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25 years after 9/11: the persistence of stereotypes, the willingness to build understanding

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 19:42:01 +0000

25 years after 9/11: the persistence of stereotypes, the willingness to build understanding Rachel Sauer Thu, 09/10/2026 - 13:42

Bradley Worrell

In the weeks following 9/11, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder sociologist Lori Peek was in New York City hearing the stories of Muslim Americans navigating suspicion, hostility and questions of identity and belonging

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, as smoke rose from the burning World Trade Center and the United States struggled to comprehend an unprecedented terrorist attack, sociologist Lori Peek found herself asking a different question: Who would be hurt next?

At the time, Peek was a doctoral student at the �鶹��Ѱ��’s Natural Hazards Center, where she studied disasters and how they affect vulnerable communities. As the nation focused on the destruction of the World Trade Center and the thousands of lives lost, Peek recognized another crisis was unfolding at the same time: anti-Muslim sentiment was quickly spreading across the country.

For Peek, this issue was not simply academic. While pursuing her master’s degree, she became close friends with an Afghan American woman whose family arrived in the United States as refugees. As public mistrust and anger quickly intensified, Peek worried about her friend and others being viewed through the lens of fear and blame.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder researcher Lori Peek, director of the Natural Hazards Center, interviewed Muslims in New York City about anti-Muslim backlash after 9/11.

When her academic advisor informed her that she would be traveling to New York City to study the disaster, Peek already knew the topic she wanted to pursue. Rather than document the attack itself, she set out to record how Muslim Americans, particularly young, second-generation Muslims, were experiencing the nation’s response.

Those interviews eventually formed the foundation for her first book, Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans After 9/11. Peek says those interviews preserved the voices of people navigating anger, discrimination and uncertainty while insisting that the actions of a few religious extremists did not define their faith, their identities or their place in America.

As the 25th anniversary of 9/11 approaches Friday, Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine spoke with Peek about what she learned in speaking with Muslim Americans immediately after the terrorist attacks and why she believes those lessons remain important today. The following interview was condensed and lightly edited for style.

Question: How did your research on the experiences of Muslim Americans following 9/11 come together?

Peek: Back in 2001, I was a PhD student in sociology, and I was working at the Natural Hazards Center here at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. Like the graduate students before me, I assumed I’d write a dissertation on natural hazards or disasters. That was one of the key expectations of being a research assistant here at the Center.

Then 9/11 happened. I came in that morning and my advisor, who was the director of the Natural Hazards Center at the time, looked at me and said, ‘I hope you know what you are going to do, because you’re going to New York City.’

As a sociologist, I was very interested in socially marginalized populations in disasters. That’s still my area of expertise. Even in that disaster, my immediate thought was, ‘Who is going to be hurt? What are the effects going to be for those who are already being blamed?’

Did 9/11 fundamentally reinvent U.S. policy in the Middle East? No, says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder historian John M. Willis, a scholar of the modern Middle East. In fact, "promoting democracy or human rights has never been a priority for the U.S. in the Middle East," he says.

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I was also influenced by my personal connections. When I was a master’s student, I had become close friends with an Afghan American woman, who wore the full head covering, whose family had come to America as refugees.

When 9/11 happened, and I had to figure out what to study, I brought together my scholarly commitment to understanding social inequality and vulnerability in disasters along with my personal care for people in the Muslim community.

Question: Did you experience difficulties in attempting to speak with Muslim Americans in the environment of distrust and suspicion following 9/11?

Peek: It took a lot of what we call ‘shoe leather sociology.’ It meant making calls, sending emails and traveling around and meeting people once I got to New York City. There were practical considerations about how to find people willing to talk. Muslim student associations were a great way to gain access to groups of young, second-generation Muslim Americans, and then they helped me to meet other people.

Interviews Lori Peek conducted very soon after 9/11 built the foundation for her book Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans after 9/11.

As a non-Muslim, people are often curious about how I was received. I think there were a lot of reasons people were willing to speak with me. I was only 26 years old at the time, and so I was a similar age as my participants. We also shared the same status as students or recent graduates in the case of a few.

Once I got on the ground and started talking to people, they often said, ‘It’s a good thing you’re talking to me, because there’s no way my parents or grandparents would have ever talked to you.’ They were too scared.

In other instances, interviewees would tell me, ‘It helps that you’re not Muslim because we’re trying to explain that we’re not all terrorists, but when that message comes from us, people may dismiss it.’ If someone outside of the faith is willing to take the time to listen, that matters.

Question: What did Muslim Americans share with you about experiencing backlash after 9/11? Also, did they feel like they had experienced discrimination before 9/11?

Peek: Like many members of religious or ethnic minority communities, participants often had stories from before 9/11 about insensitive comments, misunderstandings or stereotypes. It wasn’t as though life had been completely free of those experiences. But they generally described those earlier incidents as ignorance or unfamiliarity with the Islamic faith.

After 9/11, the situation felt completely different. There was fear from the public, often stoked by the media, regarding people who were perceived to share the identity of those responsible for the attacks. … Some participants who had grown up in diverse communities and rarely felt singled out suddenly found themselves wondering whether they were being watched, targeted or even physically endangered. Those fears were quantitatively and qualitatively different from anything they had experienced before.

Question: Did young Muslim Americans’ experiences differ depending upon gender, race, ethnicity or other factors?

Peek: All of those things mattered. None of us have only one identity. At any given moment, multiple identities operate together. In my study, Muslim women often expressed greater fear of physical violence because they felt more vulnerable and were also more visible due to their headscarves.

In addition to gender, race, ethnicity and immigration history also mattered. For example, I interviewed some white converts to Islam who felt that being white offered certain protections, but those protections seemed to disappear once they put on a headscarf because the clothing is such a symbolic marker of the faith.

All of those identity characteristics matter, but after 9/11, there was also a strong unifying effect around the faith itself. In sociology, we talk about identity salience, the idea that identity under the greatest threat becomes the most important one. After 9/11, being Muslim became a highly stigmatized identity—and that identity was pushed to the forefront of many young Muslims’ lives.

Before 9/11, many participants told me they felt they could be both Muslim and American without contradiction. Afterward, some felt society was forcing them to choose. One participant told me, ‘If I’m going to have to choose, I’m going to choose to be Muslim.’ That shift was very real.

Question: Did the backlash after 9/11 change the ways in which young Muslim Americans thought about being American?

Peek: Absolutely. I interviewed 140 people for the study, and I’ve remained in contact with some of them over the years. The effects were profound.

For some, it changed their educational paths and careers. People switched majors, pursued international relations, entered public service or sought careers where they felt they could bridge cultures and make a difference.

It also influenced how they thought about belonging and integration. Historically, immigrants tend to assimilate more easily when they are not stigmatized. When communities remain under suspicion or attack, that process changes.

I observed that some participants became more committed to living in communities where they felt safe speaking their heritage languages or marrying within their faith. I didn’t study those choices systematically, but they were themes that emerged in people’s stories.

Even now, a generation later, younger Muslim Americans who read Behind the Backlash tell me the experiences still resonate. They may not have lived through 9/11, but they recognize some of the same dynamics.

"Before 9/11, many participants told me they felt they could be both Muslim and American without contradiction," says Lori Peek. "Afterward, some felt society was forcing them to choose." (Photo: Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, Tennessee)

Question: It sounds like, for at least some of the people you spoke with, they deepened their connection with their Muslim identity after 9/11?

Peek: Yes, absolutely. In my work, I describe three stages of identity development. First is an ascribed identity, the identity you are born into. Second is chosen or learned identity, where a person actively embraces and practices their faith. Then, after 9/11, many participants entered what I called the identity of crisis.

They didn’t suddenly become Muslim because of 9/11. They were already Muslim. But after the attacks, that identity became the most important and unavoidable part of how they experienced the world.

As a result, many increased their involvement with Muslim student associations, attended mosque more regularly when they felt safe doing so and sought out connections with other Muslims who understood what they were going through.

Understandably, during that time of upheaval they wanted community, support, information and solidarity. They also wanted to serve as a counterpoint to the stigmatizing narratives surrounding Islam and Muslims in the moment.

Question: Based upon what your extensive conversations with Muslim Americans after 9/11, what are a few of the top things you think are worth sharing?

Peek: First, the consequences of 9/11 have obviously been so enduring for so many people. The effects reach from geopolitics all the way down to individual lives. There is a reason we’re still talking about it decades later, and it is important to think about the many and varied consequences for so many people.

Second, I hope people understand the importance of listening to and learning from others. Many of the stereotypes participants faced didn’t begin with 9/11, but the attacks intensified them.

One thing that stood out to me was often Muslim women said, ‘Nobody is forcing me to wear this (the hijab). In fact, concerned family members immediately after 9/11 were telling me to take it off and I chose not to.’ Yet, even when they explained that repeatedly, they felt some stereotypes remained deeply embedded in public consciousness.

At the same time, I was struck by the grace many participants showed. They often felt that people were acting out of fear or misunderstanding rather than pure hatred. They wanted to educate, engage and correct misconceptions.

The persistence of stereotypes is also an important lesson, but so is the persistence of people’s willingness to build understanding despite them.

My study was just one within a much larger body of scholarship about 9/11, but I think the broader question it raises remains important: What happens when immigrant communities or minority communities come under suspicion or attack?

What interests me is not just the theory, but the lived experience. How are people affected? How do they respond? What does it mean for their daily lives?

The United States is an extraordinarily diverse country, and one of the enduring questions we continue to face is how hundreds of millions of people from different backgrounds can live together, understand one another and build a shared future? Those questions remain as important today as they were when I began this research.

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�鶹��Ѱ��historian offers view on how 9/11 changed the Middle East

Brad Worrell — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:28:57 +0000

�鶹��Ѱ��historian offers view on how 9/11 changed the Middle East Brad Worrell Wed, 09/09/2026 - 11:28

Bradley Worrell

Twenty-five years after the terrorist attacks, Middle East expert John M. Willis says 9/11 did not fundamentally reinvent U.S. policy in the region but it did remove political constraints and accelerate changes

If there is one misconception about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that �鶹��Ѱ�� historian John M. Willis would like to challenge, it is the idea that those attacks fundamentally reinvented U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Willis, whose research focus is on the modern Middle East, was living in Yemen on a Fullbright fellowship when the 9/11 attacks occurred. He recalls attending a town hall at the U.S. embassy a few days later, where he asked the ambassador if the U.S. would present its evidence for who it saw as being responsible for the attacks and if it would seek to build international community support for any actions it would take. He says the ambassador responded bluntly that the U.S. would not wait to respond.

That idea, as later articulated in more detail by the George W. Bush administration, was that the U.S. could react unilaterally—and preemptively—against any perceived threats, Willis says. Rather than following the established rules-based international order, Bush’s declaration put forth the idea “that the U.S. presented itself as above or beyond international laws,” he adds.

John M. Willis is a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder history professor whose expertise is in the Middle East.

Officially, that represented a new policy for the U.S., but Willis says conservative think tanks had been laying the groundwork for such a change for at least two decades prior to the terrorist attacks.

‘Global War on Terror’

The first phase of the American response to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and Pentagon in Washington, D.C., focused on Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda had established its base under Taliban protection.

For many Americans, the invasion of Afghanistan appeared to have a clear objective: dismantle the organization responsible for the attacks and prevent future acts of terrorism. But Willis argues that the U.S. government’s response quickly expanded into something much broader.

He says the idea of a “Global War on Terror” evolved beyond al-Qaeda and became a framework for understanding a wide range of international challenges. Terrorism, he explains, became the central lens through which policymakers viewed the Middle East.

Willis says that broader approach helped pave the way for the 2003 invasion of Iraq—even though there was no evidence linking al-Qaeda and the Arab dictatorship.

Long before the 9/11 attacks, Willis says influential neo-conservatives associated with the Project for a New American Century had been advocating for a more muscular U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. After the first Gulf War, many prominent neo-cons argued that defeating Saddam Hussein’s regime would create a “massive domino effect in the Middle East that would lead to the emergence of liberal democracy, free market capitalism and so on,” Willis says.

He adds that neo-con ambitions did not end with Iraq, noting that in the months following 9/11 President Bush described America as being in conflict with an “Axis of Evil” that included Iran.

In the days following 9/11, Willis says using language like Axis of Evil and Global War on Terror made it nearly impossible for Americans to challenge the direction in which the country was headed.

How

How have anti-Muslim backlash and stereotypes affected Muslim Americans in the 25 years since 9/11? �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder researcher Lori Peek asks how a nation of hundreds of millions of people from different backgrounds can live together, understand one another and build a shared future.

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“If you think back to that period, it was really difficult to speak against this idea of the Global War on Terror. It was a really constrained rhetorical and political environment if you were opposed to U.S. military intervention,” he says.

Unintended rise of Iran

Perhaps one of the great ironies of the post-9/11 era, Willis says, is that efforts intended to strengthen American influence in the Middle East by overthrowing the Iraqi government instead helped Iran expand its power in the region.

The removal of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, eliminated one of the most important rivals of Iran, a Shia-majority country. In the political vacuum that followed, Shiite parties and movements—many of which had longstanding ties with Iran—gained prominence in Iraq, Willis says.

“By around 2003, when we have the first beginning of a democratic process in Iraq following the U.S. invasion, it was clear to every policy specialist that any new government would be dominated by Shiite political parties,” he says. Unfortunately for the United States, its leaders weren’t listening to what those policy specialists had to say at the time, he adds.

This development, Willis argues, illustrates the difficulty of predicting how major interventions will reshape regional politics.

Meanwhile, for Sunni-led Gulf monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, Iran’s strengthened position was a source of deep concern.

“The 1979 (Iranian) revolution was a popular revolution that unseated a monarch supported by the U.S.,” Willis says. “And in the 1980s, there were a number of local movements within the Gulf regimes’ own Shiite populations inspired by Iran, including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. For the longest time, Gulf states had seen Iran as an exporter of revolution, so the rise of the Shiite-led government in Iraq made that threat palpable.”

Two key developments

Meanwhile, the U.S. was not the only government taking action in the Middle East following 9/11 in the name of combating terrorism. Willis says many Arab states quickly recognized that by presenting domestic opposition groups as terrorist threats they could justify crackdowns while avoiding international criticism.

“Effectively, it gave the green light to massive waves of repression across the region,” he says. “Gulf states could not only get U.S. support, but also military and financial aid to combat terrorism when it was, in effect, combating domestic enemies. So, it effectively worked against any form of democratic reform or democratic culture.”

The result, Willis contends, was the strengthening of authoritarian governments across the region.

Beyond the optics of standing with Arab governments pledging to fight terrorism, Willis says the U.S. was in no position to criticize those countries because it directly benefited from those relationships. Specifically, some Arab governments like Jordan helped the U.S. infiltrate al-Qaeda while others hosted CIA-operated “black sites” where security services sought to extract intelligence from al-Qaeda prisoners in ways that would have been illegal in the U.S.

Willis says one of the other key developments that indirectly resulted from 9/11 was that, with Iran’s increased influence in the region following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the existing relationship between Israel and the Gulf countries was effectively brought out into the open.

“I think the U.S. relationship has stayed roughly the same with the Gulf states, with minor exceptions, but I think it did help cement the relationship with Israel and the Gulf states,” he says.

The ‘Arab Spring’ challenge

If the 2003 Iraq War revealed the unintended consequences of intervention, Willis says the ‘Arab Spring’ that gained momentum in 2011 exposed the limitations of a regional order built primarily on security partnerships.

An Arab Spring protest in Egypt. The movement exposed the limitations of a regional order built primarily on security partnerships, says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholar John M. Willis. (Photo: MidoSemsem/Shutterstock)

He argues that many U.S. leaders underestimated popular frustration throughout the Middle East. That’s because those leaders, Republicans and Democrats alike, tend to equate a country’s leadership with its citizens, when none of the authoritarian governments in power are popular with their citizenry, he says.

In countries such as Tunisia and Egypt, mass movements demanded political reform, greater accountability and expanded economic opportunities. Protesters demonstrated that public opinion remained a powerful force despite oppression, Willis says.

He says the Obama administration had an opportunity to support the 2011 Egyptian revolution that supplanted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a historic ally of the U.S. and Israel, but opted not to. Instead, it tacitly endorsed the military coup in 2013 that removed the Muslim Brotherhood from power.

For Willis, the Arab Spring revealed a fundamental contradiction in U.S. policy.

“Promoting democracy or human rights has never been a priority for the U.S. in the Middle East. It simply hasn’t,” he says bluntly. “If we go to the post-World War II period, when we really see the emergence of the U.S. role in the Middle East, it was about Cold War alliances and concerns; it was the domination of energy resources and military alliances meant to marginalize the allies of the Soviet Union in the region. Post-1967, it was about the strong alliance with Israel more than anything. So, we really don’t see a concerted effort to promote democracy or human rights.”

Willis says he believes U.S. policymakers still have not learned the lesson that security arrangements with Arab governments could prove fragile when the underlying grievances of those countries’ citizens remain unresolved.

A legacy still unfolding

More than two decades after 9/11, Willis believes the consequences of America’s actions after the terrorist attacks continue to shape the Middle East.

He is not confident that the U.S. has learned any lessons from its past military intervention in the region based on the Trump administration’s decision earlier this year to join Israel in launching a sneak attack on Iran, seeking to overthrow the Islamic republic’s government by eliminating its top leadership.

Willis says such an action reflects a mindset that has persisted since 9/11: that American military power alone can successfully manage the Middle East’s most difficult challenges. He warns that, historically, such confidence has often produced outcomes very different from those that policymakers originally intended.

Meanwhile, the idea of a Global War on Terror has not gone away—and the repercussions of that exist far beyond the Middle East, according to Willis.

“I think one thing we have not fully contended with here is we’re seeing the growing surveillance state and much harsher responses to civil disobedience and protest,” he says. “It is something that has grown out of this idea of a Global War on Terror, which becomes existential in a way that a war between countries can’t, because it’s not geographically bounded. Terror can exist everywhere and anywhere. It can exist outside the U.S. and in the most American places in the North American continent. I think that still lives with us in the most unfortunate way.”

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Twenty-five years after the terrorist attacks, Middle East expert John M. Willis says 9/11 did not fundamentally reinvent policy in the region but did remove political constraints and accelerate changes.

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Chornobyl disaster still casts a shadow 40 years later

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 21:44:04 +0000

Chornobyl disaster still casts a shadow 40 years later Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/27/2026 - 15:44

The New Safe Confinement structure placed over reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 2016. (Photo: iStock)

Bradley Worrell

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder political scientist Sarah Wilson Sokhey says the underlying lesson of the nuclear catastrophe is that the risk has not gone away—and that such disasters don’t recognize national borders

Forty years ago this month, Soviet officials issued their first formal report on the Chornobyl nuclear disaster to the International Atomic Energy Agency—four months after the April 26, 1986, meltdown of Nuclear Reactor No. 4 in Pripyat, Ukraine, released radioactivity across large portions of Europe.

Beyond being the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe on record, one of the most defining aspects of the disaster was the Soviet government’s deliberate decision to withhold information about it immediately afterward, according to Sarah Wilson Sokhey, an associate professor of political science at the �鶹��Ѱ�� who has spent more than 20 years studying the politics of Russia and the former Soviet Union.

In retrospect, Sokhey says the decision was not surprising given how the Soviet government operated as an organization.

Sarah Wilson Sokhey is a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder associate professor of political science who has spent more than 20 years studying the politics of Russia and the former Soviet Union.

“It was a very hierarchical system with a very specific chain of command, and there were strong incentives not to report problems and accidents or to minimize their effects,” she explains.

Sokhey notes that it’s not unusual for governments to withhold some information during a crisis to avoid creating unnecessary alarm, but she argues that was not an adequate explanation in the case of Chornobyl.

“If we had a more charitable interpretation of it, we might say they were trying to prevent a panic, but that’s not what was happening in this case because there were people at the heart of the accident who knew right at the beginning how bad this was and how bad it could get,” she says.

Not only did Soviet authorities not notify Western countries near Ukraine, but they didn’t let their own citizens know about what happened in the immediate aftermath. That included nearby residents, who were not evacuated until 36 hours later—even though government officials who were directly involved understood the situation was severe, Sokhey says.

According to the World Nuclear Association, two Chornobyl workers died instantly from the physical blast of the explosion and building collapse on the night of the accident and 28 firefighters and emergency workers died within the first few weeks from acute radiation syndrome.

Meanwhile, the Soviet republic of Belarus, located near the disaster zone, also experienced significant fallout. Sokhey says Belarussian scientists observed elevated radiation levels and that certain areas later saw increased rates of thyroid cancer, particularly in children.

While the Soviet government initially remained mum about the accident, Sokhey says efforts to control information collided with the reality that the disaster could not be confined within Ukraine’s borders. As elevated radiation levels were detected in Sweden and other Western countries, it was no longer possible to keep things under wraps.

Fallout from the nuclear disaster

In the weeks and months following the Soviet government’s first announcement of the nuclear disaster, more information came to light that showed just how serious the accident was, Sokhey says.

Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant several months after the disaster. (Photo: Ukrainian Society for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries)

“What we know now is that this was not just a small fire and it could not be quickly contained,” she says, contrasting that information with initial government reports. “It was a meltdown of the core of the nuclear reactor, so it was very serious.”

The consequences became obvious relatively quickly.

“They not only evacuated Pripyat, but they didn’t allow people to return,” Sokhey says. “And it was very soon after obvious that they would need to engage in a long-term cleanup effort and have a sarcophagus (containment structure) that was built around the reactor.”

As a proactive measure, the government later resettled 116,000 people who lived within a 30 kilometer radius of the nuclear power plant.

As a result of the disaster, Chornobyl spurred further global debate over the safety of nuclear energy, coming after Three Mile Island in the United States and before Fukushima in Japan, Sokhey notes.

Although the scale of Chornobyl disaster was ultimately acknowledged by the Soviet government, debates over the causes continued for years.

“In the Soviet system, there was a longer process that played out to pin the blame on who, exactly, was responsible within the system,” Sokhey says. “The acknowledgement of the scale of what happened, the accident itself and the conditions under which it happened came not very long after the accident because it had to.”

Initially, blame centered on the plant operators, who shut down the reactor’s safety systems to run tests. Later, questions were raised about the design and construction of the reactor.

A loss of trust

While Soviet officials eventually acknowledged the scale of the crisis and undertook a massive cleanup effort, many Soviet citizens felt deeply betrayed by the initial denials and the delay, Sokhey says.

She attended an event in Denver earlier this year hosted by the National Association of Ukrainian Women to remember the disaster, where some attendees shared their experiences. Sokhey says one woman who lived in Kyiv at the time recalled that large public events continued in the country’s capital days after the Chornobyl explosion, potentially exposing thousands of people to conditions that many now believe should have prompted caution and limited outdoor activity. The woman reported that some information regarding Chornobyl spread via word of mouth and rumors, but that governmental official remained mum at the time.

“For Ukrainians in particular, Chornobyl feeds into a long historical narrative of atrocities committed against the Ukrainian people by the Soviet and Russian system,” Sokhey says. “You’ll hear people in Ukraine talk about it in that vein. They’ll talk about the mass starvation that happened in the Stalinist period with Holodomor and they’ll talk about Chornobyl, because these are seen as a pattern of disregard, or even a pattern of hatred, toward Ukrainian life.”

In retrospect, it is fair to say that Chornobyl deeply damaged the Soviet Union’s reputation both at home and abroad, Sokhey says.

“I think it very much fed into the narrative that the Soviet system was corrupt, outdated and dishonest,” she says. “The public caught them in a very dramatic example of both incompetence and outdated technology and not being honest about the level of the disaster.”

At the same time, Sokhey cautions against the idea that Chornobyl was the catalyst for the Soviet Union’s collapse.

The New Safe Confinement structure placed over reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 2016. (Photo: iStock)

At the time of the accident, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was pursuing sweeping reforms through “Perestroika” (restructuring) and “Glasnost” (transparency). Economic restructuring was producing disruptions and shortages, while increasing openness allowed citizens to express their frustrations more freely, Sokhey says. She adds that the Soviet war in Afghanistan was draining resources and costing lives, while several Soviet republics including Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states were becoming restive.

“All of those things were working together to undermine the Soviet system,” Sokhey says.

Lessons for today

For Sokhey, one of the most enduring lessons of Chornobyl is that environmental disasters can affect everyone, regardless of political boundaries. She argues that the world must pay close attention when authoritarian governments are responsible for reporting information about disasters because the incentives to conceal bad news can delay effective responses and increase harm.

Sokhey says that lesson resonates today, as Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has renewed concerns about nuclear safety in the region. She points to ongoing worries surrounding both the Chornobyl site, which has been damaged in the fighting, as well as the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine, which is the largest nuclear plant in Europe and which was captured by Russia during the early days of the invasion. Sokhey notes that another nuclear-related crisis could happen at any time.

Forty years after the world learned that something had gone horribly wrong in a small town in northern Ukraine, Sokhey says the radiation may have diminished, but its lessons have not.

“What happened at Chornobyl remains a risk today, and I think it teaches us the danger of what happens when authoritarian regimes are faced with crises—especially ones that affect people outside of their own country.”

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GOALLLLL! What makes soccer fans different?

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 19:22:41 +0000

GOALLLLL! What makes soccer fans different? Rachel Sauer Wed, 07/01/2026 - 13:22

A fan watches the June 23 Uzbekistan v. Colombia match at the 2026 FIFA Fan Fest in Mexico City. (Photo: ProtoplasmaKid/Wikimedia Commons)

Kaio Kish

As the ongoing FIFA World Cup is showing, says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder sports scholar Jared Bahir Browsh, nationalism and longtime loyalties set soccer fans apart

Every four years, the world comes together for one sport: soccer—“football” to the rest of the world—as teams compete for national glory in the FIFA World Cup. Fans of powerhouse national teams like Argentina, Brazil and Spain have long shown immense passion for their teams and the sport.

Recently, though, the U.S. men’s national team has started to gain some traction, especially after its exciting victories over Paraguay and Australia in this year's FIFA World Cup, which is scheduled through July 19.

Even as the U.S. men’s national team gains popularity among fans, though, there still seems to be a distinct separation between the fans of this country and the fanatics of others. Jarad Bahir Browsh, director of the Critical Sports Studies program in the �鶹��Ѱ�� Department of Ethnic Studies, explains that while U.S. soccer fandom may lack the passion and devotion seen in many other parts of the world, there are signs it’s catching up.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Department of Ethnic Studies.

Just tape and some rubber bands

Browsh points to the United Kingdom as an example of this national difference: “So many small towns (in the U.K.) have soccer teams, and so you have this kind of passionate connection (to the local team). Wrexham is a perfect example.”

Wrexham Association Football Club is a Welsh club soccer team founded in 1864 that started out just below the professional divisions of the English Football League (EFL). In 2020, actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney took over the team, beginning a success streak that saw the Wrexham team move into the EFL, just below the top tier, the Premier League.

The number of leagues and teams in U.K. divisions makes moving up incredibly challenging for smaller teams, so when it happens, it brings a great sense of community to each fan base. Wrexham is a post-industrial Welsh town that had little pop culture notoriety until Reynolds and McElhenney took over. Since the new ownership and the club’s fairy tale success, it’s meant a great deal to the community and is a prominent unifying factor in the small town of Wrexham.

Smaller-town clubs also highlight the accessibility of soccer—not just watching it as a fan, but playing it, Browsh notes.

“It just takes a ball, but even then people are creating balls out of tape and rubber bands. So, people figure out a way to play the sport,” he says. “Our comparable sport (in the United States) is basketball, and basketball is the second most popular sport globally, but it doesn’t have that kind of system (of global leagues and divisions that soccer does).”

One U.S. sports community that comes close to the fervor of global soccer fandom is NCAA Southeastern Conference football. Fans of college teams like Alabama, Auburn, Georgia and Kentucky are known nationwide for their passion for their teams. But, Browsh adds, football has a short season while “soccer is year-long when you factor in these cup tournaments and the international club tournaments. Soccer is constant in many places.”

Catching up

U.S. soccer is gradually moving toward the year-round schedule seen in a lot of the world, Browsh says. For example, North American Major League Soccer and the NCAA are adapting their schedules to align with European schedules.

"We're trying to tap into that fandom, which is over a century in the making,” Browsh says. Even the United States’ oldest sports—specifically baseball—don’t “have that same community connection as some of the smaller teams in Europe and other countries have.”

And when it comes to the World Cup, Browsh says, “You get the combination of fandom along with the national connection that leads to this fanaticism we see at all the celebrations.” In some ways, it just means more for these nations than it does for the United States because of this immense build up and passion for the sport, he explains. Also, the World Cup only happens every four years, which means there’s just that much more on the line.

Plus, many Americans whose families emigrated from other countries don’t tend to root for the United States, either, Browsh says. “I have friends who are Italian, Irish or Scottish, and so they root for those national teams partly because the U.S. has not been as good on the men’s side in (soccer), and some of that is because of the cultural connections and it’s passed down from other family members,” he says.

Soccer and politics

Despite the United States trailing the rest of the world in soccer participation and fandom, hosting the World Cup is still significant for the nation, Browsh says.

A fan watches the June 23 Uzbekistan v. Colombia match at the 2026 FIFA Fan Fest in Mexico City. (Photo: ProtoplasmaKid/Wikimedia Commons)

“It means a lot right now. The tough thing is it’s hard to ignore that the political climate is impacting it,” he says. He cites a lot of negative news about certain players or referees in the lead up to the World Cup—including a Somalian referee who was forced to return to Somalia after being denied entry to the United States—which made international headlines.

Browsh also mentions that the Iranian national team had to immediately return to Mexico, where members were based, after playing in the United States. “It was even a question if Iran was going to show up,” he says.

Geopolitical realities like these can make it hard for fans of these teams to experience the joy that soccer brings them. And beyond the politics, Browsh cites another wedge that has hindered the U.S. World Cup hospitality: FIFA-set ticket prices.

In particular, Browsh cites FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s seemingly dismissive comments about the visa issues, with Infantino “saying, ‘Chill out’ and ‘relax.’ There’s a growing divide between the leadership of FIFA and the fans, and we’re coming head to head with it this World Cup.”

Browsh says the 2030 World Cup, which will be hosted in Spain, Portugal and Morocco with a special game in Uruguay—in what will be the 100th anniversary of the first World Cup—may be a litmus test. “It will be interesting to see if they can take care of (ticket pricing and alientation with fans),” he explains.

And while FIFA decided ticket pricing, the U.S. ticket market—dominated as it is by Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster, which a Manhattan jury declared a monopoly earlier this year along with the resale market—aren’t helping, Browsh says.

Do up-and-comers have a chance?

Despite the issues, though, the 2026 World Cup has still delivered many of the things fans hope for, including underdog stories. Cabo Verde’s June 15 draw against Spain—an international soccer powerhouse and a favorite to win the World Cup—as well as Ghana’s recent tie against England, demonstrate how teams from the African Federation are taking on heavily funded teams from Europe and Latin America.

“I think we underestimated the African Federation,” Browsh says, “and they have grown leaps and bounds. It keeps their players coming back to the national team after getting high-level training from European clubs.”

Part of African Federation teams’ ascendancy, Browsh adds, may be due in part to FIFA increasing the number of teams in World Cup competition from 32 to 48.

“Some of these bigger teams were not quite prepared for how good these up-and-coming federations are,” he says. “It’s interesting, too, because in a way the United States is actually an up-and-coming federation on the men’s side.”

Finally, a U.S. soccer star

As something of an up-and-coming soccer federation, the U.S. men’s team is working to catch up with its international colleagues in one area that global teams have long excelled: producing stars. Christian Pulisic, a multi-position player, is being broadly credited with bringing a certain stardom to the U.S. men’s team and being a player that even non-fans know by name.

Browsh does, however, advise caution in the process of star-making: “I think we should also be promoting other players. Nothing against Pulisic, but it’s always a danger, especially with some of his injury history, to be like, ‘This is the player you should focus on,’” he says, adding that it makes Pulisic a target.

Maybe because the United States is one of three World Cup host nations this year, U.S. soccer fandom does seem stronger this year, Browsh says. “We’re actually at least going to be competitive this year; we’re in a winnable group.”

The U.S. team’s winning potential is a departure from 2018, when the team didn’t even qualify for the World Cup, to 2022, when its run for the cup ended in a tie against England. But as for whether the United States will ever be a nation of soccer fanatics on the level of European, Latin American or African fans, Browsh says, time and this World Cup will tell.

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As the ongoing FIFA World Cup is showing, says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder sports scholar Jared Bahir Browsh, nationalism and longtime loyalties set soccer fans apart.

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Top photo: Ecuador fans during Côte d'Ivoire v Ecuador match on June 14 at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. (Photo: Bryan Belrin/Wikimedia Commons)

Ten years after Brexit, the consequences are clear…and complicated

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 22:28:02 +0000

Ten years after Brexit, the consequences are clear…and complicated Rachel Sauer Mon, 06/22/2026 - 16:28

Bradley Worrell

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder political scientist Joseph Jupille says reverberations from the United Kingdom’s vote to exit the European Union are still being felt a decade later

Ten years ago this week, British voters narrowly chose to leave the European Union, with about 52% voting in favor of leaving and 48% against. The result stunned many observers around the world, including Joseph Jupille, a �鶹��Ѱ�� political science professor who teaches courses on European politics and who is writing a book on the European Union.

“I woke up the next morning and saw the results, and it was shocking,” he says, recalling first hearing the results of the June 23, 2016, vote.

Still, Jupille is quick to point out that the shock was not the result of a sudden shift, noting that Britain’s uneasy relationship with the European continent had been building for decades.

Joseph Jupille is a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder political science professor who teaches courses on European politics and who is writing a book on the European Union.

“In a historical sense, it wasn’t surprising at all,” he says. “If some country was going to leave the European Union, it was always going to be Britain.”

The decision to hold the voter referendum on exiting the European Union—popularly termed “Brexit”—was initiated by then-Prime Minister David Cameron, who hoped it would settle longstanding divisions within his own Conservative Party. Cameron expected voters would ultimately choose to remain in the European Union, strengthening his political position.

Instead, the gamble reshaped the country—and Europe—almost immediately, Jupille says.

Why the British voted to leave the EU

To understand Brexit, Jupille says it’s important to understand that the motives behind the vote were never purely economic. At the core, he says, was a powerful, emotional appeal centered on control, sovereignty and identity.

“The main slogan was ‘taking back control,’” he explains. For many British voters, the European Union represented a remote and intrusive authority—one that regulated economic life in ways they felt diminished national sovereignty. Jupille says leaving the EU was framed as a way to restore Britain’s independence.

Closely tied to that message were concerns about immigration. As part of EU membership, Britain accepted free movement of labor—one of Europe’s “four freedoms,” along with the movement of goods, services and capital. While this openness created economic opportunities, Jupille says it also brought large numbers of migrants to Britain, particularly after the EU expanded into Central and Eastern Europe.

For many voters, that influx raised concerns about the country’s cultural change.

“There was a vision of what Britain is and about what it means to be British,” Jupille says. “Some people felt that was under threat.”

Another popular argument focused on the country’s National Health Service. During the campaign, Brexit proponents claimed that the money Britain sent to Brussels (home of the European Union) could instead be invested in the NHS—a symbol of national pride. That promise resonated widely, even though it would later prove difficult to fulfill, Jupille says.

Taken together, Jupille says, the three pillar arguments for leaving the European Union (popularly known as the “Leave” campaign) formed a compelling narrative: Britain could reclaim control, protect its identity and redirect resources toward its own citizens by leaving the EU.

Why the case for ‘Remain’ fell short

British supporters for remaining in the EU (popularly known as the “Remain” campaign) primarily focused on economic arguments. Membership, Remain supporters argued, gave Britain access to a vast single market, with lowered costs and boosted prosperity.

Those arguments were accurate, Jupille says, but he argues that they were difficult to communicate.

A pro-Brexit banner and demonstrator outside the House of Commons in London. (Photo: ChiralJon/Wikimedia Commons)

“Economic arguments can be hard to sell,” he explains. “People don’t always understand the benefits of open markets.”

In contrast, the cultural and identity-based arguments of the Leave campaign were more immediate and tangible. While Remain supporters promoted the idea of a “Global Britain” that thrived through international engagement, that vision struggled to compete with concerns about sovereignty and national identity, Jupille says.

What was happening in European and global markets leading up to the 2016 Brexit vote didn’t help the Remain cause, Jupille says. The global financial crisis starting in 2008 and the Eurozone crisis in 2009 cast doubt on the stability of European institutions.

“Media coverage often highlighted struggling economies in Southern Europe, which reinforced skepticism,” he says.

Jupille says it’s also important to understand the Brexit vote in the context of Britain’s long history of ambivalence toward European integration.

In the late 1950s, when the foundations were being laid for the European Economic Community, the precursor of the EU, Britain initially declined to participate, choosing instead to focus on its Commonwealth partners. The country eventually joined in 1973, but only after recognizing that its economic future lay more with Europe rather than distant partners, Jupille says.

Even then, he says, Britain opted out of certain agreements, including the Euro currency, and it repeatedly sought to renegotiate the terms of its participation.

“The British were always ‘awkward partners,’” he says, referring to a phrase coined by British political scientist Stephen George. “They were always sort of one foot out.”

Brexit vote lingers 10 years later

A decade later, Jupille says the consequences of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union have become both clearer—and more complicated.

From an economic standpoint, evidence suggests that Brexit has come at a cost. While estimates vary, Jupille says a widely circulated figure place Britain’s gross domestic product about 4% lower than it might have been had the country remained in the EU.

Meanwhile, the promises of Brexit have proved elusive. Immigration, for example, has not decreased overall. Instead, its composition has changed, with migrants primarily coming from India, Africa and China rather than EU countries, Jupille says.

Similarly, the much-anticipated windfall for the National Health Service has not materialized, as the NHS continues to face funding pressures and long wait times, he says.

At the same time, public opinion regarding Brexit has changed.

An anti-Brexit demonstrator at Westminster Green in London. (Photo: ChiralJon/Wikimedia Commons)

“It looks like about 60% of respondents in recent polls suggest that Brexit was a mistake and would lean toward rejoining, if that were an option,” Jupille says. While views remain divided, the needle has moved significantly since 2016, he adds.

“It (Brexit) hasn’t turned out the way it was promised. That underpins a lot of people’s regret.”

Another Brexit in the offing?

Could another European Union nation follow in the steps of Britain and stage its own Brexit?

For now, Jupille says he believes that risk is limited. Currently, no EU country is seriously discussing leaving—in part because of how the EU handled negotiations with Britain upon its departure. A revised trade agreement between the UK and the EU in 2025 has lowered some trade barriers but does not carry all of the advantages of EU membership, Jupille says.

“The EU has played hardball,” he says. “It wants Brexit to serve as an object lesson to other countries.”

By making the process of leaving complex and costly, EU leaders hope to discourage other member countries from following suit, Jupille says.

Meanwhile, the greater risk, he suggests, is not outright departures but attempts by major countries to renegotiate their terms of membership. Movements within France and Germany that push for more national control could create significant challenges for the EU’s future stability, he says.

At its heart, Jupille says Brexit illustrates a fundamental friction that is not limited to any one country.

“Our economic interests push us toward cooperation,” he says. In a globalized world, trade, investment and meeting worldwide challenges are best addressed at a broader, transnational level, he adds.

At the same time, political identity remains strongly rooted in the nation-state, as people feel a stronger attachment to their country than to larger entities like the EU, Jupille says. That attachment creates a powerful pull toward sovereignty and independence.

The result is a trade-off.

“You can have control over a smaller set of options,” Jupille explains, “or you can give up some control and have better options.”

In a sense, he says, Brexit is a case study in what happens when a country chooses the former.

Why Brexit still matters today

Ten years on, Jupille says Brexit continues to offer lessons not only for the United Kingdom but also for other countries grappling with similar questions related to sovereignty and the realities of an interconnected world.

“This is a central dilemma of the 21st century,” he says. “Brexit embodies the tension between rational economic cooperation and emotional attachments to national identity.”

Brexit also is instructive regarding the benefits of economic cooperation, Jupille says. For all of its flaws, the EU represents a remarkable transformation on the European continent, he says, noting that within the span of a century, Europe moved from two world wars that ravaged much of Europe to a time of relative peace and prosperity. He specifically credits institutions like the EU for playing a crucial role in that shift, helping to bind former rivals together, stating, “It remains the greatest example of countries that used to kill each other learning to live together.”

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�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder political scientist Joseph Jupille says reverberations from the United Kingdom’s vote to exit the European Union are still being felt a decade later.

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A new era of gunboat diplomacy?

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:33:22 +0000

A new era of gunboat diplomacy? Rachel Sauer Fri, 04/17/2026 - 15:33

Tony Wood

Trump’s coercive tactics in Latin America evoke an earlier era of U.S. policy—and the rise of anti‑imperialism it helped spur

In Latin America, as in other parts of the world, the second Trump administration has adopted an increasingly aggressive policy.

From drone strikes on purported drug traffickers to increased tariffs on imports, and from the blockade on fuel shipments and threats of invasion in Cuba to the Jan. 3 military incursion into Venezuela, the U.S.’s more coercive approach to its hemispheric neighbors evokes an earlier period of U.S. foreign policy.

Many commentators have found echoes of the 1989 capture of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega in the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. Others highlighted the longer history of U.S. interventions in Latin America stretching back through the Cold War. That includes the Nixon administration’s support for the 1973 coup against Salvador Allende in Chile or the CIA-sponsored removal of Guatemala’s elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, in 1954.

Tony Wood, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder assistant professor of history, specializes in the political and social history of modern Latin America.

Yet as a historian of early 20th-century Latin America, I believe the Trump administration’s approach to Latin America more closely resembles an older pattern of U.S. policy. Between 1900 and the mid-1930s, U.S. forces intervened in one Latin American country after another. This practice was often justified by the Roosevelt Corollary, President Theodore Roosevelt’s addition to the Monroe Doctrine. In cases of “chronic wrongdoing,” Roosevelt said in 1904, the U.S would find itself compelled to exercise an “international police power” in defense of U.S. interests.

But crucially, how Latin Americans responded to the U.S. exerting its dominance in the early 20th century may hold some lessons for the present day. One of the major side effects of the U.S.’s so-called gunboat diplomacy was an upsurge of resistance and anti-imperialist thinking in the region’s political life.

The roots of anti-imperialism

In the 30 years after Roosevelt asserted the U.S.’s right to intervene across the hemisphere, U.S. forces occupied Cuba three times—in 1906-09, 1912 and 1917-21. They also occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934 and the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924. In Nicaragua, the U.S. deployed the Marines from 1912 to 1925 and then again from 1926 to 1933, waging a counterinsurgency in which it used aerial bombardment for the first time.

Across much of the region, then, this was a time when the U.S. was quick to resort to force, unburdened by any concerns for Latin American countries’ sovereignty.

Yet this era of external intervention also coincided with a period of remarkable political ferment, which I describe in my recently published book, Radical Sovereignty.

In one place after another, from Buenos Aires to Mexico City and from Havana to Lima, movements sprang up that put forward sharp critiques of U.S power. Many of them grew out of student organizations in the late 1910s, while others drew on the rising strength of labor unions and newly formed leftist political parties.

In 1923, rural workers in the Mexican state of Veracruz formed a Peasant League. From the outset, they saw local issues as closely interwoven with international ones, and they argued that there was a compelling reason for this. As the league put it, “Our internationalism is not the child of a crazed enthusiasm for empty phrases … but of the need to take preventive measures, to bolster ourselves against the enemy,” which they identified as “the imperialism of North America.”

Many of Latin America’s radical movements at this time were inspired by the recent example of the Mexican Revolution. The new Mexican Constitution of 1917 had nationalized the country’s land and natural resources, putting it on a collision course with U.S. companies and landowners.

Emiliano Zapata (seated, center), was a Mexican revolutionary who employed guerrilla tactics during and after the Mexican Revolution (Photo: Library of Congress)

Others still were energized by the global repercussions of the Russian Revolution. This, of course, included several brand-new communist parties across the region. But at the time, many others in Latin America saw the Bolsheviks as part of a global anti-colonial wave.

Mexico City as activist hub

My book explores the key role Mexico City played as a gathering point for these different political tendencies.

They included groups ranging from Mexican peasant leagues to the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, an anti-imperialist movement formed by Peruvian exiles. Many of these organizations converged under the umbrella of the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas. Founded in Mexico City in 1925, it soon had chapters in a dozen more countries across the region.

Between them, these movements brought into focus the novel features of U.S. power. As the Cuban student leader and communist Julio Antonio Mella saw it in 1925 – at a time when his native country was highly dependent on the U.S. but formally sovereign—the U.S. was distinct. Unlike European empires, it largely refrained from direct control of territories, though it had pressed the Cubans to include in their 1901 constitution a provision allowing it to intervene in the island at will.

In Mella’s view, the U.S. was clearly an empire, one that mainly exercised its dominance through commercial or financial pressures. For him, the dollar and Wall Street were as central to U.S. power as the halls of government in Washington, D.C.

For Ricardo Paredes, an Ecuadorean doctor who founded the country’s Socialist Party in 1926, a new term was required to capture Latin American countries’ contradictory position. Formally sovereign, they were not colonies as such. Yet they were economically and politically subordinated to Washington and Wall Street—“dependent countries,” as he phrased it in 1928.

For the Peruvian poet Magda Portal, a leading member of the anti-imperialist American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, U.S. dominance played out differently in different parts of Latin America.

Fidel Castro (standing, center left) was influenced by the anti-imperialist upsurge of the 1920s and ’30s. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

In a series of lectures she gave in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic in 1929, Portal divided the region into zones. While countries such as Argentina or Brazil were mainly sites for U.S. investment, Mexico and the Caribbean were regularly subjected to U.S. military force. Or, as Portal put it, “Here imperialism wears no disguise.”

Portal concluded her lectures with a phrase that combined her analysis of U.S. dominance with a resonant appeal for unity: “We have a single and great enemy; let us form a single and great union.”

United states of resistance?

Yet while there was much Latin American anti-imperialist thinkers could agree on, there were also profound divergences between them. This included questions of strategy as well as issues of principle. What role should different classes play in their movement? How radical a transformation of society were they pushing for? And what kind of state should emerge from it?

Over time, these differences turned into deep rifts that pitted revolutionaries against democratic reformists, internationalists against nationalists, and pro-Soviets against anti-communists. These disagreements played an important role in Latin American politics over the rest of the century.

While many of these rifts became especially prominent during the Cold War, they developed out of earlier divisions over how best to counter U.S. dominance.

The anti-imperialist upsurge of the 1920s and ’30s was formative for a generation of Latin American radicals. Several of those who entered political life during these years went on to play key roles in major events of the 20th century. Raúl Roa, for example, who served as foreign secretary for Cuba’s revolutionary government from 1959 to 1976, was first politicized in the island’s anti-imperialist movement of the 1920s.

The men and women whose political visions were formed in the interwar period carried those ideals forward into the Cold War era. In important ways, the 1920s and 1930s laid vital groundwork for later and better-known radical movements.

Past is, of course, not always prologue. It is impossible to predict what the long-term consequences of current U.S. policy in Latin America will be, especially given the rightward tilt that is currently unfolding across the region.

But looking at the region’s anti-imperialist traditions does point to one possible outcome: The U.S.’s newly aggressive stance will, sooner rather than later, fuel a resurgence of anti-imperialist sentiment as the organizing principle for a new generation of activists.

Tony Wood is an assistant professor in the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Department of History specializing in the political and social history of modern Latin America.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Trump’s coercive tactics in Latin America evoke era of gunboat diplomacy—and the rise of anti‑imperialism it helped spur.

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Debating America’s power—and peril—in a time of instability

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:59:45 +0000

Debating America’s power—and peril—in a time of instability Rachel Sauer Tue, 04/14/2026 - 10:59

Bradley Worrell

Veteran national security advisors John Bolton and Susan Rice sparred over whether America is committing 'superpower suicide,' headlining the Conference on World Affairs week

“The United States is not committing superpower suicide,” veteran national security advisor John Bolton told a capacity audience gathered Monday evening in the �鶹��Ѱ��’s Glenn Miller Ballroom. He paused, then added a qualifier, “So far.”

Seated a few feet away, veteran national security advisor Susan Rice offered a very different take.

“Sadly and dangerously,” she said, “the United States, under the current administration, is indeed in the process of committing superpower suicide.”

Susan Rice (left) and John Bolton (second from right) with Jennifer Schubert-Akin (second from left), chairman and CEO of The Steamboat Institute, and Chancellor Justin Schwartz (right).

The stark disagreement between the two policy experts set the tone for a wide-ranging debate, during which the pair clashed over the extent to which America’s status as the world’s sole superpower has been damaged. Monday’s debate, sponsored by The Steamboat Institute and the Bruce D. Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization, headlined �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s 78th Conference on World Affairs week.

While the debate’s title—“Is the United States is in the process of committing superpower suicide?”—was deliberately provocative, what emerged during the roughly two-hour debate was a respectful disagreement on certain subjects and a fair amount of common ground between Bolton, a staunch Republican, and Rice, a lifelong Democrat.

Bolton and Rice both have extensive experience shaping American foreign policy for U.S. administrations. Bolton was a national security advisor during President Trump’s first term in office and was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006. Rice’s previous roles in government include serving as a U.S. national security adviser (2013–17), U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (2009–13) and domestic policy adviser (2021–23).

Opening salvos contrasted views

In her opening remarks, Rice issued a sweeping indictment of the Trump administration. She accused the administration of undermining the “five key pillars” of America’s postwar superpower status: military strength, economic power, alliances, domestic resilience and soft power.

“On each of these five dimensions, we are far weaker today than we were even 18 months ago,” she argued. She specifically accused the administration of politicizing the Pentagon and purging senior officers, implementing an unpredictable tariff policy, damaging the European alliance and openly threatening allies. She also took the administration to task for making cuts to research funding, attacking universities, expressing hostility to public health institutions, dismantling USAID and rolling back environmental protections.

Bolton did not dispute that American foreign policy under Trump—as well as previous administrations—had gone badly wrong. What he rejected was the claim that the damage was fatal.

“We have made multiple mistakes since the end of the Cold War,” he said, arguing that both political parties share responsibility. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Western leaders mistakenly believed history ended and rapidly reduced military spending, he told the audience, adding, “we have never recovered from that mistake.”

Bolton said U.S. leaders misunderstood Russian nationalism and ignored Vladimir Putin’s warnings that he viewed the Soviet collapse as a geopolitical tragedy. Failures to deter Russian aggression in Georgia and Ukraine flowed from that misreading, he said.

John Bolton (left) and Susan Rice (right) discussed whether the United States is committing "superpower suicide" during a Conference on World Affairs event Monday evening.

Meanwhile, China represents another long-running error, Bolton said. American officials assumed economic integration would produce political liberalization, but “we were wrong on both counts,” he said, warning that China today is more autocratic and more aggressive.

Yet Bolton insisted these failures—serious as they are—do not mean America’s greatest days are behind it.

As for President Trump, Bolton said, “We are suffering undeniably by his mistakes, but it is not superpower suicide. He is an aberration and will pass from the scene.”

United on alliances and the UN

Despite their opposing conclusions, Rice and Bolton did find agreement on the importance of alliances.

“NATO is the greatest alliance in human history,” Rice said, emphasizing its deterrent value and reminding the audience that Article 5, which regards an attack on one NATO member as an attack on all, had only been invoked once—following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Undermining NATO, she warned, benefits Russia and China.

“NATO is the envy of Russia and China, which is why they are trying to subvert it,” she said.

Bolton largely agreed.

“What has provided peace and security in the world since 1945 was American power and the system of alliances that we built,” he said. He dismissed the idea of a “rules-based international order” as a myth, arguing that stability came from American strength.

Their disagreement was on tone and trust. Rice said Trump’s threats regarding his desire to see the U.S. acquire Greenland and annex Canada and his transactional rhetoric have damaged allies’ confidence in America, while Bolton emphasized the long-standing failure of European allies to meet defense commitments, acknowledging that Trump’s confrontational style prompted allies to increase defense spending.

Bolton and Rice also agreed that the United Nations is largely dysfunctional, but disagreed about whether it can be fixed.

“The UN’s main political bodies are broken beyond usefulness,” Bolton said, while acknowledging some of its specialized agencies do valuable work.

“The UN is a mess, but we would be worse off without it,” Rice said. “The challenge is reform—not abandonment.”

As for China and its aspirations to reclaim Taiwan, Bolton argued that the United States should abandon its policy of “strategic ambiguity” regarding the island nation in favor of a stated commitment to defend Taiwan to deter possible Chinese aggression.

“I think if we lose Taiwan, even slowly, to China … all of East Asia and Southeast Asia are in real jeopardy, because our credibility would be shot beyond repair,” he said.

Rice did not offer an opinion as to whether the U.S. should formally commit to defend Taiwan but she said Trump’s foreign policy regarding Asia is distracted.

Susan Rice (left) and John Bolton (right) during Monday night's Conference on World Affairs discussion.

Experts divided on Iran

Iran exposed the deepest philosophical split between the two national security experts.

Bolton argued that a hostile regime bent on acquiring nuclear weapons and supporting terrorist networks ultimately leaves America with only one option: “If a regime that’s hostile to the United States can’t be persuaded or forced to change its behavior, regime change is the only option.”

Rice forcefully disagreed.

Noting that she would welcome regime change in Iran, she added, “Regime change through the barrel of a gun virtually never works … and it definitely never works without a ground invasion.” Preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons was best pursued through diplomacy rather than sustained military escalation, she argued.

Bolton said he believes that, as a result of recent U.S. strikes on Iran’s leadership and military sites, the Iranian regime is at its weakest point since it took power in 1979 and it could experience a “slow-motion collapse” before the end of the year if the U.S. applies sufficient pressure.

Rice countered that by taking out the country’s leadership in a U.S.-Israeli first strike, Iran’s new leaders are now willing to do whatever they believe is necessary to remain in power—which has made Iran more dangerous.

What Bolton and Rice did agree on is that the United States currently has not clearly improved its strategic position against Iran.

“That spirit—open inquiry, civil discourse and the exchange of ideas across differences—is the fundamental role of universities in the United States and exactly what the Conference on World Affairs was created to advance."
Chancellor Justin Schwartz

The U.S. and Iran are now engaged in brinkmanship, waiting to see if their opponent blinks, Rice and Bolton agreed. “If it depends upon Trump’s resilience, we’re screwed,” Bolton said, drawing laughter from the crowd. Trump fired Bolton during the president’s first term due to sharp disagreements over foreign policy.

The Steamboat Institute allowed those in attendance and watching online to take a poll as to whether they believe the United States is committing superpower suicide. Before the night’s debate, 77% of those casting votes said the country is committing superpower suicide, 9% said it is not and 14% were undecided. After the debate, 75% of respondents said the country is committing superpower suicide, 13% said it is not and 12% were unsure.

CWA designed to foster civic debate

Kicking off Monday’s debate, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Chancellor Justin Schwartz noted that higher education is often criticized for failing to platform diverse political opinions.

“Tonight, we are here and we are pushing back on that perception,” he told the audience, adding,

“That spirit—open inquiry, civil discourse and the exchange of ideas across differences—is the fundamental role of universities in the United States and exactly what the Conference on World Affairs was created to advance. At the �鶹��Ѱ��, we believe democracy depends on our willingness to debate hard questions with rigor and with civility. Tonight, that belief is alive and visible.”

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Veteran national security advisors John Bolton and Susan Rice sparred over whether America is committing 'superpower suicide,' headlining the Conference on World Affairs week.

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Top image: Susan Rice (left) and John Bolton (right) during Monday night's Conference on World Affairs discussion. (All photos by Glenn Asakawa/�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder)

Come for the cheese and pepperoni, stay for the lively political discussion

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 19:38:10 +0000

Come for the cheese and pepperoni, stay for the lively political discussion Rachel Sauer Wed, 03/05/2025 - 12:38

Politics & Pizza event March 17 will let students and experts discuss the relationship between business and politics

Many noteworthy images of the current political moment have included titans of business—in the Oval Office, speaking at a recent Cabinet meeting, gathered around the U.S. president during Inaugural events.

The relationship between business and politics has long been a fraught topic of discussion and, sometimes, contention—perhaps never more so than now.

If you go

What: Politics & Pizza, "The Business of Politics"

When: 5:30 to 6:45 p.m. March 17

Where: Muenzinger E0046

Free Cosmo's pizza!

Learn more

This will be the topic of the first Politics & Pizza event this semester from 5:30 to 6:45 p.m. March 17 in Muenzinger E0046. The discussion will explore the proper relationship of business leaders and organizations to politics and the political system.

The aim of the Politics & Pizza discussion series—which was initiated and will be moderated by Glen Krutz, a professor of political science—is to “encourage productive, substantive deliberation of specific topics, rather than rancorous and ideological macro-thoughts.”

“These events are meant to help �鶹��Ѱ��students sink their minds into key, specific political issues while they are sinking their teeth into delicious pizza!” Krutz says. “The other main goal is to have experts get the discussion started, but then to very much have a discussion between the students and one another and the students and the experts. The interaction piece is central, rather than a one-way information flow that sometimes we see at talks on university campuses.”

Politics & Pizza, which includes free Cosmo’s pizza, is modeled on similar sessions offered in Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. Each session will feature expert speakers who give a few introductory thoughts about the session’s topic and then open the session to a question-and-answer with students.

The theme of the Pizza & Politics event March 17 is “The Business of Politics,” with panelists Scott Flanders, a former CEO of eHealth, Playboy Enterprises Inc., Freedom Communications Inc. and Columbia House Company and board member for Fathom Holdings Inc., Fellow Health and 890 5^th Avenue; Paula Hildebrandt, former vice president for corporate development and integration planning with FedEx Corp. and former economic research associate with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City; Taylor Jaworski, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder associate professor of economics; Midge Korczak, former executive director of the Boulder County Bar Association; and Brian Morgan, founder and CEO of Ranch Bucket Brands.

Upcoming Politics & Pizza events will focus on current topics including science and politics.

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Politics & Pizza event March 17 will let students and experts discuss the relationship between business and politics.

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�鶹��Ѱ��foreign policy expert not optimistic on Syria’s outlook

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 17:03:19 +0000

�鶹��Ѱ��foreign policy expert not optimistic on Syria’s outlook Rachel Sauer Mon, 01/27/2025 - 10:03

Bradley Worrell

Political science Professor Federiga Bindi says the new, Islamic rebel-led government is telling the West what it wants to hear but that the situation on the ground is concerning

In May, �鶹��Ѱ�� Department of Political Science professor and foreign policy expert Federiga Bindi was asked to spearhead the creation of a conference sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee regarding the future of Syria. The Middle Eastern country had been mired in a grinding civil war for 13 years with no end in sight, and AFSC was concerned the world had largely forgotten about the conflict and its resulting humanitarian crisis.

By the time the two-day conference, titled Reframing the Conversation Around Syria in Europe, convened in early December at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, the Assad regime that had governed the country for more than 70 years collapsed spectacularly as Muslim rebels swept through the country and seized the capital of Damascus.

“The strategy of exporting democracy to the Middle East has failed miserably, because our understanding of the region was faulty and the Middle East is such a kaleidoscopically complex region,” says Federiga Bindi, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder professor of political science.

“Everybody was surprised—even that the rebel attack took place,” says Bindi, noting the war had essentially settled into a stalemate for some time. “That’s the interesting thing, because to prepare for this conference, I talked to a lot of experts. I went to Brussels several times—and nobody expected something like this. So, everybody was taken by surprise, and everyone was surprised how quickly things happened.”

In past years, the Assad regime had been able to successfully battle insurgents with support from Russia and Iran. However, with Russia bogged down in its war in Ukraine and Iran on the defensive after Israel’s attacks on it, as well as allies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon—following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel—the situation on the ground in the Middle East is very different today, Bindi says.

“Also, there are indications that they (the rebels) were not alone—the U.S., Israel and Turkey directly or indirectly supported them, because Syria was an ally of Iran, and if you take away Syria as an ally of Iran, then Iran can’t resupply Hezbollah in Lebanon,” she says. “So, the change (in leadership in Syria) is bad for the Russians, but I think it’s even worse for Iran.”

Meanwhile, Israel and Turkey can be considered the winners resulting from the outcome and the new major regional power in the Middle East, she adds.

What next for Syria?

At the December conference in Brussels, attendees—including foreign policy experts and Syrian activists—were “clearly happy that Assad was gone, but they were also very wary,” Bindi says. “Their first message was, ‘We shouldn’t just say this is great, because we don’t know what happens next.’”

While many Syrians at home and abroad—and many in the West—hope for peace and healing in Syria, Bindi says there are too many variables to know if that’s possible. One particular concern is whether the new government, composed of leaders from the Islamic rebel group Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), will show tolerance for the country’s religious and ethnic minorities and support basic human rights.

While noting that Ahmed al-Sharaa, the charismatic leader of HTS, has swapped his combat fatigues for business suits, dropped his wartime pseudonym for his real name, and downplayed his past jihadist views for a more moderate form of Syrian nationalism in interviews with Western media, Bindi says the news that has been coming out of Syria is not encouraging.

“The way he (Sharaa) presents himself, dressed in a suit and speaking with western media, he’s been very conciliatory. For example, he just met with the custodian of religious sites in Jerusalem. He said, ‘Christians are going to be allowed to live in peace. Don’t worry. I’m a big supporter of the Pope.’ So, the rhetoric is very conciliatory, very Western, but the acts are not. The little news we have out of Syria is that Alawi (members of a religious minority to which previous President Bashar al-Assad belongs and drew power from) have been beaten and even killed.”

Separately, when the German foreign minister, who is a woman, recently visited Syria with a European delegation, HTS leaders declined to shake hands with her but did shake hands with male delegation members. Bindi says that could suggest HTS endorses strict Muslim prohibitions regarding interactions between men and women, in contrast with Syria’s recent past as a Muslim but largely secular country that allowed women many of the freedoms found in the West.

“At the moment, there is no territorial integrity in Syria,” says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder political scientist Federiga Bindi. (Photo: Umayyad Mosque and surrounding neighborhood in Damascus, Syria; Bernard Gagnon/Wikimedia Commons)

“So, that may suggest they (HTS) are not that liberal after all,” she says. “A former envoy to Syria, who I know very well, told me he’s convinced Syria is going to be a theocracy-style government like in Afghanistan.”

Meanwhile, Bindi says rightwing leaders in Europe are using the change in leadership in Syria to say that the roughly 2 million Syrian refugees can safely return home, but it’s her view that “Syria is not safe by any means.”

Foreign troops occupy Syria

Currently, several foreign governments have military troops occupying portions of Syria, and Bindi says the potential for clashes with Syrian forces and with each other remains ever-present, noting that those foreign powers have sometimes competing objectives. Israel has occupied the Golan Heights and nearby areas in Syria for what it says are security reasons, the United States has occupied portions of the country with the stated objective of fighting ISIS while also supporting the Kurds, and Turkish armed forces have occupied the northern portion of Syria to support rebel forces and to potentially combat what it calls Kurdish terrorists. Meanwhile, Russia, which maintained naval and air bases in Syria during Assad’s regime, still has some troops in the country.

“At the moment, there is no territorial integrity in Syria,” Bindi says. “I don’t see the Kurds giving up their territory in Syria. I don’t see the Turks giving up their territory. I don’t see the Russians leaving, if they can keep their bases. And I don’t see the Americans and the Israelis withdrawing. Nobody wants to give up their territories, so it’s a big mess.”

The new leadership in Syria likely isn’t happy that portions of the country are occupied by foreign powers, but it’s not in a position to demand their withdrawal, and it may grudgingly accept the status quo if it is allowed to implement a theocracy, she says.

Given the situation in Syria today, it’s hard to predict what comes next, Bindi says. Still, one scenario that Bindi says is very unlikely is that Bashar Assad, who fled to Moscow as the rebels closed in on Damascus, will ever return to power.

“I think he’s gone, just like the Shah in Persia,” she says. “He’s going to have a golden exile in Russia, and that will be it. He should be happy he saved his skin, unlike Saddam Hussein (in Iraq) and unlike Muammar Gaddafi (in Libya).”

The other scenario that Bindi finds very unlikely is that the United States and Europe will commit major military forces to Syria to attempt to promote nation-building and democracy, like they attempted with Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The strategy of exporting democracy to the Middle East has failed miserably, because our understanding of the region was faulty and the Middle East is such a kaleidoscopically complex region,” she says. “So, I don’t think we will put boots on the ground in Syria. That, I think, is fairly certain. The more plausible is that we just let them be, like we ultimately did in Afghanistan.”

Risks remain for the West, as well as Syria

Bindi says such a scenario does not automatically mean that the risks to the West are minimized, however, with the new Republican U.S. administration and Congress.

“To be frank, the most important variable is what will happen in Washington, D.C., after Jan. 20. That’s the true reality,” she says. “Syria is definitely not a priority for Trump, but the neighboring states are. The loss of (Assad) was a blow to Iran, and we know that for Trump, Iran is a foe, so what might the (new administration) allow Israel to do? I say that because Israel can only attack with the support of the U.S. It’s a very dangerous situation.”

Meanwhile, with so much recent conflict in the Middle East, Bindi says she is concerned that people in the West have become numb to all the fighting.

“I think we’ve gotten way too used to violence,” she says. “The images don’t touch us anymore. Kids die. We’ve become accustomed to the horror. We’ve lost our humanity, and I think that’s very scary.”

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Political science Professor Federiga Bindi says the new, Islamic rebel-led government is telling the West what it wants to hear but that the situation on the ground is concerning.

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