The inaugural edition of the Hoover Briefing on Revitalizing History deals with evaluating historical trends to help America better contend with its rivals. It also features a host of new content offerings from Hoover Institution Library & Archives, touching on presidential scandal and underreported periods in US history.
FEATURED ANALYSIS
Hoover History Lab Hosts Second Global Futures Conference
The Hoover History Lab, directed by Kleinheinz Senior Fellow Stephen Kotkin, hosted the second conference of its Global Futures Project. Scholars, scientists, private sector investors, and officials from US national security and intelligence services, as well as those of the Five Eyes allies, met for two and a half days (January 11‒13, 2024). This year’s theme was “The Changing Nature of Power.” The Global Futures Project is modeled on the unclassified Global Trends report issued every four years by the National Intelligence Council (NIC).
Attendees plumbed how well past analyses of comprehensive national power have aged and the lessons for analysts undertaking such exercises in the current circumstances. Serial sessions examined economic power, science and tech power, hard or military power, alliance power, soft and sharp power, and new forms of power. They assessed how these dimensions of power interact and how they might evolve and could be shaped by policymakers over the next ten or even twenty years.
A special session took up shifts in human agency amid advances in biotechnology and robotics.
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Kissinger and the True Meaning of Détente
In a recent Foreign Affairs essay, Milbank Family Senior Fellow Niall Ferguson describes the late secretary of state Henry Kissinger’s strategy of détente, arguing its detractors in the Nixon, Ford, and even Reagan eras struggled to define it and often subjected it to unfair criticism.
Ferguson contends that détente was not about striking up a friendship with Moscow but reducing the risks of a cold war becoming a hot one.
Kissinger’s effort was to engage with America’s main rivals on a number of fronts, Ferguson explains, while still deterring them from pursuing other goals, like growing the sphere of communist states throughout the world.
Ferguson argues that, today, Biden’s White House is pursuing a similar strategy with Beijing. “To paraphrase Kissinger, the United States and China are major rivals. But the nuclear age and climate change, not to mention artificial intelligence, compel them to coexist,” Ferguson writes.
Click here to read the entire essay (subscription required).
New Issue of Strategika Focuses on Iran Proxies
A newly published issue of Strategika, a publication produced through the efforts of Hoover’s Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group chaired by Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson, features three essays stressing that the United States should retaliate more aggressively against Iranian proxy militia groups across the Middle East.
In the background essay, historian Edward Luttwak writes that the Biden White House could deter Iran by massively raising the stakes both militarily and economically of Iran’s proxy militia activity throughout the Middle East.
In another essay, Reagan-era defense official Bing West argues that the United States should respond with strikes against Houthi missile sites and command centers in western Yemen, with an aim to completely remove the group’s offensive capabilities against shipping in the Red Sea. He also suggests Biden authorize tough enforcement action against Iran’s so-called “ghost fleet” of three hundred-plus tankers used to evade oil sanctions.
Next, Jerry Hendrix, a retired navy captain and defense expert, argues the Biden White House needs to jettison its position that Iran will recommit to de-escalation and denuclearization at the negotiating table. He calls for Biden to order direct strikes against Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) assets, including military targets within Iran.
Click here to read the new issue of Strategika.
Hoover Library & Archives Releases New Exhibition, Volume, and Video Series
The Hoover Institution’s Library & Archives continues to develop exciting new content drawing from the knowledge of the fellowship and its deep reservoir of archival material. Research fellows Kaoru (Kay) Ueda and Eiichiro Azuma compiled an anthology called Japanese America on the Eve of the Pacific War to better document the Japanese experience in America between 1924 and 1941. It contains unique insights into the Japanese experience in the continental United States and Hawai‘i as well as field-leading scholarship translated into English for the first time. A Q&A with Ueda and Azuma about the volume can be read here.
Earlier this month, Library & Archives unveiled Un-Presidented: Watergate and Power in America, a new exhibition that will be on display in the Hoover Tower through August 8. The exhibition illustrates the historic Watergate scandal from the perspective of those who uncovered, investigated, and prosecuted it, leading to the first-ever resignation of an American president. Objects in the exhibition include never-before-displayed sketches drawn by Nixon aide John Ehrlichman during the Watergate trials; memoranda on campaign strategy and clandestine operations from the collection of Jeb Magruder, deputy director of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President; trial notes on perjury taken by Nixon aide Robert Mardian; a series of drawings of Watergate figures created by artist Edwin Eugene Herron; and correspondence written to and about the wives of the indicted conspirators of the Watergate scandal.
Library & Archives recently launched its new Reflections video series, whereby Hoover scholars and curators tell unique stories about the consequential documents and artifacts from the Archives’ world renowned collections. In the first episode, Kay Ueda, who is also the curator of Japanese Diaspora Collections, explores Japanese records detailing the plan to bomb Pearl Harbor. In the second, Jean McElwee Cannon, research fellow and curator for Hoover’s North American Collections, reveals the document that first coined the Depression-era term “New Deal,” penned by Roosevelt adviser and speechwriter Raymond Moley.
Also, the Archives has fully digitized the papers of H. H. Kung, a confidant of Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. Kung served in several prominent roles in the Kuomintang (KMT) government of the Republic of China between 1937 and 1945. Fully digitized and available here, the papers reached Hoover in 2006 but needed years of painstaking restoration work before digitization.
Click here to explore more from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
