History As It Happens

Forty years ago, 'Return of the Jedi' opened in movie theaters, but 1983 also was a big year for another kind of 'Star Wars.' Two months before the movie premiered, President Ronald Reagan delivered a nationally televised address announcing an initiative to build a space-based missile shield that would use lasers to shoot down incoming ICBMs. Derisively dubbed "Star Wars" by skeptics -- skeptics who were right to doubt its feasibility -- Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative never amounted to anything useful. It was, however, part of Reagan's vision for a world free of nuclear weapons, a vision he successfully pursued in negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. In this episode, Joseph Cirincione, an expert on nuclear non-proliferation and national defense, discusses how the world has moved a long way in the wrong direction from the "golden age" of nuclear arms reduction treaties.

Former President Donald Trump held his first rally of the 2024 campaign near a special place in far-right mythology. Thirty years ago in Waco, Texas, federal agents lay siege to the Branch Davidian compound where charismatic religious leader David Koresh awaited the end of the world. In this episode, historian Nicole Hemmer contends Trump's choice of location was a deliberate move to stoke anti-government vibes among militias, white supremacists, sovereign citizens, and similar groups whose visibility dramatically grew during his presidency. Their ideas have bled into the mainstream of American political life, but their origins date to the 1970s -- mostly from the Mountain West and Pacific Northwest. Trump may be drawing a direct line from Waco to January 6 as a campaign motif. He ended his presidency by embracing political violence to attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, and then used his first rally of the 2024 election cycle to glorify the people serving time for the attack on the Capitol.

One consequence of the United States' massive military failures in the Greater Middle East is its waning influence in a region where U.S. leaders once dreamt democracy would spread outward from Kabul and Baghdad. As the U.S. presence and its credibility have shrunk, regional powers are looking elsewhere to resolve entrenched disputes. Enter Beijing. In this episode, the Quincy Institute's Trita Parsi discusses a potential paradigm shift that's been decades in the making. Without firing a shot or taking sides – without any military presence at all in the Middle East – China helped broker a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran that will restore diplomatic relations between the two nations. The U.S. has moved a long way in the wrong direction from the days of the Camp David Accords in 1978 and the Oslo Accords of 1993.

This is the third in a multi-part series of episodes examining the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which began on March 20, 2003. The video version of this episode will air on C-SPAN 2's American History TV on April 1. Melvin Leffler, an eminent historian of U.S. foreign policy, joins Martin Di Caro in a conversation about Leffler's new book, "Confronting Saddam Hussein." The historian argues the Bush administration was influenced by fear, overconfidence in U.S. power, and hubris rather than outright dishonesty when it drove the country to war in 2003.

This is the second in a multi-part series of episodes marking the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which began on March 20, 2003. Iraqi voices are largely absent from U.S. retrospectives on the war and its consequences. In this episode, Baghdad native and The Guardian journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reflects on everything he witnessed over the past 20 years -- the fall of Saddam, military occupation, civil war, torture, the rise of ISIS -- through the eyes of the "liberated." Despite what some American commentators claim, Iraq is not a democracy today and neither is it "better off" thanks to the U.S. invasion. Corruption now reigns and the fabric of Iraqi society was permanently damaged. Abdul-Ahad's new book, "A Stranger in Your Own City," is a superb reporter's account of the catastrophe seen through Iraqi eyes.

This is the first in a multi-part series of episodes marking the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which began on March 20, 2003. Have Americans truly learned the lessons of the failed war in Iraq? Catherine Lutz at Brown University's Costs of War Project and historian Andrew Bacevich of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft contend that the war's disastrous consequences, including hundreds of thousands killed and millions displaced, have been memory-holed. Rather than reckon with a misplaced confidence in the efficacy of military power projection, most Americans are indifferent to or generally supportive of U.S. hegemony. In Bacevich's words, a reckoning that wasn't.

Conservative icon William F. Buckley died fifteen years ago as the George W. Bush presidency was in its last year. The movement to which Buckley had dedicated his prodigious energies and remarkable mind faced an ordeal as Bush's "compassionate conservatism" foundered on massive failures: the war, the response to Hurricane Katrina, the subprime mortgage crisis. Today, conservatives and populists are somewhat split over another major foreign policy question: should the U.S. continue to support Ukraine? Buckley's movement is also being pulled further to the right by populists, media personalities, and cranks. What would Buckley do? In this episode, National Review senior writer Daniel McLaughlin discusses the past and future of conservatism.

Earthquakes in Turkey and Syria killed at least 50,000 people. In four Turkish provinces, hundreds of buildings collapsed in seconds, trapping their occupants while government rescue teams failed to adequately respond. This was not entirely a natural disaster. Over the past several decades, Turkish governments offered builders "amnesties" allowing them to ignore safety codes, including the stronger building codes enacted after a devastating 1999 quake. The most recent amnesty occurred in 2018 under the increasingly despotic President Recep Erdogan, who now faces the most acute crisis of his two decades in power. In this episode, historian Howard Eissenstat discusses Turkey's history of shoddy construction and the political future of Erdogan's AKP party.

It's been three years since the unchecked spread of a novel coronavirus upended our daily lives. In March 2020, offices began closing, sporting events were canceled, and frightening numbers of people started dying from Covid-19. As of today, the virus has claimed the lives of more than one million Americans and at least seven million worldwide, although experts estimate as many as 20 million may have succumbed to the virus globally. In this episode, historian John Barry, an expert on the 1918 flu pandemic and a distinguished scholar at Tulane University, delves into what the world now knows about Covid's origins, masks, vaccines, and more.

As the race for the 2024 Republican nomination intensifies, it's unclear whether an important GOP constituency will continue steadfastly supporting Donald Trump, because his influence appears to be waning. Whoever wins the nomination, though, will need the backing of conservative evangelicals. They've become a dominant force in Republican politics, evidenced by the emphasis on appointing conservative judges and the relentless culture war against liberalism. In this episode, historian Darren Dochuk discusses the origins of evangelicals' rightward move and the politicization of faith -- from the aftermath of the First World War to the Cold War through the presidency of George W. Bush and the embrace of "faith-based" initiatives.