The first mention of a ‘ranger’ is as early as 1622, during the 1622 Powhatan rebellion, a near-successful effort to drive the British out of what is now Virginia. Greg Grandin Read Quote
Hillary Clinton became secretary of state under Barack Obama. It’s hard to convey just how stunningly cynical she has been on Colombia: In 2008, running against Obama, she opposed, in unambiguous terms, a free-trade deal with Colombia. Greg Grandin Read Quote
Just as much as the United States mattered to cotton, cotton mattered to the United States. Cotton reinvigorated slavery, established the young nation’s place in the global economy, and eventually helped create the political and economic conflicts that resulted in civil war. Greg Grandin Read Quote
The unraveling of America’s long mid-century domestic consensus, which ran from about 1941 to 1966, had begun earlier, under Lyndon B. Johnson. Greg Grandin Read Quote
By June 1974, Treasury Secretary George Shultz was already suggesting that rising oil prices could result in a ‘highly advantageous mutual bargain’ between the United States and petroleum-producing countries in the Middle East. Greg Grandin Read Quote
In Texas, the rangers were established on an ad hoc basis in the 1820s to protect the settlers making inroads into Spanish borderlands. Soon, Mexicans and Mexican Americans replaced Native Americans as the prime target of ranger repression. Greg Grandin Read Quote
Within days of Richard Nixon’s inauguration in January 1969, national-security adviser Kissinger asked the Pentagon to lay out his bombing options in Indochina. The previous president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, had suspended his own bombing campaign against North Vietnam in hopes of negotiating a broader cease-fire. Greg Grandin Read Quote
A new book by ‘New York Times’ reporter Charlie Savage, ‘Power Wars,’ suggests that there has been little substantive difference between George W. Bush’s administration and Obama’s when it comes to national-security policies or the legal justifications used to pursue regime change in the Greater Middle East. Greg Grandin Read Quote
Decades before President Richard Nixon bet his re-election on winning the Dixiecrat vote, Wilson worked out his own Southern Strategy. Even as he was moving the nation to war, Wilson re-segregated Washington and purged African-Americans from federal jobs. Greg Grandin Read Quote
Defenders of Wilson are correct to beg for context when considering his legacy. But it is they who ignore the context: the role Wilson played in using war, including Haiti’s racist counterinsurgency, to nationalize white supremacy, militarism, and Christian evangelism. Greg Grandin Read Quote
