Benn Steil

Feb 29, 2024 | hudson.org | Benn Steil

After the Vietnam War, disgruntled lefties increasingly reconsidered American history to discover how the country could have chosen peace instead of a confrontation with the Soviet Union. One pivotal moment was the 1944 Democratic National Convention, when the party replaced Vice President Henry A. Wallace with Harry Truman. According to Oliver Stone, who helped popularize this revisionist history, “there would not have been this cold war” if Wallace was still vice president when Franklin D.

Jan 30, 2024 | time.com | Benn Steil

IdeasJanuary 30, 2024 7:00 AM ESTSteil is senior fellow and director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author, most recently, of The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century. Heading into an election year in which two radically different visions of America’s place in the world look set to compete, yet again, one issue is bound to beset Joe Biden—and rightly so. His age. Biden will, shortly after the election, turn 82.

Jan 25, 2024 | foreignaffairs.com | Benn Steil |Manjari Chatterjee Miller |Noah Berman

Ukraine may be facing the toughest chapter of its war since the first days of Russia’s invasion. Its top general has used the word “stalemate,” and frontlines have changed little over the past year. In the West, the political tides may be shifting—especially in the United States, where Republicans in Congress are holding up new aid to Ukraine.

Dec 8, 2023 | foreignaffairs.com | Olesya Vartanyan |James M. Lindsay |Benn Steil

In late September, one of the most shocking human upheavals since the century began took place in the former Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, a small, hilly patch of territory nestled within Azerbaijan. After three decades of tensions and conflict, it took just one day in September for Azerbaijan to seize the disputed enclave.

Nov 30, 2023 | foreignaffairs.com | Joseph Nye |James Lindsay |Benn Steil

How should one apply morality to Henry Kissinger’s statesmanship? How does one balance his accomplishments against his misdeeds? I have wrestled with those questions since Kissinger was my professor, and later colleague, at Harvard University. In April 2012, I helped interview him before a large audience at Harvard and asked whether, in hindsight, he would have done anything differently during his time as secretary of state for U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. At first, he said no.