Why America’s National Security Establishment Keeps Falling Short

Is USA Succumbing to Imperial Presumptions Our Founders Defied?

Jan 26, 2024

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A modern classroom scene with a man resembling George Washington, dressed in a mix of historical and contemporary clothing, standing and pointing at a 2024 world map. The setting includes a classroom with educational posters, a chalkboard, and modern desks. The atmosphere suggests a history lesson in progress, with the figure of Washington adapted to a contemporary educational context, bridging the past and present.

The last months of 1953, and the early ones of 1954, are a Groundhog Day of disappointments. After summer’s Korean Armistice Agreement, Americans came to realize what it was like to fail at war. Yet for a lifetime to come, they would wake again, and again, and again to discover that they had failed once more, and for the same reasons. The time loop that…

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A guest post by

Derek Leebaert

Derek won the 2020 Truman Book Award, and, in 2023, published Unlikely Heroes: Franklin Roosevelt, His Four Lieutenants, and the World They Made. He cofounded Harvard/MIT’s journal International Security, and helped launch the Museum of the US Army.

The New Nationalist

Why America’s National Security Establishment Keeps Falling Short

Is USA Succumbing to Imperial Presumptions Our Founders Defied?

This post is for paid subscribers