Yeltsin torturing the metaphor.

📍 London, United Kingdom

“For three hours, Putin hosted Witkoff, who took notes as the president gave a lecture on the 1,000-year history of Russia.”

A wonderful tribute to Bill Burr — an absolute legend in our field — from Richard Immerman and @shafrhistorians.bsky.social.

Simon Miles has been named incoming director of the Duke Sanford Master of National Security Policy (MNSP) program. His five-year term will begin July 1, 2026. A historian of strategy and diplomacy, Dr. Miles is an associate professor at the Sanford School. Full announcement: duke.is/miles-mnsp

Luke Mergott still out here clutching the ball he intercepted in the post-game interview just to be sure Duke really beat Virginia.

Make that 2 of 2. Somehow.

Embrace the chaos: DUKE JUST WON THE ACC.

Time for overtime in the ACC.

Duke is winning. (This is football, not basketball.)

The basic problem with the United States' call for Europe to lead on conventional forces while it takes care of nuclear deterrence.

One Duke win down today, another to go. Time to bring home that (extremely improbable) ACC championship.

Applications are due on December 15 for the next AWC Young Scholars Conference on deterrence, diplomacy, and disarmament in the 21st century.

How it started / How it's going

It is striking, though not surprising, how much the National Security Strategy is steeped in a narrative about how the United States has engaged in the world, based on a v. particular reading of the contemporary history of US foreign relations.

In absolutely shocking news, it turns out that it’s difficult to have your cake and eat it too.

That Duke win did a number on my nerves.

“The mission can be urgent and important — not every task in service of that mission is also urgent and important. On top of that, “work won’t love us back” doesn’t mean we don’t love our work. It means we don’t love our work at the expense of everything else.” — @amandalitman.bsky.social

There's still a few days left to apply for a predoctoral or postdoctoral fellowship at one of the four schools in the America in the World Consortium. Details:

I love that the city of Prague not only painted the bridge next to the Russian Embassy blue and yellow, they’ve also renamed the road its on Street of Ukrainian Heroes and the neighboring square after Boris Nemtsov.

📍 Prague, Czech Republic

In March, the America in the World Consortium will be hosting a one-day workshop for early-career scholars and practitioners on US nuclear policy in the 21st century. Paper proposals due December 15. www.awconsortium.org/about/call-f...

They don’t make gas stations like they used to.

Texas seems to be missing a key thing: penalties are bad.

Not a great week for Texas A&M all around, it seems.

The Access to Information Act is a complete shambles and suffocating Canadian history, exhibit 3007. It is wild – and tragic – that a briefing on the general contours of Canada's foreign policy regarding Europe from 1951 are still closed.

Wonderful to see this news that the Kennan Institute will continue its vital work, now as an independent center.

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.