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Current History Magazine

First published in 1914 to cover World War I, we are America's oldest magazine dedicated exclusively to world affairs. Nye Jr.

Current History is the oldest United States-based publication devoted exclusively to contemporary world affairs. The magazine was founded in 1914 by George Washington Ochs Oakes, brother of New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs, in order to provide detailed coverage of World War I. Current History was published by The New York Times Company from its founding until 1936. Since 1942 it has been owned

by members of the Redmond family; its current publisher is Daniel Mark Redmond. Current History, based in Philadelphia, maintains no institutional, political, or governmental affiliation. It is published monthly, from September through May. Seven issues each year are devoted to world regions (China and East Asia, Russia and Eurasia, the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, South Asia, and Africa); one issue covers current global trends; and one issue addresses a special theme such as climate change or global governance. The magazine has followed this practice of devoting each issue to a single region or theme since 1953. Each issue includes a chronology of major international events, and most contain a book review section and an article devoted to commentary. Contributors to Current History in the publication's early years included George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill, Charles Beard, Allan Nevins, and Henry Steele Commager. More recently, the journal has featured authors such as James Schlesinger, Francis Fukuyama, Jeffrey Sachs, Bruce Riedel, Leslie H. Gelb, Bruce Russett, Elizabeth Economy, Charles Kupchan, Ivo Daalder, Joseph Cirincione, Phebe Marr, Juan Cole, Bruce Gilley, and Marina Ottaway. Shortly after Current History began publishing in 1914, its editor, Ochs Oakes, decided that a magazine recording “history in the making” should maintain as regular contributors a group of historians and social scientists. He enlisted the help of a Harvard historian, Albert Bushnell Hart, in organizing the journal’s initial group of contributing editors. Current History’s board of contributing editors today includes Catherine Boone (London School of Economics); Bruce Cumings (University of Chicago); Uri Dadush (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace); Deborah Davis (Yale University); Larry Diamond (Stanford University); Michele Dunne (Carnegie Endowment); Barry Eichengreen (University of California, Berkeley); C. Christine Fair (Georgetown University); Sumit Ganguly (Indiana University); G. John Ikenberry (Princeton University); Michael T. Klare (Hampshire College); Joshua Kurlantzick (Council on Foreign Relations); Michael McFaul (Stanford University); Rajan Menon (Lehigh University); Augustus Richard Norton (Boston University); Joseph S. (Harvard University); Bruce Russett (Yale University); Michael Shifter (Inter-American Dialogue); Arturo Valenzuela (Georgetown University); and Jeffrey Wasserstrom (University of California, Irvine). The publication’s editor is Joshua Lustig.

12/22/2025

In our annual Middle East issue, Steven Brooke reviews “Twilight of the Saints: The History and Politics of Salafism in Contemporary Egypt,” by Stéphane Lacroix. While previous works on Salafism, a conservative strain of Islam, tend to emphasize its distinctiveness, “Lacroix illustrates how the emergence of Salafism in Egypt has been a process of borrowing, overlap, and cross-contamination,” writes Brooke, director of the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Its adaptability since its founding in the 1920s has been a key strength for the movement, helping it endure through authoritarian regimes and the brief democratic opening following the Arab Spring. In some respects, “Egyptian Salafism has become a victim of its own success,” evolving from a dissident reformist movement to one that represents the norms of Sunni Islam.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/866/358/214191/Egypt-s-Adaptive-Islamic-Puritans

Brooke’s review, “Egypt’s Adaptive Islamic Puritans,” is available along with the rest of our December issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/866

Despite their reputation as fundamentalists repudiating innovation and political engagement, Egyptian Salafis have proved open to outside influences and pragmatic maneuvers, transforming into a powerful social movement.

12/17/2025

In our December issue, Yara M. Asi compares attacks on health care infrastructure during recent conflicts in Syria and Gaza. “The Assad regime’s systematic attacks on health care garnered global attention,” writes Asi, an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida’s School of Global Health Management and Informatics. Although Israel has waged “a comparable form of warfare, targeting health care across the Gaza Strip,” its actions “have prompted little more than occasional condemnation.” The pattern of denying Palestinians access to vital health care predates the war that began in 2023. While “Israel was heralded as a global vaccine success story” during the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities restricted “what could enter the West Bank and Gaza, including personal protective equipment and, at some points, vaccines.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/866/354/214193/When-Health-Is-the-TargetViolence-Restriction-and

Asi’s essay, “When Health Is the Target: Violence, Restriction, and Neglect in Palestine,” is available along with the rest of our annual Middle East issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/866

Syria’s Assad regime launched relentless attacks on health care infrastructure during its war against its own people. Israel has since used the same tactics in the Gaza war, though it has imposed heavy restrictions on Palestinian health care for much longer.

12/11/2025

In our annual Middle East issue, Allan Hassaniyan details the environmental movements in Iran’s peripheral regions that contest the central state’s exploitation of their resources. Scarce water supplies have been diverted to Tehran and other central cities, and dam construction and the extraction of oil, gas, and minerals from regions populated by ethnic minorities have “caused ecological deterioration, negatively affected public health, and worsened peripheral underdevelopment,” writes Hassaniyan, a senior lecturer in Middle East studies at the University of Exeter’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. “The natural wealth that could have supported local development and prosperity has instead become a resource curse.” Protests have been met with severe repression, yet advocates for environmental justice continue to mobilize.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/866/348/214196/Environmental-Injustice-in-Iran-s-Peripheral

Hassaniyan’s essay, “Environmental Injustice in Iran’s Peripheral Regions,” is available along with the rest of our December issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/866

This article examines the persistent problem of environmental injustice and degradation in Iran from a peripheral and subaltern perspective. The systematic extraction of oil, gas, water, and various minerals from peripheral regions has reached a critical juncture. Despite the marginalization of non-...

12/10/2025

In our December issue, Eleanor Gao explains how Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy has endured for more than a century despite regional upheavals. Jordan is “a land-locked country with artificial origins, little water, no oil wealth, and no ability to grow much of its own food,” notes Gao, a senior lecturer in Middle East politics at the University of Exeter’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. It has also “absorbed an enormous number of refugees,” especially Palestinians, who make up about half of Jordan’s population. The country’s stability is maintained by the bargain the monarchy has struck with the other major ethnic group, East Bankers, “the ‘tribes’ of Jordan.” A vast patronage network and (often informal) preferential policies give East Bankers favored access to higher education, military positions, and public sector jobs.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/866/342/214192/The-Tenuous-Bargain-Behind-Jordan-s-Stability

Gao’s essay, “The Tenuous Bargain Behind Jordan’s Stability,” is available along with the rest of our annual Middle East issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/866

A small country in a volatile region, Jordan has remained reliably stable since its founding in 1946. While its neighbors have endured persistent wars and internal conflicts, Jordan has absorbed their fleeing refugees. This article explores how the East Bank community, or what some call “the tribe...

12/05/2025

In our annual Middle East issue, Mehmet Gurses sees an opportunity for a new approach in the longstanding conflict between the Turkish state and the country’s Kurdish minority. Of the four modern Middle Eastern countries with large Kurdish populations, “Turkey stands out,” writes Gurses, the director of the Kurdish Political Studies Program and a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida. More than half of the world’s Kurds live in Turkey, but the state has undertaken an “aggressive agenda targeting Kurdish identity, language, and culture.” Since the early 1970s, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has sought to “establish a united, socialist, and independent Kurdistan through armed resistance.” But in February 2025, the group’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan, called on it to disarm. A reimagined PKK, “grounded in gender equality, grassroots democracy, and secular governance, could become a stabilizing force in a fractured region,” says Gurses.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/866/336/214197/Turkey-s-Kurdish-Conflict-Transformed

Gurses’s essay, “Turkey’s Kurdish Conflict Transformed,” is available along with the rest of our December issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/866

In February 2025, Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) founder Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned since 1999, called on the organization to disarm. The group swiftly complied, first declaring a cease-fire in March and then, in May, formally announcing its readiness to dissolve if the Turkish government recogn...

12/02/2025

In our December issue, Omar S. Dahi details how Syria’s Assad dynasty crumbled after five decades in power. By 2019, President Bashar al-Assad seemed to have emerged victorious from a brutal civil war that began in 2011, but the “victory was a Pyrrhic one,” writes Dahi, professor of economics at Hampshire College and founding director of the Security in Context research network. Preservation of the regime had come “at the cost of immense loss of life, loss of sovereignty, and potentially irreversible fragmentation of the country.” Hampered by sanctions, unable to rein in the corruption and abuses of his allies, and unwilling to offer concessions, Assad failed “to forge a nationally inclusive narrative.” Unity remains elusive under the alliance of former jihadists that succeeded Assad; the new government “has already overseen two horrific attacks against civilians.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/866/323/214195/How-Syria-s-Dynasty-Collapsed

Dahi’s essay, “How Syria’s Dynasty Collapsed,” is available along with the rest of our annual Middle East issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/866

The Assad regime, with backing from allies Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, seemed to have survived a long civil war that began in 2011, and was beginning to emerge from regional isolation. But when Islamist forces led an offensive from their enclave in late 2024, a dynasty that had lasted five decades....

11/27/2025

n our annual Middle East issue, enjoy free access (for a limited time) to an essay by Leila Tayeb on how Libya’s divisions have altered daily life. The country’s militarized bifurcation “has made routine travel arduous, forced people to relocate, limited their work options and even their ability to form relationships and families,” writes Tayeb, an assistant professor of communication and liberal arts at Northwestern University in Qatar. Since 2014, “most of the essential institutions of government ended up in opposing pairs: two central banks, two parliaments, two heads of state.” Travel between the country’s two largest cities, Tripoli in the west and Benghazi in the east, is complicated by unpredictable checkpoints, skirmishes, and other conflict-related obstacles. Even air travel is affected by Libya’s bifurcation—flights to Tripoli from abroad have been forced to land in Benghazi.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/866/330/214194/Movements-and-Mobility-in-Libya-s-Militarized

Tayeb’s essay, “Movements and Mobility in Libya’s Militarized Daily Life” is available along with the rest of our December issue in print and on our website: https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/866

When the Soumoud Convoy to Gaza was stopped outside the Libyan city of Sirte in June 2025, it offered a particularly visible example of what the division of Libya has looked like for ordinary people since 2014. The territorial bifurcation of the Libyan state has forced people to move, while also lim...

11/25/2025

The international affairs journal Current History presents its December 2025 issue: the annual Middle East issue.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/866

The issue features the following essays:

How Syria’s Dynasty Collapsed
Omar S. Dahi (Hampshire College)
In December 2024, a regime that had endured for decades and had seemingly outlasted a drawn-out
civil war fell in a matter of days. Deep fissures confront the new Islamist rulers.

Movements and Mobility in Libya’s Militarized Daily Life
Leila Tayeb (Northwestern University in Qatar)
Travel within a country bifurcated by competing militias is hindered by an array of obstacles, disrupting
decisions about everything from work to marriage.

Turkey’s Kurdish Conflict Transformed
Mehmet Gurses (University of Central Florida)
In a civil conflict lasting four decades, Kurdish militants and the Turkish state have both undergone
profound changes. Now a changing region has brought them to the threshold of peace.

The Tenuous Bargain Behind Jordan’s Stability
Eleanor Gao (University of Exeter)
By forging strong bonds with East Bank tribes through patronage, the Hashemite monarchy has endured
since 1921. But neoliberal reforms are straining their relations.

Environmental Injustice in Iran’s Peripheral Regions
Allan Hassaniyan (University of Exeter)
Despite repressive securitization of ecological crises, protest movements in outlying provinces contest
the central state’s colonialist, extractive approach to natural resources.

PERSPECTIVE
When Health Is the Target: Violence, Restriction, and Neglect in Palestine
Yara M. Asi (University of Central Florida)
Following the Syrian example, Israel has resorted to the destruction of medical facilities and the denial
of care as a method of asserting control over a restive population.

BOOKS
Egypt’s Adaptive Islamic Puritans
Steven Brooke (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
Although associated with strict religious conservatism and hostility to innovation, Egyptian Salafism
has deftly responded to shifting political currents.

Current History | 124 | 866 | December 2025

11/19/2025

In our November special issue on anti-governance, Duncan Bell reviews “More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity” by Adam Becker. The book’s “main strength,” argues Bell, a professor of political thought and international relations at the University of Cambridge, “is its deflationary thrust,” casting a critical eye on Silicon Valley’s hopes for “technological salvation” through mind-uploading or the colonization of Mars. Such utopian dreams may promise an escape from problems on Earth, but their pursuit intensifies “the hoarding of ever-greater power and wealth by those already hugely powerful and wealthy” and diverts “resources and attention (both governmental and public) away from . . . more quotidian concerns.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/865/318/213895/Machine-Dreams-of-the-Tech-Barons

Bell’s review is available along with the rest of our November special issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/865

Silicon Valley oligarchs are pursuing science-fiction ambitions of immortality and interstellar conquest, with origins in post-Darwinian and colonial thinking.

11/14/2025

In our special issue on anti-governance, Holly Case explores the ideological techniques of fact-making—a process that has interested thinkers for much longer than the term “alternative facts” has been around. “Dostoevsky was among the first to notice how assertive logical consistency could morph into a form of bullying,” notes Case, a professor of history at Brown University and a Current History contributing editor. In a 1935 essay, German mathematician Pascual Jordan posited that “objective historical facts” could be forced on opposing nations through war. Faced with such authoritarian logic, says Case, “the forces of opposition and dissent often seem frozen, sunk in ‘I-told-you-so’ cynicism.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/865/314/213901/Anti-Governance-of-the-Deed

Case’s essay, “Anti-Governance of the Deed,” is available along with the rest of our November special issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/865

Current History | 124 | 865 | November 2025

11/10/2025

In our November special issue on anti-governance, Errol Saglam shows how conspiracy theories have gone from the political margins to the mainstream. “From Trump’s United States to Erdoğan’s Turkey, conspiracism has steadily become an integral element of governmental logic,” writes Saglam, an associate professor of sociology at Istanbul Medeniyet University. Conspiracy theories can bring “bottom-up pressures to bear on political institutions and processes.” They can also give adherents a sense of participating in the patriotic defense of their homeland, or of membership in a political and moral community. In Turkey, citizens “participated in the circulation of narratives that they did not necessarily believe in,” sometimes veering into vigilantism.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/865/300/213899/Conspiracism-Politics-and-the-State-in-the-Twenty

Saglam’s essay, “Conspiracism, Politics, and the State in the Twenty-First Century,” is available along with the rest of our special issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/865

Current History | 124 | 865 | November 2025

11/06/2025

In our new special issue on anti-governance, Gideon Lasco examines how populist leaders around the world have exploited declining trust in global health institutions. Post-pandemic medical populism “reflects and amplifies public anxieties while advancing authoritarian, nationalist, and anti-scientific agendas,” writes Lasco, a professorial lecturer in anthropology at the University of the Philippines, Diliman. Leaders have portrayed vaccine mandates as threats to freedom, and blamed immigrants and minorities for the spread of disease. Countering medical populism will require a new approach that includes “a commitment to community engagement, democratization of expertise, and institutional accountability.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/124/865/295/213897/Medical-Populism-and-the-Future-of-Global-Health

Lasco’s essay, “Medical Populism and the Future of Global Health,” is available along with the rest of our November special issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/124/865

Populist political leaders around the world have increasingly focused on health issues, promoting anti-scientific agendas, attacking experts, and dramatizing their responses to public health crises. Although Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are prominent examples of this trend of medical popul...

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