Foreign Policy & War

Dresden: Time to Say We’re Sorry

by Simon Jenkins September 1, 1995

As the U.S. Fifth Army inched its way up Italy in 1944, its command constantly pondered which towns should be spared bombardment. Monte Cassino was destroyed. The centers of Rome and Florence were saved. The Pieros of Sansepulcro were reprieved at the last minute (I believe by an art-loving gunner). These decisions were taken out of respect for the ...

Killing Noncombatants

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 1995

In May 11, 1940, Great Britain made a fateful decision in its approach to fighting the second world war. On that night, eighteen Whitley bombers attacked railway installations in the placid west German province of Westphalia, far from the war front. That forgotten bombing raid, which in itself was inconsequential, has been called "the first deliberate breach of the ...

Repatriation — The Dark Side of World War II, Part 6

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 1995

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 The U.S. government's cry to the American people during recent wars has been: "Support the troops." A person might disagree with the war itself. Or the president may have failed to secure the constitutionally ...

Covering the Map of the World — The Half-Century Legacy of the Yalta Conference, Part 6

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 1995

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 In 1940, the Japanese consul general in Harbin, Manchuria, intercepted several messages sent from the Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, to the Soviet ambassador in Tokyo. ...

The Power to Declare War — Who Speaks for the Constitution? Part 3

by Doug Bandow August 1, 1995

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The favorite justification for presidents unilaterally wandering off to war around the globe seems to be: everyone else does it. Proponents of executive war-making contend that ample precedents — two hundred or more troop deployments without congressional approval — exist for the president to act without a congressional declaration. Yet, ...

World War I and the Great Departure, Part 1

by Wesley Allen Riddle August 1, 1995

Part 1 | Part 2 The fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II has provided an occasion for revisiting the momentous events from 1939 to 1945 that reshaped the world. It may well be that this commemoration will lead to rediscoveries and new appreciation — the way the Bicentennial prompted popular and academic rediscovery of American tradition ...

The Vietnam War and the Drug War

by Robert Higgs August 1, 1995

Maybe you have never thought about the similarities between the Vietnam War and the Drug War. You may believe that although the former really was a war, the latter is only called a war. But the recently published memoirs of Robert S. McNamara, defense secretary for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, call to mind many parallels. At ...

Repatriation — The Dark Side of World War II, Part 5

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 1995

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 When Franklin Roosevelt assumed the presidency in 1933, Americans expected him to fulfill certain promises that he had made during the presidential campaign: balance the budget; lower taxes; reduce government spending; downsize government; and ...

Covering the Map of the World — The Half-Century Legacy of the Yalta Conference, Part 5

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 1995

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 When Adolf Hitler's foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, came to Moscow on August 23, 1939, to sign the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, Joseph Stalin hosted a late-night ...

The Power to Declare War — Who Speaks for the Constitution? Part 2

by Doug Bandow July 1, 1995

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 What conceivable justification is there for ignoring the Constitution's straightforward requirement regarding the power to declare war? Advocates of expansive executive war power — oddly enough, including some conservatives who claim to believe in a jurisprudence of "original intent" — have come up with a number of reasons to give ...

American Foreign Policy — The Turning Point, 1898–1919 Part 6

by Ralph Raico July 1, 1995

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 The vast changes that the First World War was to bring about began to occur even while the war was still going on. In February 1917, the Tsarist Russian state collapsed, and a provisional government was established. But ...

American Foreign Policy — The Turning Point, 1898–1919 Part 5

by Ralph Raico June 1, 1995

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 When the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany in February 1917, war did not immediately follow. President Wilson hesitated to take that final, fateful step, first asking Congress for authority to arm U.S. merchant ships. Since ...