William Anthony Hay Subscribe

William Anthony Hay is professor of history at Mississippi State University and the 2019-20 Garwood Visiting Fellow for the James Madison Program at Princeton University. He is also the author of Lord Liverpool: A Political Life, and The Whig Revival, 1808-1830.

February 6, 2020|Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Foreign Policy

No Policy, No Strategy, No End?

by William Anthony Hay|

A soldier at rest in the desert (shutterstock.com).

Public relations seems to have been the Afghanistan War’s most successful operation.

July 15, 2019|cyclical time, eternity, Frederick the Great, Frederick William, Germany, History, linear time, National Socialism, Otto von Bismarck, World War I

Germany, Temporal and Eternal

by William Anthony Hay|

Then as now, where people stood on history and how they understood their place in the flow of time shaped their actions.

March 1, 2019|British Foreign Policy, Catholic Emancipation, Congress of Vienna, Corn Laws, English Constitution, free trade, Ireland, Lord Liverpool, Napoleonic Wars, Peterloo Massacre

Lord Liverpool & the British Tradition of Strategic Independence: A Conversation with William Anthony Hay

by William Anthony Hay|

William Anthony Hay talks about Lord Liverpool's excellent statesmanship.

February 21, 2019|Petr Dunovo, Russia, Vladimir Putin, World War I

Hell Is Truth Realized Too Late: Russia and the Legacy of World War I

by William Anthony Hay|

Russians camped out during the famines of 1918-1921 (Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com).

Had the costs of war and revolution been understood, Russia might have avoided much of what it suffered over the 20th century.

November 9, 2018|Armistice, Fascism, Nazism, Treaty of Versailles, World War I

Remembering World War I

by William Anthony Hay|

Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery and Memorial to the Missing of World War I, Ypres, Belgium (Chris Dorney/Shutterstock.com).

The centenary of the armistice should prompt some reflection on the dangers of rolling what Otto von Bismarck called the iron dice of war.

October 9, 2018|Nationalism, Realism, Yoram Hazony

Nationalism as Political Realism

by William Anthony Hay|

Flags outside the United Nations building in New York City (Maria Kovaleva / Shutterstock.com).

Hazony's The Virtue of Nationalism helps build a realist conception of political order that goes beyond theory to understand history.

February 21, 2018|Citizenship, Civil War, David Armitage, Ideology, revolution, Rome, Secession

What Makes Civil Wars Different

by William Anthony Hay|

'The Last Argument of Kings' (Creative Commons 3.0/Wikimedia Commons)

David Armitage offers tremendous insight into civil wars and how to understand them, but not in the usual social scientific or historical key.

January 23, 2018|American Foreign Policy, containment, Eliot Cohen, Hard Power, Interventionism, Soft Power, Theodore Roosevelt

Overusing The Big Stick

by William Anthony Hay|

Eliot Cohen presents a world full of threats, but not all of them are best addressed with military power.

December 29, 2017|Landsdowne Letter, World War I

A Letter for Peace

by William Anthony Hay|

The centenary of World War I has drawn surprisingly little attention. And this is unfortunate because the Great War offers many opportunities for reflection on statesmanship, the losses of war, and the strategies and tactics of military leaders. One event in 1917 merits particular attention as an occasion to reflect upon the costs of war and national strategy.

November 15, 2017|Ken Burns, South Vietnam, Vietnam

Lessons from a Tragedy

by William Anthony Hay|

Soldiers on a search and destroy operation near Qui Nhon in central Vietnam, January 17, 1967. Bettmann/Getty Images

The lessons of Vietnam long ago became a cliché in American political debate. It provided a shorthand for mistakes to avoid or overcome. Successfully driving Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991, at minimal cost in lives and money, appeared to lift the United States from the shadow of Vietnam. After the disappointed hopes of more recent Middle Eastern conflicts, however, the shadow returned. Ken Burns’ recent documentary series, The Vietnam War, revives the debate over what lessons that war provides. Rather than the usual approach of drawing analogies that show what policies to adopt or avoid, learning from Vietnam involves…

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

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