Truman National Security Project

In 1948, Harry Truman flip-flopped. After decades of holding racial biases, he decided to support the civil rights movement against Jim Crow laws. Truman’s shift was as much cold political calculation as anything else. The path to 270 electoral college votes ran through northern cities with large African American populations and a few states in [...]

Truman National Security Fellow Ariel Ratner discusses the possibility that Syria has used chemical weaponry against the rebels in this article from the Associated Press. Assad has clung to power despite repeated U.S. calls for him to step down. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the revolt against his family’s decades-long autocratic rule. [...]

Less than 48 hours before Pakistan’s historic democratic elections on May 11 — which saw former Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif re-elected — Pakistani police gathered at the Islamabad home of New York Times correspondent Declan Walsh. They had Walsh sign for a letter from the Minister of Interior, which informed him that his visa had been canceled [...]

U.S. President Barack Obama travels to Europe next month to start formal negotiations on a trading bloc that would dwarf any the world has seen. He should look for ways to integrate Turkey into this new order. Trade between the U.S. and the European Union still accounts for a third of everything the world imports [...]

The White House surely has a full plate already. But it can add one more item to its long to-do list: respond to Chinese petitioners. Starting on May 3, the White House’s petition website has become a favored landing spot for Chinese Web users, and the hashtag #occupytheWhiteHouse, and a variety of related memes, has recently appeared on [...]