Today, Russell A. Berman writes about the continued need for the US to secure waterways around the Middle East. Jonathan Roll explores Israel’s security and intelligence reforms in the wake of failures preceding October 7, 2023. And the author of a Pulitzer Prize–winning book that draws heavily on several collections in Hoover’s Library & Archives talks about how perusing Hoover’s collections felt like being a kid in an alphabetically organized candy store.
The Middle East
In the latest issue of The Caravan, Senior Fellow Russell A. Berman summarizes the challenges the US faces in keeping waters around the Middle East open and safe to facilitate global trade. With the region facing continued harassment of Red Sea shipping by Iran-backed Houthis and its other proxies in the region, Berman argues that the US remains the only power that can stand up to these threats. Russia and China are in the rearview mirror, and it would be foolish to withdraw from the region. “The Middle East is very much an opportunity for the Trump administration to establish regional political cohesion by resolving the competition among the various states and solving the several conflicts,” he writes. Read more here.
In a new policy brief for the Hoover History Lab, Postdoctoral Fellow Jonathan Roll writes that Israeli military and security forces’ lack of preparedness on October 7, 2023, was the “product of flawed conceptions” among officials and elected leaders that dated back a decade or more before Hamas’s assault. Looking to the history of reviews and reforms in Israel’s security establishment, he writes that because of “institutional resistance to structural changes,” not all recommendations were adopted. However, the achievements of Israel’s intelligence community since late 2023 have been “astonishing,” Roll says, arguing that critics should not ignore some of Israel’s major victories since the October 7 attack. Read more here.
Revitalizing History
A book on Soviet dissidents detailing the absurdities of Soviet times, which drew heavily on records housed at Hoover’s Library & Archives, has won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. Its author, Benjamin Nathans, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, says putting together To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement became possible once he got access to the treasure trove of Soviet records stored and preserved at Hoover’s Library & Archives. “It wasn't just like being a kid and walking into a candy store. It was like walking into a candy store where everything is arranged alphabetically,” Nathans said. The Pulitzer Prize Board called the book “a prodigiously researched and revealing history of Soviet dissent, how it was repeatedly put down and came to life again, populated by a sprawling cast of courageous people dedicated to fighting for threatened freedoms and hard-earned rights.” Read more here.
Defining America’s Role in the World
Writing in RealClearWorld, Research Fellow Michael S. Bernstam charts the enormous investment by “Western allies”—Canada and nations in Europe and Asia—into the US over the past 50 years. He writes that 60–90 % of the $62.1 trillion in foreign direct investment into the US to date is by these allies. With the US global nuclear deterrence and security umbrella extended over them, Bernstam writes, these allies directed their savings and investments into the US. But with the current global trade war and Europe and Canada rearming, these allies “will rebalance their economies and divert their savings from US investment to defense spending. Eventually they may need to divest their stock of US assets,” he warns. The pivot away from the US by its natural partners may cause a downward economic spiral. Read more here.
California
On the latest episode of Frontline Voices, former Veteran Fellow Mike Steadman speaks with Dave Winnacker and Donnie Hasseltine, Marine Corps veterans who were part of the inaugural Hoover veteran fellowship cohort in 2021–22. Building on the project they worked on at Hoover, both Winnacker and Hasseltine now work at the community level to reduce fire risk in California. The solution to lowering wildfire risk in the state of California involves insurance market reform, they tell Steadman, outlining ideas such as natural fire obstacles, put in place years before flames are ever spotted in a community, to software that better plans evacuations in the event fires threaten a neighborhood. Watch or listen to the episode here.
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