History
World history shapes us today in so many ways, from revolutions and diplomacy to political philosophy, that it is always worth examining.
Berlin, 1984
A divided city before it reunited When I visited West Berlin in 1984 to cover the Filmfestspiele, or Berlin Film Festival, the city was thoroughly divided. Much of my day there was spent exploring the two sides of the city. In the 1920s, the 1960s then again in the 1980s, Berlin was at the centre…
Sartre : a free man
Sartre: still alive today? Jean-Paul Sartre died in April 1980. Curiously, that was the month I graduated in Philosophy, after studying Sartre’s writing intensely. I hastily composed a detailed obit/essay, which was somehow published in the Montreal daily Le Devoir. For me, college was serious business: I studied a lot of politics and philosophy, working…
Dien Bien Phu and after: the U.S. inherits an intractable conflict
You thought the Vietnam war was lost by 1974? Turn your clocks back two decades Almost 70 years after the French defeat — and, all credit due, the Vietminh victory — at Dien Bien Phu in northwest Vietnam,1 lessons continue to be drawn from a military confrontation that saw the defeat of a well-equipped Western…
Les Lumières en Amérique: America and the Enlightenment
As North America was about to erupt with the American revolt against imperial Britain in the late 1700s, many liberal currents in Europe were feeding this move toward freedom. My 2009 essay for a panel discussion on the Enlightenment held in Divonne, France focused on the connections between American revolutionary thinkers, principally Paine and Jefferson,…
The return of Dag – dynamic UN head back in the spotlight as turbulence looms
UN Special magazine, June 2011 Coincidence, or a trick of history? At the very moment when the UN appears caught in confrontation with a superpower member and overwhelmed by tectonic geopolitical shifts in the developing world, Dag has returned to the headlines. Dag Hammarskjöld is a large figure – maybe the largest – on the…