RealClearHistory Articles

In February 2003, the planning for Operation Iraqi Freedom felt like a math problem that could be solved with a discrete solution. Maps. Timelines. Phase lines. Routes. Bridges. Objectives. The maps were clean, the intent was sharp, and the plan – at least in our minds – had an end state you could point to with a pencil. While not stated explicitly, many of us felt it was implied: secure Saddam International Airport, codenamed Objective Lions, and we could declare victory.   We were in Kuwait with the 3rd Infantry Division, rehearsing an invasion that many believed...

Ninety years ago this month, German troops marched into the demilitarized Rhineland area in violation of the Versailles Treaty of 1919.  Some historians and international relations experts, like Henry Kissinger, contend that the Rhineland Crisis of March 1936 was a turning point in history. Had Britain and France reacted forcefully against the entry of German troops into the demilitarized Rhineland, history might have evolved differently. Nazi Germany may have been deterred from further aggressive moves. After all, it was none other than Adolf Hitler, Germany’s leader, who assuaged...

By February 1778, the Continental Army had already endured several months of a harsh, cold winter at Valley Forge.      Though not the coldest conditions the Americans would suffer – that would come during the Morristown encampment several years later – the stakes were no less severe. After a series of crushing defeats, the British Army had decisively driven Gen. George Washington and his ragged army from New York across the Hudson River. The port city would remain Loyalist for the war’s duration until November...

A few days ago, the President closed the longest state of the union on record with a moment of historical introspection. Referencing the two centenarians he featured in the address, Trump pointed out that, from the signers of the Declaration to today, the country is only as old as three lengthy lifespans. His speech contained a number of historical references, but the most important was his recurring tie-in to the 250-year anniversary of American independence. Trump was right that two and a half centuries is a brief span in the annals of world history, a fact which should encourage us with...

The payroll imbalance between the Dodgers and everyone else, and between big- and small-market franchises, is setting up an owner-union impasse that might kill the 2027 baseball season. Owners are demanding a salary cap; the players union won’t budge. But MLB has another imbalance problem, a generational offensive-defense crisis. In 2022, Major League Baseball instituted the most far-reaching rules changes in well over a century – the pitch clock, defensive-shift ban, pickoff limits, enlarged (“pizza box”) bases, extra-inning “ghost runners.” The game had...

The French and Indian War ended with the 1763 Treaty of Paris, with Britain receiving all French and Spanish-claimed territories between the Mississippi River and the British-American Colonies. Afterwards, the British instilled the Proclamation Line of 1763, a boundary along the Appalachian Mountains to prevent Colonists from expanding westward into Native lands. Instead, many Colonists migrated into Native lands, including veterans who were promised frontier land grants for their service before the Proclamation Line was announced. Consequently,...

President’s Day is often treated as a generic celebration of presidents – or, more commonly, as a convenient sales event marking the approach of spring. The modern observance, falling between the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, has become a combined civic ritual that tends to flatten the distinct stature of each. In that reduction, something essential has been lost. The day was not created to promote consumption or to blur distinct lives into an amorphous narrative. Nor was it meant to compress the memory of the presidency itself into a single interchangeable...

The cult of personality: a quippy term to describe how a strongman cultivates his followers to see him as powerful, knowledgeable, and protective. Such rulers and their techniques are as old as recorded history – among the oldest of is Ramses II, who ruled as the pharaoh of Egypt for 66 years, 1279-1213 B.C. Ramses' rule as pharaoh was marked by military campaigns along Egypt's borders. His earliest success was to defeat pirates that had been attacking ships along Egypt's Mediterranean coast. Later in his rule, he conducted successful military campaigns to control Egypt's southern and...

Before the founding of Israel, the Galilee, stretching from the Litani River in the North to the Jezreel Valley in the South, was a quiet region split between Mandatory Palestine and Lebanon. Largely populated by a mix of Jews, Shias, and Sunnis, the region was far away from administrative centers and life was shaped by kinship and survival.  Today, the Galilee is split between a Jewish Israel and Shia South Lebanon, and has been subject to sporadic conflicts between the State of Israel and Shia Islamist Hezbollah since the 1980s. Spurred by the Khomeinist ideology of the Iranian regime,...

With The Silent Service’s First Hero, Ryan Walker gives Naval History lovers something special: The story of a man who defined humble hero, a look at the pre-WWII submarine community, and a masterclass on historical research and writing all in one. While The Silent Service’s First Hero isn’t the traditional biography most readers may expect, Walker’s work certainly doesn’t disappoint. Well-researched and formatted, the microhistory approach rebuilds the world sailor Henry Breault once lived in. Walker uses Breault’s relationships with family...

At Westminster Abbey, over 1,000 years of Christian observance and British royal ceremony are enshrined within a set of medieval walls. After a millennium, the Abbey exerts a powerful hold on British and world public imagination, as a spectacular venue for royal and national services and commemorations. The Abbey remains among the UK’s top visitor attractions: 1.7 million tourists to London encountered its treasures in 2024. May 2026 marks a dramatic anniversary for this venerable institution. Eighty-five years ago – in May 1941 – Westminster Abbey faced a moment...

Many opponents of so-called Bolivarian socialism welcomed the capture and arrest of Nicholas Maduro. Yet, while rejoicing in the fall of a tyrant, one cannot help but share an important observation: the liquidation of a leadership through external intervention does not automatically mean a change in the regime or the country's trajectory of development. The example of Iraq – which, after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, collapsed into the chaos of ISIS and then effectively fell under Iranian influence – is a clear confirmation of this. One can only hope that Venezuela does not...

America’s foremost heroes are cowboys, soldiers, and innovators. They imposed order on the Wild West. They showed courage on countless battlefields and saved civilization in the Second World War. Armed with a vision for the future and their own two hands, they overpowered a dark and forbidding wilderness to create our modern world. We memorialize their great deeds because strong men inspire strong reactions. In 1841, Americans were aghast when sculptor Horatio Greenough unveiled the naked splendor of his 12-ton Enthroned Washington, a marble tribute to the Nation’s father and...

Since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers, many have designated September 11, 2001 as the true close of the 20th century. That event indeed changed many things in the United States and in the world. It was a sign that the American-led global order established after World War II had become fragile and hollowed out. But in the decades that followed, our leaders clung to the pieties and perspectives of the pre-9/11 period, applying obsolete solutions in a new era with much different problems. In retrospect, Donald Trump’s 2015 presidential campaign was the true start of...

On December 7, 1941, Americans awoke to a quiet Sunday that would end in war. Sixty years later, on another unremarkable morning, I walked into my unit to sign in. By the time the second tower fell, that moment off routine had become the beginning of a very different history. Pearl Harbor showed my grandfather’s generation how quickly clarity replaces complacency. On 9/11, I learned the same. The young officers who reported for duty after Pearl Harbor did not expect war that morning. Nor did my fellow lieutenants on 9/11. What both generations learned, in real time and sometimes the...

When politicians invoke “America First” today, they echo arguments first championed by Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., U.S. ambassador to Britain in 1940. Kennedy believed aiding allies would weaken American strength, entangle the United States in conflicts it could not win, and ultimately threaten the nation’s survival. His defeatism during the Blitz, and his open clashes with Franklin Roosevelt, foreshadowed a struggle that still shapes U.S. strategy: whether America’s security lies in global leadership or in isolationism. In the fall of 1940, as German bombs fell on...

Ken Khachigian, 81, of Orange County, California, was in the room with Reagan and Nixon. In the fall of 1967, Khachigian was a second-year law student at Columbia University when he wrote a letter to Richard Nixon at his New York law office to volunteer for his presidential campaign. He was hired by Patrick J. Buchanan as an aide and assistant before joining the Nixon White House as a junior speechwriter. After Nixon’s resignation in 1974, Khachigian followed the “Old Man” to his Western White House in San Clemente, where Khachigian helped Nixon compose RN: The Memoirs of...

People may think the 2020s in America seem like strange times, but 1881 could give it a run for its money. A corrupt Vice President, Chester Arthur, ascended to the highest office in the land after a disgruntled madman shot President James Garfield. It’s a wild story that, nearly 150 years later, has slipped out of our collective memory. Netflix has resurrected this drama and its aftermath with a limited series called Death by Lightning. Though as is common for any dramatization of real events, not everything shown on screen is true to history. As a filmmaker who spent the past two...

Americans love to be outraged. Our identity is endowed with a consistent distrust, if not vitriolic animosity, towards both government and the conditions detrimental to everyday life which the government has failed to address. Whether it be in politics or business, there is little consideration for the severity of this hatred or even the influence and power of the entity that we are disposed to hate. It is a deeply rooted, instinctual exercise in what it means to be an American. In no other nation on earth can a school board administrator be expected to face as much enmity as a candidate for...