Off the coast of the southern Chinese island of Hainan stands a 350-foot-tall statue of the Bodhisattva Guanyin. Facing the sea, Guanyin gazes serenely out upon the contested waters of the South China Sea. In her hand she holds a string of pearls, traditional iconography for the deity symbolizing mercy. The Guanyin of Nanshan is...
Genesis, growth, breakdown, and disintegration: such is the life cycle of a civilization proposed by Arnold Toynbee in his sweeping Study of History (1934) as the British Empire was gradually coming to terms with its waning geopolitical predominance. The idea has deeply impressed itself upon Western and non-Western minds alike. “In life and in the...
On February 22, 1946, George Kennan, a then-relatively unknown diplomat in the American Embassy in Moscow, sent his now famous “Long Telegram” to Washington. Kennan posited that the Soviet Union “learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power;” consequently, in combination with Marxist dogma, Moscow’s ambitions were...
Last week, President Biden hosted leaders from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in DC to celebrate the alliance’s 75th anniversary. Created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and 10 Western European countries, NATO sought to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. Since its founding, 20 more countries have joined the alliance, the...
In May, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called for general elections as Britons faced challenges at home and abroad like increasing inflation, high living costs, deteriorating public services, economic recession, and war in Ukraine. The elections last month did not go as expected for Rishi Sunak and his Conservative Party, as Britons handed the Tories...
Following its defeat at the end of the Second World War, Japan was forced to end its colonial rule over Korea, which it had maintained for 35 years. With its infrastructure and institutions destroyed and its population left destitute and traumatized by Japanese domination, Korea was a hotbed of political and societal unrest. The peninsula...
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Connor Cowman: Thank you for joining us! Where in the world did you study abroad and what were you doing there? Thaddian Burson: For this last semester, I spent a term studying abroad in Oxford, England at the University of Oxford. I took two tutorials from...
Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Israel and Iran have been mortal enemies. In a speech given to his people on Iranian New Year in 1980, the ideological and political leader of the fundamentalist revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared that his government would “fight against the Western world — devourers led by America, Israel, and Zionism.”...
