherent uncertainties of future wars.

Recent U.S. And International Assessment Of Baltic Security Developments, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this paper is to analyse Baltic security developments from U.S. government and military resources, scholarly journal articles, and multinational public policy research institute assessments. METHODS: The aim is to analyse the content and rhetoric within these resources to learn how those producing these materials view Baltic security developments and their viewpoints on how the U.S. and its allies should respond to these developments focusing on increasing Russian regional assertiveness. RESULTS: The author provides interpretations of Baltic security developments, Russian Baltic policy, and U.S. and NATO responses to these developments in materials produced by U.S. civilian and …

Who Owned Waterloo? Wellington’S Veterans And The Battle For Relevance, Luke A. L. Reynolds

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the afterlife of the battle of Waterloo in the collective memory of Great Britain as well as the post-war lives of officers who fought there. Using a variety of techniques associated with cultural, social, and military history, it explores the concept of cultural ownership of a military event and contextualizes the relationship between Britain and her army in the nineteenth century, both at home and abroad. It argues that, almost immediately after the dust settled on the field of Waterloo, a variety of groups laid claim to different aspects of the ownership of the memory of the …

The Baltics And Ukraine: Geopolitical Hotspots, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides detailed historical overview and contemporary analysis on why the Baltics and Ukraine are historical and remain contemporary geopolitical hotspots. Provides analysis of cultural economic, environmental, and security factors influencing long-standing contentiousness over these regions. Places emphasis on how Russian behavior and policies influence this contentiousness. Concludes by noting that differences between the U.S. and its allies and conflicts within the U.S. Government may limit the ability of the U.S. to effectively respond to events in these disputed regions.

Planning For A War In Paradise: The 1966 Honolulu Conference And The Shape Of The Vietnam War, Gregory A. Daddis

History Faculty Articles and Research

This article explores the impact of one of the key non-military events in the U.S. war in Vietnam, at least in the crucial years from 1964 to 1968. During a two-day U.S.–South Vietnamese conference held in Honolulu in early 1966, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk laid out a series of overarching strategic objectives, both military and political, that shaped the allied war effort through the 1968 Tet offensive, and even beyond. The goals outlined at the summit remained the touchstone of U.S. military strategy until they were superseded in 1969 by a policy …

Media Discourses That Normalize Colonial Relations: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of (Im)Migrants And Refugees, Meng Zhao, Jorge Rodriguez, Lilia D. Monzó

Education Faculty Articles and Research

The im(migration) and refugee crisis that are being exacerbated under the Trump administration, is a manifestation of empire-building and the long history of colonization of the Global South. A Marxist-humanist perspective recognizes these as consistent aspects of a clearly racist global capitalism that functions in the interest of multibillion dollar U.S.–based corporations and increasingly transnational corporations. Trade agreements, international economic policy, political intervention, invasion or the threat of these, often secure corporate interests in specific countries and regions. The authors use critical discourse analysis to examine the discourses around Mexican, Central American, and Syrian im(migrants) and refugees as examples of …

Introduction To Stalin's Soviet Justice: "Show" Trials, War Crimes Trials, And Nuremberg, David M. Crowe

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"Once Stalin won his power struggle against his principal rival, Leon Trotsky, he adopted new campaigns to collectivize Russian agriculture and dramatically increase industrial production. He decided in the late 1920s to use "show" trials as one of the ways to respond to growing domestic opposition to both programs. The 'show' trials, extralegal proceedings that bore modest resemblance to more traditional Western-style trials, were carefully orchestrated to convince the public of the dire nature of such threats. Thematically, Stalin used them to highlight his fears about an ongoing threat of domestic and international forces determined to destroy the Soviet state. …

Late Imperial And Soviet "Show" Trials, 1878-1938, David M. Crowe

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"According to Cassidy, the imperial 'show' trials, which began in the 1870s, were a series of 'highly publicized public spectacles that spread the ideas of Russian radicalism even as they condemned the radicals themselves to imprisonment, exile, hard labor, civil death, or execution.'⁴ They also became a source of 'popular entertainment' that drew large audiences and helped, according Elizabeth A. Wood, create a link in the public imagination between 'revolution and trials.' Georgii Plekhanov, one of Russia's foremost Marxists, saw the 'revolutionary trials in the 1870s and 1880s' as 'the greatest historical drama which is called the trial of …

"May Justice Be Done!" The Soviet Union And The London Conference (1945), Irina Schulmeister-André, David M. Crowe

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"The London Conference, which ended on August 8, 1945, with the signing of the London Four-Power Agreement¹ with annexed statute, was a crucial step in the planning of the Nuremberg IMT trial of major German war criminals. The joint development of the statute is regarded as an important example historically of the cooperation of the Allied Powers, who, despite their different legal traditions, found ways to reach a consensus acceptable as the legal basis for their common goal: to carry out a trial of the major war criminals. This was particularly remarkable, given that they had to negotiate the …

Us And The Cold War In Latin America, Thomas Field

Publications

The Cold War in Latin America had marked consequences for the region’s political and economic evolution. From the origins of US fears of Latin American Communism in the early 20th century to the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, regional actors played central roles in the drama. Seeking to maximize economic benefit while maintaining independence with regard to foreign policy, Latin Americans employed an eclectic combination of liberal and anti-imperialist discourses, balancing frequent calls for anti-Communist hemispheric unity with periodic diplomatic entreaties to the Soviet bloc and the nonaligned Third World. Meanwhile, US Cold War policies toward …

The Just And The Unjust: Ernest Hemingway And Protest Literature In Response To Civil Disobedience In The Context Of The Two World Wars, Trang Hoang

Celebration of Learning

By obeying unjust laws, human beings give up their own opportunity to live in a humane world. Henceforth, the two World Wars stand remarkably as situations that conscience of morality has to be placed on top of obedience to ensure the essence of human existence, and a failure to do so led to not only the deaths and exhaustions worldwide but also the collapse of human love and human responsibility to love. Protest literature, especially Ernest Hemingway's novels allow people to reflect on this philosophy through an artistically credible lens.

Analysis Considering The Significance Of The Use Of Naval Blockades During The Napoleonic Wars, John J. Janora

The Exposition

During the course of the 18th and 19th centuries the British Navy took an age old method of manipulating and dominating an enemy, the naval blockade, and perfected it. The blockade was going to be used by a generation of admirals, captains, and crews in a way that would cause pain, financially, physically and psychologically, on a large swath of the western world, much of it specifically centered on ensuring that Napoleon and his aggressively expansionist France would pay too dear a price if they tried to move off of the European mainland. The British Navy and their continued use …

The Private Navy Of The United States: The Effects Of Privateers On The War Of 1812, Anthony Green

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The declaration of war in June of 1812 brought more questions than it did answers for the United States. Economically, the government was not prepared to fund a war with multiple fronts. To make matters worse, the government’s primary source of income was through import duties, which they expected to decrease drastically as the war progressed. Militaristically, the United States Navy was too small to offer the protection that was needed from Britain, who possessed the world’s strongest navy at the time. Luckily for the United States, Congress in conjunction with President James Madison authorized privately owned ships to participate …

'We Are Abolitionizing The West': The Union Army And The Implementation Of Federal Emancipation Policy, 1861–1865, Scott Ackerman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project provides a new history of the implementation of federal emancipation policy by the Union armies during the Civil War. It examines five geographic regions occupied by the Union army—the Mississippi River Valley, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, and Kentucky—focusing on the activities of officials whom I term the “middle managers” of federal emancipation policy. Though often overlooked by historians, officers such as Union army Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas, Commissioner for the United States Colored Troops George Stearns, and Major William Sidell were specifically designated by the Lincoln administration to superintend the implementation of emancipation policy in …

Casualties Of War? Refining The Civilian-Military Dichotomy In World War I, Eric Grube

Madison Historical Review

Throughout the First World War, newspapers around the world mocked the British state for its lavish spending on captured German officers kept at Donington Hall, a refurbished English estate. Why was this camp such a controversial space of perceived decadence? I argue that its comforts seemed to linger from an earlier era, one in which military men exuded genteel civility as integral to their supposedly heroic service. The British state essentially enabled such treatment, and the public decried this space for sustaining the anachronism of aristocratic privilege in the face of a globalized total war. However, the German inmates expected …

Two Poems: Stop Time Before; Forsaken Ones, Ánh-Hoa Thị Nguyễn

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

This creative work features two poems: Stop Time Before; Forsaken Ones

Women Of The War: Female Espionage Agents For The Confederacy, Sarah Stellhorn

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

Although historians have frequently examined the role of women on the home front during the Civil War, women who contributed to the cause in more direct ways, such as espionage, are often neglected. An in-depth examination of specific females spying for the Confederacy, such as Rose O’Neal Greenhow and Belle Boyd, proves that their actions, both remarkable and uncharacteristic of women at the time, had a direct impact on the war. A vast network of spies and smugglers existed not only in the southern and border states but also throughout the North, even in Washington D.C. itself. This network was …

A Modern-Day Review Of The Fort Pillow Massacre - Act Of War Or Genocide, Austin Valentine, Austin Valentine

Student Scholarship & Creative Works

On April 13^th, 1864 Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest attacked Union held Fort Pillow in western Tennessee. The event would later be known as the Fort Pillow Massacre where a number of African American soldiers were killed while trying to surrender to Confederate forces.

Forrest was one who had not been a graduate of a military academy, nor had any military experience. He had simply been a Memphis slave trader turned Confederate sympathizer who enlisted as a private in the Confederate Army on June 14^th of 1861. However, he eventually financed and organized his own cavalry …

An Analysis Of U.S. Custom And Border Protection’S Tripartite Mexico Border Security Policy, Terence Garrett

Political Science Faculty Publications

The Custom and Border Protection (CBP) border security policy was explicitly presented by former Acting Commissioner of CBP, David Aguilar, in testimony before the United States Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) on April 4, 2017 in testimony on the subject of “Fencing Along the Southwest Border.” Important for discussion here are the key components of the DHS/CBP/Border Patrol’s strategy, or sets of policies, laying forth elements of the border walls (including barriers, fences), personnel, and technology in order to hinder, or intercept, undocumented migrants (homo sacer) from entering the United States illegally—all socially constructed. Aguilar …

Bienville Parish Records, University Archives And Special Collections, Prescott Memorial Library, Louisiana Tech University

Manuscript Finding Aids

Parish court records, 1866-1874; "Enumeration of ex-Confederate soldiers and widow of deceased soldiers," Bienville Parish, 1911.

Civil Neighbors To Violent Foes: Guerrilla Warfare In Western Virginia During The Civil War, Lauren Michelle Milton

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

“Civil Neighbors to Violent Foes” researches the effect of guerrilla warfare in West Virginia during a national war and statehood movement, and the impact that emotions had on the people of the state. When President Lincoln won the election in 1860, secession was inevitable and war a likely possibility. At the time, West Virginia was still a part of Virginia, but old state political divisions, combined with the current national political divisions, fueled the fire for a new state, separate from Virginia and loyal to the Union. It would take West Virginia two years from the time delegates began holding …

Kline Collection Finding Aid, Casey Bush, Robyn Conroy

Strassler Center Archival Collection Finding Aids

This collection was purchased in 1997 through the generosity of the following donors: Michael J. Leffell ’81 and Lisa Klein Leffell ’82, the Sheftel Family in memory of Milton S. Sheftel ’31, ’32 and the proceeds of the Carole and Michael Friedman Book Fund in honor of Elisabeth “Lisa” Friedman of the Class of 1985

The collection contains books, pamphlets, magazines, guides, journals, newspapers and screenplays related to Jewish history, German history, World War II, and the Holocaust. Of the at least 3,600 volumes, valued at approximately $300,000, 60% are in English, 30% in German, and 10% in other languages …

Israel Shreve Letters, University Archives And Special Collections, Prescott Memorial Library, Louisiana Tech University

Manuscript Finding Aids

Correspondence of Colonel Israel Shreve, who served with Washington during the Revolutionary War; provides information on battles, conditions, etc., during the Revolution, including Ticonderoga, Valley Forge, Brandywine.

James L. Hogan Collection, University Archives And Special Collections, Prescott Memorial Library, Louisiana Tech University

Manuscript Finding Aids

Afrika Korps pattern eagle and swastika. This artifact was given to American civilian camp employee, James L. Hogan by German POW Robert Kopriwa. Also, includes a book entitled The Brothers Karamazov written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and published by Random House in 1943.

The Justice System Is Criminal, Raven Delfina Otero-Symphony

2020 Award Winners

No abstract provided.

Architect Of The New South: The Life And Legacy Of William Mahone, Heath M. Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

In Virginia following the Civil War, white and black people formed complex and shifting alliances based on their own self-interests that cut across the lines of established political parties. In this turbulent atmosphere, William Mahone forged a new biracial political coalition called the Readjuster Party in order to transform Virginia’s economy so that it would be competitive in the years to come. Chapter One argues that Mahone’s experience as a soldier and railroad man gave him the political clout needed to enter politics and an industrial vision for Virginia’s future that was markedly different from many of his contemporaries. Chapter …

Remembering An Invasion: The Panama Intervention In America’S Political Memory, Dave Nagaji

Senior Theses

In December of 1989, the United States launched Operation Just Cause, a military invasion of the country of Panama, capturing Manuel Noriega and overthrowing his government. This research project examines how Colin Powell, Richard Cheney, James Baker, and George H.W. Bush presented Operation Just Cause in their memoirs. It attempts to determine how these senior leaders’ depictions of this invasion incorporated it into the Bush administration’s overall foreign-policy strategy. The research finds that their general approach was to present the Panama intervention as an isolated incident which had no intentional link to other major events at the time, was not …

Ike’S Constitutional Venturing: The Institutionalization Of The Cia, Covert Action, And American Interventionism, Jacob A. Bruggeman

Grand Valley Journal of History

U.S. covert action from the 1950s onward was shaped, in part, by the success a CIA-orchestrated coup d'état in which the United States deposed the popular Iranian nationalist Mohammed Mossadegh. Ordered by president Eisenhower, the coup in Iran set the precedent for utilizing covert action as a means of achieving State goals. In so doing, President Eisenhower overturned the precedent set by his immediate predecessor, President Truman: that is, the precedent of using the CIA in its intended function, gathering and evaluating intelligence. The coup, then, is an exemplary case of venture constitutionalism. Eisenhower, in ordering the coup, extended his …

Enhancing Your Intelligence Agency Information Resource Iq: Pt. 4: National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (Ngia), National Intelligence University (Niu), And National Reconnaissance Office (Nro), Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Webinar presentation on publicly accessible information resources produced by the U.S. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGIA), National Intelligence University (NIU), and National Reconnaissance Office. Places significant emphasis on missions of these agencies, their historical accomplishments, coverage of their educational activity, and information on the technologies they have used and are currently using to fulfill their institutional objectives.