The dismantling by the Trump administration of venerable foreign policy agencies such as the USAID, and the hobbling of venerable multilateral institution such as NATO, the World Health Organization, the UN, and many others, seems unquestionably to have brought to a sudden, and shocking, end the exercise of American power on the global stage. I write at some length about many of these institutions, and the vigorous support of them by Americans and global partners, in my book. I give primary attention to what American multilateralism meant for post-WWII Dutch reconstruction and renewal. But the work of these institutions and practices carried similar consequences for nations and communities around the world, for decades after the end of World War II. 

I do not imagine the history I produce here or elsewhere to function as a direct response to misinformation or propaganda. Such an approach is itself reactionary. But insofar as misinformation proliferates, and bad-faith policymakers continue to distort history, I do believe that historians maintain some duty to combat propaganda. The past several years have born witness to many officials directly or indirectly endeavoring to weaken the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a collective defense alliance that appears to have served the signatories well for over seventy years. I treat Dutch participation in NATO in various places in my book, most extensively in Chapter 5. I thought I’d share a couple relevant excerpts, after the break:

As a historian of modern America, I am naturally certain that Americans do not know nearly enough about key developments that shaped the world in which they live, notably the civil rights movement, the New Deal, and the Cold War among them. As a historian generally, I wish more Americans knew even a little quality history about the Founding period, about race in America, and certainly women’s history. However, if I was forced to choose one period or topic exhibiting the greatest disparity between what we should know and what we actually do (or don't) know, I would have to choose Reconstruction, the period directly after the Civil War ended in 1865 and which lasted, by all accounts, only until 1877. Ignorance about Reconstruction has been poisonous to American civic life.