Kew remains a treasure trove for historians interested in tackling contemporary subjects. I pulled folders today for an upcoming research trip -- including prime ministerial records from 2004!

Revisiting Lawrence Kaplan's NATO and the United States from 1994 which remarks, almost in passing, that the term isolationism is largely irrelevant. "It not only lacks resonance today," Kaplan writes, "it is an anachronism." My, how times have changed.

A Thanksgiving tradition. (Happy Thanksgiving, Canadians!)

Textbook Leafs fan experience tonight—oof.

📍University of Toronto (aka, some old stomping grounds)

Hey Military Historians, esp Grad students! The SMH is announcing its 2026 Summer Seminar in Military history, hosted by the Adams Center at VMI. This is a fabulous opportunity to learn the field outside your specialty, to network, and enjoy the Blue Ridge Mountains. www.smh-hq.org/summersemina...

Spent a great day with students from Duke, UNC, NC State, and NC Central for our @bridgingthegap.bsky.social FIRST workshop, including a morning talking about scenario planning and some alternative futures for the world ten years from now.

Applications are now open for the 2026-27 predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships with the America in the World Consortium! Applicants from all disciplines whose research bears directly on American grand strategy, broadly defined, are welcome to apply. Deadline: December 1

Motion to bar use of the phrase “as history teaches us.”

Can we get a cost estimate on how much the American taxpayer coughed up for that “meeting”?

FRUS klaxon: another new volume is out today on START I! history.state.gov/historicaldo...

Name-checking LeMay almost never makes me feel good.

Great opportunity for early-career scholars working on topics related to World War II at the National WWII Museum’s Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. www.nationalww2museum.org/war/jenny-cr...

“Their presence suggests that Russia was testing NATO resolve by forcing Poland and its allies to scramble air defenses thereby allowing Moscow to assess the speed and efficiency of an alliance response.”

Today, millions of people suddenly discovered, to their astonishment, that the North Atlantic Treaty also has articles 1 to 4. Thanks to the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation for their educational efforts

Me: writing the historiography section is the hardest, most painful part of any project. Also me: agrees to write an entire essay on a fraught historiography. 🙃

A fixture of the NATO literature: the Canadian caveat.

"Crafting history in real time makes it harder to drain the emotion and to look at events objectively, removed from our own passions and personal commitments." This @tnsr.org introduction from Frank Gavin has a great, short discussion on the differences between contemporary and "regular" history.

“Integration was the fundamental premise of building security across Europe, including a democratic Russia as a full partner.” A short interview with Stephan Kieninger on his new book about Strobe Talbott and US-Russian relations, SECURING PEACE IN EUROPE.

Alabama looks like they have no clue what is going on.

Too much positive pre-season chatter is a form of Texas curse, it seems.

Saturday is just better when there’s football.

Without fail, the first week of classes is like drinking from a fire hose.

American alliance management, 1978. history.state.gov/historicaldo...

More new FRUS! Three chapters of the Western Europe volume from the Carter years are now available, covering Canada, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Nordics. history.state.gov/historicaldo...

File this under entirely predictable.

At @warontherocks.bsky.social, @jamesgrahamwilson.bsky.social highlights some of the gems in the latest FRUS volume on the Strategic Defense Initiative and the Reagan administration's modernization program, including the full release of NSDD 250.

"While U.S. officials said Putin had agreed to security guarantees in Alaska, Russian analysts said any such agreement would probably involve Moscow insisting on a veto — a stance it took during peace talks in Istanbul in 2022 — making an arrangement worthless."

One of the things Zelenskyy and his European posse should insist on before they get into substantive discussions at White House is proof of any claimed Russian concessions, including those now reported by Witkoff on security guarantees. Supposed past concessions have been wishful thinking.

Language of proposed US security guarantee to Ukraine will be based on text of Trump University’s satisfaction guarantee, according to informed sources.

And what, exactly, is an "Article 5-like protection"?

“Putin made it clear that he had not dropped his core demands to ‘resolve the root causes’ of the conflict, which would essentially end Ukraine’s statehood in its current form and roll back Nato’s eastward expansion.”

That press conference was complete gibberish.

All of the visuals coming out of this (disaster of a) visit are such a gift to VVP.

"Sovereignty and territorial integrity are not abstract diplomatic ideals; they are the guardrails that protect people from the fate suffered by generations in the Baltics and now in occupied Ukraine. To entertain the idea of trading land for a fragile truce is to repeat the mistakes of the past..."

Billy Bishop in Toronto: it's connected to public transit, easy to navigate, has great views, and, perhaps most important of all, isn't Pearson. For a transfer, at least as a Delta loyalist, Detroit is the best.

Few things are better than when a copy of a friend’s new book arrives.

If you have used TNSR resources in the past, please take a few minutes to fill out this survey. The first 100 respondents will receive a FREE COPY of our next print edition! coda.io/form/Texas-N...

Great to see this roundtable of THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF GRAND STRATEGY, edited by Thierry Balzacq and Ronald R. Krebs, out on @h-diplo.bsky.social. I contributed a few thoughts on how the United States dominates the current study of grand strategy and where the discipline of history fits in.

Me looking at my to-do list when it’s August 1.

New FRUS volume just dropped on SDI and the Reagan administration's strategic modernization program, compiled by @jamesgrahamwilson.bsky.social. history.state.gov/historicaldo...

Tim Sayle has a great new book out – published last week! – called THE NEXT WAR. It deals with the creation of a tripartite (🇨🇦/🇬🇧/🇺🇸) indications network in the early Cold War aimed at figuring out a truly pressing matter: when general war was about to break out! press.ucalgary.ca/books/978177...

“Included among the items being pulled back are missiles for Patriot air defense systems, precision artillery rounds, Hellfire and other missiles that Ukraine launches from its F-16 fighters and drones.”

“But the alliance is pretending that the only thing that needs to change is how much Europeans spend.” - @maxbergmann.bsky.social www.csis.org/analysis/nat...

I get the desire to play for time but, folks, dignity and confidence also count for something. Today was embarrassing.

Mark Rutte referring to Donald Trump as daddy puts a whole new gloss on him as the “Trump whisperer.”

Someone please check on Mark Rutte to see if he's OK.

I’m worried that way too much emphasis has been put on the 5% spending target as a kind of wishful thinking. 5% is a significant ask, yet of all the possible permutations, it still feels like the easy button that enables the allies to sidestep big, thorny questions—ones that shouldn’t be ignored.

“But a more pressing question might be, what if the rest of the world beats Washington to the punch, withdrawing from the cooperative U.S.-led order that has been the bedrock of American power?” Excellent from @kschake.bsky.social.

“There is a methodical attempt on the part of Russia to exercise coercive tutelage over its neighbours, to seek to destabilise European countries and to challenge the global order. We cannot accept it, because our aim is to protect and preserve peace on our continent.” www.ft.com/content/c1bf...