Alex Hobson
Alex Hobson teaches history at Mississippi State University and specializes in international history and U.S.-Middle East history since 1945. He is currently writing a book titled “Chains of Vengeance: The United States, the Middle East, and the Wars of Terrorism, 1967-2021.” His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, International History Review and Diplomatic History.
Latest from Alex Hobson
The Humiliation Is the Point
Humiliation has become inextricable from the exercise of U.S. power. It is tempting to attribute this development to Trump alone, but his role as humiliator-in-chief should be understood as part of a dynamic of humiliation and counter-humiliation going back to 9/11 and America’s response to it.
Henry Kissinger’s Great Escape
When Kissinger died, he escaped once and for all from having to face an irreversible decline in his respectability among American elites, let alone actual punishment for what many agree was, at the least, his critical role in the killing of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in the Global South.
The Unraveling of Jimmy Carter’s Middle East
Carter’s Middle East strategy unraveled in part because the range of characters he interacted with and whose own political perspectives he took seriously was far too limited. The pull of vocabularies and policies associated with Henry Kissinger proved stronger than Carter’s stated desire to break free of them.