Category: Uncategorized

When a coupon suddenly appears on your phone as you approach a store, you might find it convenient and even helpful. But the same AI systems that know where you are and try to influence your purchases can be used to infer what you fear, what you trust and which stories you are likely to believe. AI-fueled marketing algorithms are becoming increasingly good at influencing human behavior.

That raises concern about what various governments might do with these tools to influence citizens’ views about warfare. A clear-eyed look at how administrations are exploiting these systems may help people and their nations navigate an uncertain future.

I am a security researcher who studies ways to explore and characterize the risk technology poses to individuals and society. The rise of AI-mediated influence has raised questions about the erosion of people’s capacity to exercise free will and, by extension, society’s ability to distinguish a just war from an unjust war.

AI-powered marketing

The integration of AI with location-based services is pushing the marketing frontier. Location-based services use geographic data from indoor sensors, cellphone towers and satellites to promote goods and services that are tailored to your location, a capability called geofencing.

When marketing firms couple massive amounts of data about individuals’ behaviors – including information that people voluntarily or unknowingly share through mobile device applications – the firms can group, or segment, potential customers based on what they like, what they do and what they say.

Once an AI-powered marketing system knows where a user is and can make an informed guess about that person’s likes and dislikes, it can design targeted coupons and advertisements to influence the behavior of each person in a group, and possibly the group as a whole. This combination of AI with geofencing and segmentation makes hyperpersonalized marketing content possible at an unprecedented scale.

Real-time propaganda

What might this advance have to do with warfare? The use of psychology to win battles or obviate the need for war is as old as armed conflict itself. Sun Tzu, the Chinese military general and philosopher who died in 496 B.C., wrote: “Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy’s troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field.”

From Sun Tzu’s era until today, skilled practitioners of military strategy have sought to reduce the risk in fighting through reflexive control: getting opponents to willingly perform actions that are best for the strategist’s empire or nation.

Today’s strategists increasingly rely on paid social media advertisements, influencers, AI-generated content and even fake social media accounts to sway popular opinion toward their goals. This power, and controversy surrounding it, has been implicated in recent national elections, domestic unrest and negotiations to end the conflict in Ukraine.

Unlike propaganda during the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, modern influencers don’t rely on a single message broadcast to the masses. Strategists test and deploy thousands of narrative variations simultaneously, monitor how different groups respond and refine their approach in near-real time. The purveyors don’t need to convince everyone. They just need to nudge enough people at the right moment to change election outcomes, pressure domestic policies or even trigger ethnic violence.

How much deception is tolerable?

As online influence becomes more automated and personalized, it is harder to determine where persuasion ends and coercion begins. If groups of people, or even a nation’s citizenry, can be guided toward certain beliefs or behaviors without overt force, democratic societies face a new problem: how to distinguish traditional attempts at influence from manipulation – especially during conflict.

Recent studies show that Americans trust local news sources more than national ones, although trust in both local and national news media has declined across all age groups in the U.S. Ironically, this trust deficit is being exploited by unscrupulous media in various ways, such as AI-generated, pink-slime news – online news stories that only appear to be from authentic local news outlets. The stories are often technically accurate but presented with veiled political bias.

AI-driven propaganda directly challenges how people typically evaluate claims that their nation has been wronged – that it is the “good guy” standing up for what is right. Just war theory assumes that citizens can reasonably consent to war. Legitimate political authority requires an informed public that can decide violence is both necessary and proportional to the offense. However, when influence operations sway people’s views without them being aware of it, these systems threaten to undermine the moral preconditions that make war just.

The question citizens have to answer is how they will allow their information environments to evolve. Do they assume that deception is ubiquitous and therefore governments must control information and even preempt the truth by weaponizing AI-driven narratives? Or should the public accept the risk of AI-generated influence as a regrettable but necessary part of openness, pluralism and the belief that truth emerges through transparent debate and not under tight controls?

The same systems that decide which coupon reaches your phone are starting to shape which narratives reach you, your community and a nation’s entire population during a crisis. Recognizing this connection is the first step toward deciding how much influence people are willing to accept from such algorithms and the propagandists who control them.

Justin Pelletier is affiliated with the United States Army Reserve. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Army, Department of War, or the U.S. Government.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is reportedly issuing administrative subpoenas to identify anonymous social media accounts that criticize U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Google, Meta and Reddit have complied with at least some of those requests, according to The New York Times.

These subpoenas appear alongside other recent steps by the Trump administration aimed at clamping down on its critics.

In Minneapolis and Chicago, ICE agents told protesters their faces were being recorded and identified using facial recognition technology. Tom Homan, the White House border czar, has also spoken publicly about creating a database of people arrested during protests against immigration enforcement operations.

One way to understand these government moves is by focusing on law enforcement and compliance. Some people may wonder about what legal authority DHS is using to demand identities and compile lists, how many accounts are involved, and whether prosecutions will follow. Those questions matter.

But they are not the most important ones.

To me, a professor of public service and vice chair of the National Communication Association’s Communication and Law Division, the more revealing question is why the government wants the names of critics in the first place, and what that choice signals about how dissent is being understood.

Legality is wrong measure

The DHS subpoenas that target social media accounts may be perfectly legal.

Administrative subpoenas are authorized by statute and do not require a judge’s approval before issuance. The government’s use of facial recognition technology has survived constitutional challenge in certain investigative contexts. A president’s executive memoranda routinely set enforcement priorities.

But constitutionality does not turn on whether a tool exists. It turns on how that tool is used.

Power can be lawful in the abstract and antidemocratic in its application. The fundamental question in a democracy isn’t whether the government possesses investigative authority. Instead, the question to ask is what happens when that authority begins to focus on critics of a particular policy.

National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, issued in September 2025, makes the stakes even more stark. It directs agencies to prioritize efforts to counter what it calls “domestic terrorism” and organized political violence. It emphasizes threat assessment and intelligence sharing across departments. It frames certain forms of political conflict in security terms.

When protest and online criticism are characterized using a national security vocabulary, they begin to look less like disagreement and more like destabilization. And once dissent is understood as a potential threat, the gathering of names and data can feel ordinary rather than exceptional.

Same rules for everyone

The First Amendment draws its strongest protections around speech that challenges the state. Criticism of immigration enforcement concerns federal authority, borders and human rights. It is core political speech.

Viewpoint discrimination is among the borders the Supreme Court has guarded most carefully. A viewpoint-neutral law is one that applies to everyone, regardless of opinion. Racists have the same right to speech as do Catholic nuns.

Government may regulate conduct, and it may punish true threats and incitement. It may even enforce neutral laws that incidentally restrict speech.

What government may not do is single out one side of a political debate because officials disapprove of its perspective.

If opposition to immigration enforcement triggers subpoenas by the government to businesses to provide the identity of dissenters, that is a problem for the Constitution. The government would need to demonstrate a compelling and viewpoint-neutral justification for the requests. Broad appeals to public safety are rarely sufficient when the speech at issue lies at the center of public debate.

Anonymous speech makes the stakes clearer

In the 1958 case NAACP v. Alabama, the Supreme Court refused to allow the state to compel disclosure of civil rights membership lists because exposure invited retaliation. In McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, in 1995, the court protected anonymous pamphleteering.

The reasoning in both cases was grounded in experience rather than theory. People speak differently when they believe their names may be recorded and stored by the state.

The risk in the present moment to the kind of dissent democracy needs and the Constitution protects may not lie in mass arrests. It may lie in narrowing – a narrowing of who feels safe criticizing federal policy. A narrowing of how sharply people speak. A narrowing of what feels worth the risk.

The First Amendment guards the right to express unpopular views. Chilling speech does not require prosecution. It requires uncertainty and asymmetry – a power imbalance. A person who believes online criticism could land them in a federal database may decide silence is the rational choice.

Supporters of the subpoenas will point to genuine safety concerns. Sharing agents’ locations can create real danger. True threats and incitement fall outside constitutional protection. Under the Supreme Court’s Brandenburg standard, advocacy loses protection when it is directed at and likely to produce imminent lawless action.

The Constitution leaves room to address such genuine danger. The harder question is what happens when tools designed for protecting against tangible harm migrate into ordinary political conflict.

American history offers reminders of how this unfolds. During the Red Scare, loyalty investigations reached into universities and civic organizations. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, surveillance authorities expanded under the Patriot Act. Early provisions allowed the government to seek library borrowing records. Even limited use or constraints on how government could apply its powers for obtaining information may have chilled inquiry. The harm did not depend on mass prosecutions. It depended on normalization.

Measuring what is lost

It is easy to identify the harms that speech can cause. Hate speech can silence its targets. Dishonest rhetoric from public officials can erode trust in institutions. Marketing campaigns can deceive elderly citizens into surrendering their savings. We can see those injuries. We can name their harm. We can point to the damage.

The benefits of free speech are harder to make tangible.

It is difficult to measure what is lost when an opinion is never voiced. It is impossible to catalog the arguments that never quite form because a speaker calculates the risk and decides silence is safer. There is no headline announcing that a citizen chose not to post, not to protest, not to dissent.

Yet the Supreme Court has long understood that the value of free speech lies precisely in that unseen space.

In New York Times v. Sullivan in 1964, the court wrote that “the theory of our Constitution is that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” That theory assumes something demanding. It assumes that criticism of government will be sharp, uncomfortable and, at times, unfair. It assumes that the cure for bad speech is more speech, not surveillance.

When the government begins collecting the names of its critics, even through tools that are lawful in isolation, the question is not simply whether a statute permits it. The question is whether the conditions for uninhibited and robust debate are quietly narrowing.

Free speech rarely disappears in a dramatic moment. It erodes at the margins. It shrinks in the spaces where people decide the risk feels too high.

And by the time someone tries to measure what has been lost, the silence may already feel normal.

Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Talk show host Stephen Colbert made headlines on Feb. 17, 2026, when he wrapped a network statement in a dog-waste bag and tossed it in the trash.

He did it live, while on air.

The move came after CBS lawyers reportedly told him he could not broadcast a scheduled interview with Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico on his show, Late Night with Stephen Colbert. According to Colbert, the network warned him that broadcasting the interview could trigger the Federal Communications Commission’s equal time rule, which requires broadcasters to allow political candidates equal access to the nation’s airwaves.

CBS said it gave Colbert “legal guidance” that airing the segment could raise equal time concerns and suggested other options.

Colbert countered that in decades of late-night television, he could not find a single example of the rule being enforced against a talk show interview. He ultimately posted his Talarico interview on YouTube instead, where broadcasting rules don’t apply.

As a media scholar, I believe Colbert is right about the law. Congress has deliberately protected editorial discretion to prevent equal time rules from chilling political speech. And the FCC has extended this privilege to shows like his.

To understand why, you have to go back to 1959 and to a forgotten fight over the role of broadcasting in a democratic society.

Amending ‘equal time’

Because the airwaves have been viewed as a scarce public resource, radio and television broadcasting have been regulated to balance the First Amendment rights of the press with public interest obligations. That includes the need to provide reasonable access to the airwaves for candidates for office – so citizens can hear what they have to say, whether in the form of paid advertising or unpaid news coverage.

After first appearing in the Radio Act of 1927, the equal time provision was codified in Section 315 of the Communications Act of 1934.

That law created the FCC and still governs the use of the nation’s airwaves today. It requires broadcast licensees to provide “equal opportunities” to legally qualified candidates in a given election if they allow one candidate to “use” their facilities. The requirement was intended to prevent broadcasters from favoring one candidate over another and to foster robust political debate that would serve the public interest.

But the statute did not clearly define what counted as a “use.”

That ambiguity was a known issue, but it came to a head in 1959, when Lar Daly, a fringe Chicago mayoral candidate, filed a complaint with the FCC. He argued that if stations aired news clips of his opponents – including the incumbent mayor – as part of their routine coverage, he was entitled to equal time on air.

The FCC agreed. And it created a ruling that meant even routine news coverage of a candidate could trigger equal time obligations.

Broadcasters immediately warned that the decision would make political journalism nearly impossible. If every news interview or campaign clip required providing comparable time to every rival – including minor or fringe candidates – stations would either have to book everyone or drastically scale back political coverage.

NBC president Robert Sarnoff issued a thinly veiled threat in a message that was not lost on politicians who would be affected by the change: “Unless the gag is lifted during the current session of the Congress, a major curtailment of television and radio political coverage in 1960 is inevitable.”

Later that year, Congress stepped in and amended Section 315 to create explicit exemptions for “bona fide” newscasts, news interviews, news documentaries and on-the-spot coverage of news events. As my colleague Tim P. Vos and I note in our research on the history of the amendment, Congress rejected calls to repeal equal time altogether.

Instead, lawmakers preserved the rule for candidate-sponsored advertising while shielding news programming. Persuaded by broadcasters, lawmakers determined that professional journalism, guided by norms of balance and fairness, would best serve democratic discourse.

In signing the 1959 legislation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower highlighted the “continuing obligation of broadcasters to operate in the public interest and to afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views on important public issues.”

Eisenhower concluded by appealing to the good intentions of the nation’s broadcasters: “There is no doubt in my mind that the American radio and television stations can be relied upon to carry out fairly and honestly the provisions of this Act without abuse or partiality to any individual, group, or party.”

The talk show exemption

Over the decades, the FCC has interpreted the 1959 exemptions broadly.

Programs ranging from Meet the Press to The Jerry Springer Show to The Tonight Show and other interview-based broadcasts have been treated as “bona fide news interviews,” even when hosted by comedians. That’s why Colbert’s claim that there is no enforcement history against late-night talk shows is accurate.

It’s important to remember that equal time still applies in other contexts. If a candidate purchases or receives airtime for an advertisement, opponents are entitled to comparable access.

Equal time also applies to non-exempt entertainment programming, such as Saturday Night Live. Donald Trump’s hosting gig on SNL in November 2015 triggered an equal time request from four opposing primary candidates. And NBC obliged by providing a comparable amount of airtime for their campaign messages.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr recently signaled he was considering eliminating the talk-show exemption, arguing that some programs are “motivated by partisan purposes.”

As of now, no legal change has occurred. And it seems to me that CBS has acted out of caution, responding to political and regulatory pressure rather than to an actual rule change. That makes this episode unusual: The equal time rule was perhaps applied indirectly, through corporate self-censorship, not through direct FCC enforcement.

Why this moment matters

Either way, the Colbert incident highlights the growing restrictions on editorial independence during the second Trump administration – either imposed by government threat or corporate fear.

Whether through direct regulatory intervention or indirect corporate influence, this incident and others like it show an increased willingness to interfere with the editorial independence of media producers.

The dispute is part of what some critics view as an ongoing effort by the Trump administration to silence criticism. Trump is no fan of Colbert and has targeted comedians before.

CBS already announced in 2025 that Colbert’s show will be canceled in May 2026, leading many to suggest CBS was trying to appease Trump and his FCC, particularly ahead of a then-pending merger that required FCC approval.

The 1959 amendment that created the equal time exemption aimed to preserve editorial independence and protect free expression by limiting equal time claims and ensuring vibrant political discourse. The decision reflected a judgment that professional editorial discretion, not mandatory equivalence, best served citizens.

If the FCC alters the exemption, it would represent a major shift in U.S. media policy and would almost certainly face legal challenges. The government has an important role to play in promoting free expression and protecting free speech, but this is a good time to be wary of efforts to alter regulations to control content.

Seth Ashley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

As the actions of agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement come under intense scrutiny, it’s worth noting that a little more than 100 years ago, another expansion of federal policing – to enforce national Prohibition – also sparked nationwide concern.

As a U.S. history scholar, I know both the government agencies charged with enforcing national Prohibition in the early 20th century and with mass deportation in the early 21st century were hastily expanded. They were asked to achieve difficult objectives and were staffed by sometimes poorly trained people who at times resorted to violence.

National prohibition enforcement

When Congress approved the Volstead Act in 1919 that outlawed the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcoholic liquors, it purposely limited the number of Prohibition enforcement officials due to pressure from powerful dry lobbying groups, which supported the prohibition of alcohol sales and consumption. These groups thought the majority of the Prohibition policing would be done by states.

The Volstead Act also exempted Prohibition agents from civil service laws, which would have required job applicants to pass certain minimum standards. The exemption was written into the law because the prohibitionist lobby only trusted committed “drys” – people resolutely dedicated to maintaining an alcohol-free society – to do the enforcing, and they thought that they would control the appointments.

For the first years of Prohibition, the Bureau of Prohibition belonged to a division of the Bureau of Internal Revenue – some were converted alcohol tax collectors. Then they became part of the Bureau of Prohibition in the Treasury Department. And in 1930, they moved to the Department of Justice.

These moves to various bureaus and departments reflected attempts to curtail corruption, reduce the influence of the prohibitionists on staffing, and increase effectiveness. Despite the moves, funding and training for Prohibition agents never improved. Additionally, in an effort to cut government spending during the Great Depression, the Herbert Hoover administration cut Prohibition agents’ per diem pay from US$6 to $5.

The initial group of Prohibition agents were either committed prohibitionists or “political hacks with little law enforcement experience,” according to author W. J. Rorabaugh. The hacks, Rorabaugh wrote, soon outnumbered the prohibitionists.

In 1927, Federal Circuit Judge William S. Keynon said that “three-fourths of the 2,500 dry agents are ward heelers and sycophants named by the politicians.” The assistant attorney general in charge of Prohibition enforcement, Mabel Walker Willebrandt, said that Prohibition agents were “as devoid of honesty and integrity” as those who violated Prohibition laws.

When Prohibition agents were placed under the civil service, 60% of them failed their civil service tests. In a six-year period beginning in 1920, 752 Prohibition officials lost their jobs for delinquency or misconduct. Drunkenness and bribery were the two main reasons for dismissal.

In 1930, the 1,450 front-line Prohibition agents dwarfed the 350 FBI field agents across the country. They were the largest federal law enforcement body, and they were busy.

From 1921 to 1930, they averaged over a half-million arrests per year. They seized over 45,000 automobiles, and by their own account, Prohibition agents killed 89 people.

However, the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment calculated that about 1,000 people were killed in enforcing Prohibition.

Endemic violence

Federal officials authorized Prohibition agents’ use of violence. One official told U.S. Sen. Wesley Jones, a strong prohibitionist, that some bootleggers “deserve a good killing, and I am not losing any sleep if now and then a bootlegger is killed.”

But Prohibition agents did not just shoot criminals. The Washington Herald detailed in 1929 a pattern of reckless use of force, with prohibition agents shooting at the tires of escaping cars and accidentally firing weapons. In 1924, within blocks of the U.S. Capitol, a Prohibition agent who was firing at a fleeing car carrying a bootlegger accidentally shot Sen. Frank L. Greene of Vermont. Greene, wounded in the head, never fully recovered the use of one arm.

The author Daniel Okrent illustrated the link between trigger-happy officers and shoddy recruitment and training when he detailed the case of “the first agent to kill a suspect bootlegger in the line of duty.” The Prohibition agent had been accepted into service under a false name. He was not a stranger to killing, as he had killed a man when he was 14. He had also served multiple prison terms. Indeed, he was given his badge when “still incarcerated at Dannemora State Prison,” according to Okrent.

The parallels between Prohibition and the Trump administration’s mass deportation tactics are not identical. Prohibition was more unpopular in much of the country compared with mass deportation. And Congress was not willing to adequately pay for Prohibition enforcement, while it has generously funded ICE.

Several reports detail ICE’s recent massive expansion. In early January 2026, the agency announced it grew by 120%, adding 12,000 agents to the existing force of 10,000, which raised concerns among lawmakers about lowered training standards to meet recruitment targets. Other accounts reveal lax vetting, insufficient training and past officer misconduct.

But both efforts share important similarities. They were hastily built, with agents who were asked to do something very difficult, and staffed by sometimes poorly trained people who were authorized to use force.

Richard F. Hamm does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

For the first time in more than half a century, there are no binding restraints on the buildup of the largest nuclear forces on Earth. The New START treaty expired on Feb. 5, 2026, ending the last agreed limits on U.S. and Russian nuclear forces.

New START limited the number of strategic nuclear weapons the United States and Russia could deploy to 1,550 each. It also limited the missiles and bombers those warheads were loaded on, required on-site inspections and data exchanges, barred interference with satellite monitoring, and established a joint commission to discuss disputes. It did not limit the number of nuclear weapons each side could hold in reserve.

With China rapidly building up its nuclear forces, intense rivalry between the United States, China and Russia, and evolving technologies – from precision conventional weapons to artificial intelligence complicating nuclear balances – there is a real potential of an unpredictable three-way nuclear arms competition.

Such a competition could increase the danger of nuclear conflict, which I believe is higher than it has been in decades.

The security of agreed restraint

While the particular numbers of warheads and delivery vehicles an accord specifies may not make an immense difference, nuclear agreements offer important advantages in four key areas:

• Predictability, limiting the pressures to build up nuclear arsenals that come from worst-case analysis of what adversaries might build and the destabilization that unexpected new weapons can bring.

• Transparency, elements such as data exchanges, on-site inspections and limits on interfering with satellite monitoring, giving each side a better ability to understand what is going on with the others’ nuclear forces.

• Reduced first-strike incentives, from banning or limiting particularly dangerous types of weapons.

• Improved relations, through the mere fact that the other side is willing to limit the nuclear forces arrayed against you, which undermines the belief that they are implacably bent on your utter destruction. This reduces the intensity of hostility that can drive crises and escalation.

After 1962’s Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy realized that relying on nuclear deterrence without any agreed nuclear restraints or risk-reduction measures is just too dangerous. He moved quickly to negotiate the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963 and put in place a U.S.-Soviet hotline for crisis communication.

He also launched a series of initiatives that led to reductions in defense spending on both sides, cuts in production of nuclear materials for weapons, and even troop pullbacks in Europe. Every subsequent U.S. president has pursued nuclear arms control accords.

Moreover, the countries that have promised not to get nuclear weapons under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty want to see the nuclear-armed nations living up to their treaty obligation to negotiate in good faith toward nuclear disarmament. As pressure builds for countries to get their own nuclear weapons, maintaining the nonproliferation regime and getting the non-nuclear countries’ votes for stronger nuclear safeguards or export controls is likely to require the nuclear-armed nations to accept at least some constraints of their own.

Critics of arms control point out that Russia has violated many past accords – and the Trump administration has accused both Russia and China of carrying out illicit nuclear tests, though his administration has not offered solid evidence in public so far. But despite these very real issues, key elements of these agreements were implemented, and they “left the United States safer,” as Secretary of State Marco Rubio has noted. More than four-fifths of the nuclear weapons that used to exist in the world have been dismantled.

New limits or buildup?

So, what’s next? President Donald Trump ignored Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal that both sides stay within the limits of New START while they explored options for new steps. But Trump said he wants to negotiate a “better” deal on fewer nuclear weapons – a deal that would not only limit U.S. and Russian strategic forces but also China’s much smaller but rapidly growing nuclear forces and Russia’s large force of nonstrategic nuclear weapons – that is, ones for battlefield or regional use.

So far, though, no negotiations on follow-on accords are underway, and the administration has not offered to negotiate about any of the U.S. weapons systems that worry Russia and China.

Moreover, there is strong pressure in Washington to build up U.S. nuclear forces rather than reduce them, to deter both Russia and China – while also dealing with the smaller but still dangerous North Korean nuclear force. The United States has many hundreds of nuclear weapons in storage that could be brought out and put on existing missiles, along with empty missile tubes on submarines that could again be filled with missiles. And the U.S. is developing new weapons, such as a nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile.

Constraints and challenges

In my view, the more than 1,500 strategic nuclear weapons the United States already has deployed – with a major modernization underway – provide a sufficient deterrent to aggression. And if the United States begins to build up, Russia will respond in kind, and China may go even further. Once a multisided buildup is underway, its momentum will be more difficult to reverse.

Fortunately, the United States, Russia and China all have strong national interests in avoiding an unrestrained nuclear race, which would leave all of them poorer and no more secure. While the United States has quite a few nuclear weapons in storage, its nuclear modernization is struggling with enormous delays and cost overruns, and its industrial base is simply not prepared for a major nuclear expansion.

Putin is building a war economy that can churn out a lot of weapons – but he knows his economy is a 10th the size of the U.S.’s, and he wants to focus on rebuilding the conventional forces being chewed up in his war on Ukraine, making nuclear competition a bad idea. China has an economy to match the U.S.’s and an unrivaled manufacturing capacity, but it, too, would be worse off if its buildup provokes a U.S. buildup in response and a collapse of nuclear restraints.

Despite these common interests, finding a path to new accords among at least three parties, rather than two, will not be easy. Coalitions in each capital will have to win arguments that an accord is in their nation’s interest at the same time. The parties will have to address in some way the non-nuclear technologies that affect nuclear balances, and technologies such as cyber weapons and artificial intelligence would be hard to count or verify.

U.S. political polarization might make it very difficult to get a two-thirds vote in the Senate to ratify a treaty – though there are many other possible approaches, from reciprocal political commitments to executive agreements.

Famously unpredictable, Trump might still reverse course and agree to some version of Putin’s proposal for a “strategic pause” in which neither the United States nor Russia would build up its nuclear capabilities for the time being, while talks on next steps were underway. That would have the advantage of offering time to explore the options before new nuclear buildups got locked in.

And that would give him more chance of reaching his oft-stated goal of being the one to bring home a deal to reduce nuclear weapons and the dangers they pose.

Matthew Bunn is a member of the Board of Directors of the Arms Control Association; is a member of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences; has consulted for several U.S. national laboratories; and has served on the Academic Alliance of U.S. Strategic Command.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The president announces an aggressive, controversial policy. Large groups of protesters take to the streets. Government agents open fire and kill protesters.

All of these events, familiar from Minneapolis in 2026, also played out at Ohio’s Kent State University in 1970. In my academic writing about the First Amendment, I have described Kent State as a key moment when the government silenced free speech.

In Minneapolis, free speech has weathered the crisis better, as seen in the protests themselves, the public’s responses – and even the protest songs the two events inspired.

Protests and shootings, then and now

In 1970, President Richard Nixon announced he had expanded the Vietnam War by bombing Cambodia. Student anti-war protests, already fervent, intensified.

In Ohio, Gov. James Rhodes deployed the National Guard to quell protests at Kent State University. Monday, May 4, saw a large midday protest on the main campus commons. Students exercised their First Amendment rights by chanting and shouting at the Guard troops, who dispersed protesters with tear gas before regrouping on a nearby hill.

With the nearest remaining protesters 20 yards from the Guard troops and most more than 60 yards away, 28 guardsmen inexplicably fired on students, killing four students and wounding nine others.

After the killings, the government sought to shift blame to the slain students. Nixon stated: “When dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy.”

Minneapolis in 2026 presents vivid parallels.

As part of a sweeping campaign to deport undocumented immigrants, President Donald Trump in early January 2026 deployed armed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agents to Minneapolis.

Many residents protested, exercising their First Amendment rights by using smartphones and whistles to record and call out what they saw as ICE and CBP abuses. On Jan. 7, 2026, an ICE agent shot and killed activist Renee Good in her car. On Jan. 24, two CBP agents shot and killed protester Alex Pretti on the street.

The government sought to blame Good and Pretti for their own killings.

Different public reactions

After Kent State, amid bitter conservative opposition to student protesters, most Americans blamed the fallen students for their deaths. When students in New York City protested the Kent State shootings, construction workers attacked and beat the students in what became known as the “hard hat riot.” Afterward, Nixon hosted construction union leaders at the White House, where they gave him an honorary hard hat.

In contrast, most Americans believe the Trump administration has used excessive force in Minneapolis. Majorities both oppose the federal agents’ actions against protesters and approve of protesting and recording the agents.

The public response to Minneapolis has made a difference. The Trump administration has announced an end to its immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities. Trump has backed off attacks on Good and Pretti. Congressional opposition to ICE funding has grown. Overall public support for Trump and his policies has fallen.

Free speech in protests, recordings and songs

What has caused people to view the killings in Minneapolis so differently from Kent State? One big factor, I believe, is how free speech has shaped the public response.

The Minneapolis protests themselves have sent the public a more focused message than what emerged from the student protests against the Vietnam War.

Anti-war protests in 1970 targeted military action on the other side of the world. Organizers had to plan and coordinate through in-person meetings and word of mouth. Student protesters needed the institutional news media to convey their views to the public.

In contrast, the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis target government action at the protesters’ doorsteps. Organizers can use local networks and social media to plan, coordinate and communicate directly with the public. The protests have succeeded in deepening public opposition to ICE.

In addition, the American people have witnessed the Minneapolis shootings.

Kent State produced a famous photograph of a surviving student’s anguish but only hazy, chaotic video of the shootings.

In contrast, widely circulated video evidence showed the Minneapolis killings in horrifying detail. Within days of each shooting, news organizations had compiled detailed visual timelines, often based on recordings by protesters and observers, that sharply contradicted government accounts of what happened to Good and Pretti.

Finally, consider two popular protest songs that emerged from Kent State and Minneapolis: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis.”

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded, pressed and released “Ohio” with remarkable speed for 1970. The vinyl single reached record stores and radio stations on June 4, a month after the Kent State shootings. The song peaked at No. 14 on the Billboard chart two months later.

Neil Young’s lyrics described the Kent State events in mythic terms, warning of “tin soldiers” and telling young Americans: “We’re finally on our own.” Young did not describe the shootings in detail. The song does not name Kent State, the National Guard or the fallen students. Instead, it presents the events as symbolic of a broader generational conflict over the Vietnam War.

Springsteen released “Streets of Minneapolis” on Jan. 28, 2026 – just four days after CBP agents killed Pretti. Two days later, the song topped streaming charts worldwide.

The internet and social media let Springsteen document Minneapolis, almost in real time, for a mass audience. Springsteen’s lyrics balance symbolism with specificity, naming not just “King Trump” but also victims Pretti and Good, key Trump officials Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, main Minneapolis artery Nicollet Avenue, and the protesters’ “whistles and phones,” before fading on a chant of “ICE out!”

Critics offer compelling arguments that 21st-century mass communication degrades social relationships, elections and culture. In Minneapolis, disinformation has muddied crucial facts about the protests and killings.

At the same time, Minneapolis has shown how networked communication can promote free speech. Through focused protests, recordings of government action, and viral popular culture, today’s public can get fuller, clearer information to help critically assess government actions.

Gregory P. Magarian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Jesse Jackson’s two campaigns for president, in 1984 and 1988, were unsuccessful but historic. The civil rights activist and organizer, who died on Feb. 17, 2026, helped pave the way for Barack Obama’s election a generation later as the nation’s first – and so far only – African American president.

Jackson’s campaigns energized a multiracial coalition that not only provided support for other late-20th-century Democratic politicians, including President Bill Clinton, but helped create an organizing template – a so-called Rainbow Coalition combining Black, Latino, working-class white and young voters – that continues to resonate in progressive politics today.

Vermont, where I teach political science, did not look like fertile ground for Jackson when he first ran for president. Then, as now, Vermont was one of the most homogeneous, predominantly white states in the country. But if Jackson seemed like an awkward fit for a mostly rural, lily-white state, he nonetheless saw possibilities there.

He campaigned in Vermont twice in 1984, buoyantly declaring in Montpelier, the state capital, “If I win Vermont, the nation will never be the same again.”

He did not win Vermont, taking just 8% of the Democratic primary vote in 1984 but tripling his share to 26% in 1988. Appealing to voters in small, rural New England precincts was a remarkable achievement for a candidate identified with Chicago and civil rights campaigns in the South.

Jackson’s presidential ambitions coincided with a pivotal moment in Vermont politics: The state’s voting patterns were shifting left, with new residents arriving and changing the state’s culture and economy. In 1970, nearly 70% of Vermonters had been born there. By 1990, that figure had dropped by 10 percentage points.

The Vermont Rainbow Coalition, which was formed to support Jackson’s first campaign, organized a crucial constituency in a fluid time, establishing patterns that would persist for decades.

Setting the standard in Vermont

Jackson created a “People’s Platform” that would sound familiar to today’s progressives, calling for higher taxes on businesses, higher minimum wages and single-payer, universal health care.

In light of Jackson’s efforts, Vermont activists saw the potential for a durable statewide organization. Rather than disband the Vermont Rainbow Coalition after the 1984 primary, they kept the group going, endorsing candidates in campaigns for the legislature and statewide office in each of the next three election cycles. The coalition also endorsed Bernie Sanders’ failed bid for Congress in 1988.

Sanders served eight years as mayor of Burlington as an “independent socialist,” cultivating a core collection of local allies known as the Progressive Coalition who sought to wrest power away from establishment members of the city’s Board of Aldermen.

In 1992, the Vermont Rainbow Coalition merged with Burlington’s Progressive Coalition to form the statewide Progressive Coalition.

The Jackson-Sanders lineage

Sanders eventually went on to win election to the House as an independent in 1990, serving in the chamber until winning his Senate seat, also as an independent, in 2006. His presidential runs in 2016 and 2020 made him a prominent national figure and a leader among progressives.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who unseated a member of the House Democratic leadership in a stunning 2018 primary upset in New York, had been a Sanders campaign organizer and remains his close ally. On Jan. 1, 2026, Sanders swore in Zohran Mamdani – like Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic socialist – as mayor of New York City.

Sanders had endorsed Jackson for president in 1988. Years later, Jackson returned the favor.

Sanders paid tribute to Jackson at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. “Jesse Jackson is one of the very most significant political leaders in this country in the last 100 years,” Sanders said. “Jesse’s contribution to modern history is not just bringing us together – it is bringing us together around a progressive agenda.”

Not just Vermont

In Vermont, Jackson performed surprisingly well in unlikely places – taking nearly 20% of the 1984 primary vote in working-class Bakersfield and Belvidere, for example.

Today’s Vermont Progressive Party, which emerged out of the old Vermont Progressive Coalition, is one of the most successful third parties in the nation, winning official “major party” status in the state shortly after its official founding in 2000. The party has elected candidates to the state legislature, city councils and even a few statewide offices, including that of lieutenant governor.

Vermont was not alone in experiencing the catalyzing effect of Jackson’s presidential runs. Jackson had a significant mobilizing impact on Black voters nationwide. In Washington state, the Washington Rainbow Coalition started in Seattle and spread across the state between 1984 and 1996. New Jersey and Pennsylvania had their own successful and independent Rainbow Coalitions. In 2003, the Rainbow Coalition Party of Massachusetts joined the Green Party to become the Green Rainbow Party.

In my own research, I’ve investigated the durability of the “Jackson effect” in Vermont. There is no better test of what differentiates the Vermont Progressive Party from the state’s Democratic Party than the 2016 Democratic primary race for lieutenant governor, which pitted progressive David Zuckerman against two prominent, mainstream Democrats.

Zuckerman beat the Democrats most handily in towns that had voted the most heavily for Jesse Jackson in 1984, an effect that persisted even when controlling for population, partisanship and liberalism.

Many people would point to Sanders as the catalyst for Vermont’s continuing progressive movement. But Sanders and the progressives owe much to Jackson.

Bert Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The negative public reaction to Operation Metro Surge – the violent immigration dragnet in Minnesota – was “MAGA’s Gettysburg,” wrote New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie on Jan. 28.

Bouie, of course, was comparing ICE’s setbacks to the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, the battle often credited with turning the tide of the American Civil War. Fresh off a string of victories, Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, believed his men were “invincible” and launched an invasion into the North.

But Gen. George G. Meade and the Army of the Potomac won the battle of Gettysburg, and the Confederates would fight on the defensive for the rest of the war.

Since early 2026, growing numbers of commentators have turned to the Civil War of 1861 to 1865 to make sense of America’s fractured political climate.

After a masked federal agent shot and killed a 37-year-old mother of three, Renée Good, in Minneapolis, novelist Thane Rosenbaum wondered whether the city might become a “new Antietam.” The battle of Antietam, fought on Sept. 17, 1862, remains the bloodiest day in all of American history, leaving more than 3,600 soldiers dead.

Later in January 2026, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speculated that ICE violence in the Twin Cities could spark a national conflict. “I mean, is this a Fort Sumter?” he asked an interviewer, alluding to the South Carolina harbor fortress where, in 1861, the opening shots of the Civil War were fired.

In response, defenders of Donald Trump, including CNN commentator Scott Jennings and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, compared Walz to Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America. On Fox News, Washington Examiner columnist Tiana Lowe Doescher said: “News flash, Tim Walz. In this case, you’re the Confederacy,” accusing him of conspiring to defy federal immigration policy.

At a time of deepening national division, the recent spate of Civil War analogies should come as no surprise.

Unprecedented political fracture

The Civil War remains the nation’s most divisive and defining epoch. The secession of 11 states propelled a democratic nation into unprecedented political fracture. After four years of bloodshed, the Union was preserved and 4 million enslaved people were granted their freedom.

Preservation of the Union came at a heavy price. More than 700,000 people were dead, about 2% of the 1860 population, or a number roughly equivalent to the current population of the state of Maryland.

But the Civil War’s staggering death toll cannot fully explain the references to “Gettysburg” and “Jeff Davis” in media coverage of ICE operations in Minnesota and elsewhere.

As we argue in our book, “They Are Dead and Yet They Live: Civil War Memories in a Polarized America,” the impulse to connect the American Civil War to contemporary crises can be traced to the politics of memory, the ways interest groups, politicians and ordinary people shape the past to meet the needs of the present.

Likening Walz to Jefferson Davis or Minneapolis to Gettysburg or Fort Sumter are clear examples of how Americans appropriate the Civil War for our contemporary political needs.

Competing memories

In the Civil War’s aftermath, the conflict’s participants quickly crafted competing versions of the Civil War.

Some Union veterans labeled their former adversaries as traitors. Clinton Spencer, a captain in the 1st Michigan Infantry, declared, “disloyalty to the old flag was is and shall always be TREASON, deep, dark, and damnable.”

Yet the Union memory soon became subsumed by the dominance of the “Lost Cause,” an intentional and distorted narrative crafted by white Southerners. That version of the Civil War ignored slavery and celebrated Confederate soldiers in a war to defend states’ rights from federal tyranny.

By the early 1900s, Lost Cause ideology had taken root across the nation. The United Daughters of the Confederacy and other Southern apologists erected hundreds of Confederate monuments throughout the United States, and blockbuster movies like “The Birth of a Nation,” from 1915, and “Gone with the Wind,” from 1939, turned Lost Cause nostalgia into big-screen spectacle.

Over the past few decades, however, communities around the United States have made great strides to disentangle the Lost Cause from public memories of the Civil War.

After Dylann Roof massacred nine African American worshippers at Charleston’s Emmanuel AME Church in 2015, he was found to have espoused white supremacist ideas and posted a photo of the Confederate battle flag on his website. In the killings’ aftermath, cities across the South removed more than 300 Confederate flags, monuments and symbols from public view.

“The Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity,” declared New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu in a 2017 speech about the removal of four Confederate statues in the city. “It sought to tear apart our nation and subjugate our fellow Americans to slavery. This is a history we should never forget and one that we should never, ever again put on a pedestal to be revered.”

Homegrown analogy

In 1961, poet Robert Penn Warren famously observed, “Many clear and objective facts about America are best understood by reference to the Civil War.”

That remains the case today.

For many Americans, the Civil War is the prime example of the danger of allowing political division to spiral into organized violence.

Minnesota’s governor, Walz, could have used the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898 or the bombing at Pearl Harbor in 1941 for his historical analogy, but the references to the start of the Spanish-American War or World War II would not have been as powerful. Using the Civil War as a reference point underscores the danger when Americans decide to abandon their shared history and values and engage in fratricidal war.

Many of the recent Civil War analogies do not hold up to scrutiny. The events going on in Minneapolis bear little to no resemblance to the years of tumult leading to the assault on Fort Sumter, and the violence on the streets of Minneapolis can hardly compare to the horrors on the fields along the Antietam Creek.

But that’s beside the point.

More than 160 years after the defeat of Confederate forces at Gettysburg, the Civil War continues to have an enduring hold on the American political consciousness – shaping the way we view the past and offering a vocabulary for understanding the political conflicts of the present.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

In November 2025 the Trump administration announced a special park pass commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary that featured images of two presidents: George Washington and Donald Trump.

Featuring the current president – in place of the National Park Service’s usual landscape pictures – triggered both a lawsuit and a social media movement to put stickers over Trump’s face.

As a businessman, Trump has frequently emblazoned buildings and consumer products – shoelaces, an airline, an edition of the Bible, among many others – with his own name.

During his current presidential term, his administration has put his name on numerous government properties – perhaps most famously the Kennedy Center, but also money, monuments and military equipment. In January 2026, Trump floated the idea Congress would rename both New York’s Penn Station and Washington’s Dulles International Airport after him.

With Florida lawmakers considering renaming the airport near Mar-a-Lago after the president, the Trump Organization has filed an application to trademark his name for use in airports and ancillary activities, although the company said it would not charge a fee in the case of the Palm Beach airport.

As a communication professor who studies the First Amendment, I was intrigued by the federal actions and the protests they’ve triggered.

Citizens certainly have the right to protest these decisions, like any government action. The First Amendment prevents the government from making laws that abridge freedom of speech.

But does the federal government itself have freedom of speech? And can a president put his name and image wherever he wants?

Free speech for government

The answer to the first question has already been answered. In a series of rulings, the Supreme Court has upheld the government speech doctrine, which allows the government as speaker to say whatever it wants.

Moreover, if the forum is governmental, the government may even be able to compel people to express its messages – for example, with public employee speech that is part of job duties. The 2006 Supreme Court decision establishing that principle involved a deputy district attorney who’d questioned the validity of a warrant, but the rule applies to other employees, such as teachers who have to offer instruction in state-mandated curricula.

The court’s decisions in government speech cases imply that if people do not like the government speech, they should change the government with their votes.

However, some scholars and advocates argue that this relatively new constitutional doctrine gives the government too much power to drown out other viewpoints in the marketplace of ideas.

In most instances, the government cannot compel speech or force citizens to express a certain message. Compelled speech is not allowed when the government is forcing a citizen to endorse an ideological message.

For example, the Supreme Court allowed a Jehovah’s Witness to cover the words “or Die” on his license plate, which included the New Hampshire state motto, “Live Free or Die.”

The First Amendment is not absolute, and some government regulations will infringe on speech.

The federal government has strict regulations on how the American flag should be disposed of, but it cannot punish someone who is burning a flag as a form of political protest.

Government control of its own products

What happens when the government itself hosts forums for citizen speech, such as placing monuments in a park or flying flags on government property? Can the government deny certain speech based on the speaker or message?

In such cases, courts have had to decipher whether the forum was purely governmental. To do so, they examine the history of the forum in which the contested speech takes place, who controls the forum, and the public perception of who controls it.

This brings us back to the question of Trump’s name and likeness. As a constitutional matter, the Trump administration can express itself as it sees fit under the government speech doctrine. But in some cases, the administration may be bound by statute or formal contracts, as with the legal battle over the naming of the Kennedy Center, which was named by an act of Congress. The lawsuit over the National Park passes claims that the administration is violating a federal law requiring that the winning entry in a public lands photo contest be used for the passes.

Still, I believe it would be difficult to win a lawsuit claiming that the new passes are a form of compelled speech, with bearers of the pass arguing they are being forced, in effect, to endorse Trump. Most people would likely see the park passes’ artwork as being controlled by the government and therefore a form of government expression, not a form of private expression.

Can people cover up Trump?

But the Trump administration may not be able to defend its policy of declaring passes null and void if the president’s image is covered by a sticker. Citizens protesting Trump’s appearance by covering up the president’s image is protected speech, in my view. The government’s action to void the passes is likely a violation of the First Amendment.

On the face of it, placing stickers on passes would appear to violate the long-standing Interior Department rule that passes are “void if altered.” Those regulations were content neutral and incidental to any particular message or cardholder.

However, the updated policy, voiding the pass if Trump’s image is covered or marred, is more suspect. The new rules seem to be a direct response to the protesters’ political speech and, as applied, primarily aim to affect these stickers and speakers.

With an administration known for its social media savviness, it may not be convincing for officials to argue they did not know about the protest or that the policy was not a direct attempt to chill such speech.

The government will have the right to put Trump’s name and images on more government property in many cases, but most resulting political protests, in my view, will also be protected speech.

Jason Zenor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

On April 9, 1940, Nazi tanks stormed into Denmark. A month later, they blitzed into Belgium, Holland and France. As Americans grew increasingly rattled by the spreading threat, a surprising place became crucial to U.S. national security: the vast, ice-capped island of Greenland.

The island, a colony of Denmark’s at the time, was rich in mineral resources. The Nazi invasions left it and several other European colonies as international orphans.

Greenland was essential for air bases as U.S. planes flew to Europe, and also for strategic minerals. Greenland’s Ivittuut (formerly Ivigtut) mine contained the world’s only reliable supply of the most important material you’ve probably never heard of: cryolite, a frosty white mineral that the U.S. and Canadian industries relied upon to refine bauxite into aluminum, and thus essential to assembling a modern air force.

A month after the Nazis seized Denmark, five American Coast Guard cutters set sail for Greenland, in part to protect the Ivittuut mine from the Nazis.

People sometimes forget that World War II was a dog-eat-dog struggle for resources – oil and uranium but also dozens of other materials, everything from rubber to copper. Without these strategic materials, no modern military could produce crucial new weapons such as tanks and airplanes. The resource struggle often started before actual fighting.

Foreign materials fueled American global power, but also raised tricky questions about access to resources and about sovereignty, just as the old European imperial order was being rethought. As in 2026, U.S. presidents had to skillfully balance force and diplomacy.

As a historian at Macalester College, I research how Americans shape environments around the world through their purchasing and national security needs, and how foreign landscapes enable and constrain American actions. Today, control of Greenland’s natural resources is again on an American president’s radar as demand for critical minerals rises and supply tightens.

During the spring of 1940, America and its European allies mapped out patterns of resource use and ideas of global interconnection that would shape the international order for decades. Greenland helped give birth to this new order.

Rethinking American vulnerability

On May 16, 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt addressed a joint session of Congress, including many “American first” isolationists wary of European entanglements. Roosevelt implored Americans to wake up to new threats in the world – to, in his words, “recast their thinking about national protection.”

New weapons, he warned, had shrunk the world, and oceans could no longer shield the United States. The nation’s fate was inextricably tied to Europe’s. Nothing showed this better than Greenland: “From the fiords of Greenland,” FDR warned, “it is four hours by air to Newfoundland; five hours to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and to the province of Quebec; and only six hours to New England.”

But Greenland set off alarm bells for another reason. To protect itself in a dangerous world, Roosevelt famously called for the U.S. to hammer out 50,000 planes a year. But in 1938, America had produced only 1,800 planes.

To meet this ambitious goal, Roosevelt and his advisers knew that little could be done without Greenland. No Greenland, no cryolite. No cryolite, no massive American air force. Without cryolite, making 50,000 planes would be infinitely more difficult.

The age of alloys

Americans, National Geographic explained in 1942, lived in an “age of alloys.” Without aluminum alloys and other metallic mixtures, assembly lines churning out modern tanks, trucks and airplanes would grind to a halt. “More than any other struggle in history, this is a war of many metals, and the lack of a single one may be a blow far worse than the loss of a battle.”

Few materials mattered more than aluminum. Light yet strong, aluminum formed 60% of a heavy bomber’s engines, 90% of its wings and fuselage, and all of its propellers.

But there was a problem: Refining aluminum from bauxite ore required working with dangerously hot metallic mixtures, over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 degrees Celsius). Cryolite solved the problem by reducing the temperature to a more manageable 900 F (480 C).

The Nazis’ chemical industry had found a substitute for cryolite using fluorspar, but the U.S. preferred the more resource-efficient cryolite and wanted to prevent the Germans from having it.

After the Nazis seized Denmark

Just days after German tanks rolled into Denmark in April 1940, Allied officials huddled to devise ways to protect Ivittuut’s magical mineral. On May 3, Danish Ambassador to the U.S. Henrik de Kauffmann, risking trial for treason, requested American assistance. On May 10, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Comanche departed New England for Ivittuut. Four others soon followed, one with guns for the mine’s defenders.

That very week in Washington, at a meeting of the Pan American Union, Roosevelt and his advisers spoke with hundreds of geologists and other representatives from Latin America — a resource-rich region that the U.S. saw as an answer to its strategic materials shortages.

Nervous about the history of U.S. imperial high-handedness in the region, some Latin Americans thought that their countries should seal off their resources to outside control, as Mexico had in nationalizing U.S. and European oil holdings in 1938.

With European empires crumbling, Roosevelt faced a delicate diplomatic dance with Greenland. He wanted to maintain the appearance of neutrality, keep skeptical isolationists in Congress from revolting and give no provocations to Latin American anti-imperialists to cut off resources. Crucially, he also needed to avoid giving the resource-starved Japanese a legal justification to seize the oil-rich Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia – another European colony orphaned by the Nazi invasion.

Roosevelt’s solution: enlist Coast Guard “volunteers” to guard Ivittuut. By the end of the summer, long before the U.S. officially entered the war, 15 sailors resigned from their ships and took up residence near the mine.

Seeing Greenland as crucial to US security

Roosevelt also got creative with geography.

In an April 12, 1940, press conference, just days after the Nazi invasion, he began to emphasize Greenland as part of the Western Hemisphere, more American than European, and thus falling under Monroe Doctrine protections. To calm fears in Latin America, U.S. officials recast the doctrine as development-oriented hemispheric solidarity.

Maj. William S. Culbertson, a former U.S. trade official speaking before the Army Industrial College in fall 1940, noted how the scramble for resources pulled the U.S. into a form of nonmilitary warfare: “We are engaged at the present time in economic warfare with the totalitarian powers. Publicly, our politicians don’t state it quite as bluntly as that, but it is a fact.” For the rest of the century, the front line was just as likely a far-off mine as an actual battlefield.

On April 9, 1941, exactly a year after the Nazis seized Denmark, Kauffmann met with U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull to sign an agreement “on behalf of the King of Denmark” placing Greenland and its mines under the U.S. security blanket. At Narsarsuaq, on the island’s southern tip, the U.S. began constructing an airbase named “Bluie West One.”

During the rest of World War II and throughout the Cold War, Greenland would house several important U.S. military installations, including some that forced Inuit families to relocate.

Critical minerals today

What transpired in Greenland in the 18 months before Pearl Harbor fit into a larger emerging pattern.

As the U.S. ascended to global leadership and realized that it couldn’t maintain military dominance without wide access to foreign materials, it began to redesign the global system of resource flows and the rules for this new international order.

It rejected the Axis’ “might makes right” territorial conquest for resources, but found other ways to guarantee American access to critical resources, including loosening trade restrictions in European colonies.

The U.S. provided a lifeline to the British with the destroyers-for-bases deal in September 1940 and the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941, but it also gained strategic military bases around the world. It used aid as leverage to also pry open the British Empire’s markets.

The result was a postwar world interconnected by trade and low tariffs, but also a global network of U.S. bases and alliances of sometimes questionable legitimacy designed in part to protect U.S. access to strategic resources.

During the Cold War, these global resources helped defeat the Soviet Union. However, these security imperatives also gave the U.S. license for support of authoritarian regimes in places like Iran, Congo and Indonesia.

America’s voracious appetite for resources also often displaced local populations and Indigenous communities, justified by the old claim that they misused the resources around them. It left environmental damage from the Arctic to the Amazon.

Strategic resources have been at the center of the American-led global system for decades. But U.S. actions today are different. The cryolite mine was a working mine, rarer than today’s proposed critical mineral mines in Greenland, and the Nazi threat was imminent. Most important, Roosevelt knew how to gain what the U.S. needed without a “damn-what-the world-thinks” military takeover.

Thomas Robertson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation