Books
Rethinking U.S. Power: Domestic Histories of U.S. Foreign Relations (co-edited with Daniel Bessner)
Buy the Book:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Bookshop
Since the late-1990s, diplomatic historians have emphasized the importance of international and transnational processes, flows, and events to the history of the United States in the world. Rethinking U.S. World Power provides an alternative to these scholarly frameworks by assembling a diverse group of historians to explore the impact of the United States and its domestic history on U.S. foreign relations and world affairs. In so doing, the collection underlines that, even in a global age, domestic politics and phenomena were crucial to the history of U.S. foreign policy and international relations more broadly.
For Might and Right: Cold War Defense Spending and the Remaking of American Democracy
Buy the Book:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Bookshop
IndieBound
University of Massachusetts Press
How did the global Cold War influence American politics at home? For Might and Right traces the story of how Cold War defense spending remade participatory politics, producing a powerful and dynamic political coalition that reached across party lines. This "Cold War coalition" favored massive defense spending over social welfare programs, bringing together a diverse array of actors from across the nation, including defense workers, community boosters, military contractors, current and retired members of the armed services, activists, and politicians. Faced with neoliberal austerity and uncertainty surrounding America's foreign policy after the 1960s, increased military spending became a bipartisan solution to create jobs and stimulate economic growth, even in the absence of national security threats. Using a rich array of archival sources, Michael Brenes draws important connections between economic inequality and American militarism that enhance our understanding of the Cold War's continued impact on American democracy and the resilience of the military-industrial complex, up to the age of Donald Trump.
Praise for For Might and Right
"Michael Brenes's remarkable and original study of the material life of anticommunism shows how deeply it reshaped not only ideological commitments but the daily economic experiences of millions of Americans. A beautifully researched and powerfully argued work of history, For Might and Right transforms our understanding of the Cold War."—Kim Phillips-Fein, author of Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics
"Brenes has significantly added to our understanding of the political economy of the Cold War and the reshaping of American values from the New Deal to the contemporary moment. A truly engrossing and important story told with depth and skill."—Mitchell B. Lerner, author of The Pueblo Incident: A Spy Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy
"For Might and Right will appeal not only to Cold War scholars but to anyone interested in the history of twentieth-century politics, liberalism or conservatism, and the history of U.S. foreign policy. A must-read."—Michael Koncewicz, author of They Said No to Nixon: Republicans Who Stood Up to the President's Abuses of Power
"The book makes a valuable contribution to the political history of defense spending during the Cold War and especially to understandings of how various interest groups sought to harness defense spending for their own economic and ideological purposes."―H-Diplo
"Brenes’ research provides a fast-paced, enjoyable introduction to a crucial period in American economic, political, and military history. It also raises further questions that are worth investigating by political scientists and historians alike."―International Journal"Michael Brenes has written an intriguing and thought-provoking work . . . For Might and Right is a unique blend of political history, class history, and domestic Cold War history that explains the evolution of the 'Cold War coalition' and its transformative effect on the United States during the Cold War and into the 1990s."—Journal of American History
"For Might and Right enhances our understanding of the American political economy of defence spending in the Cold War and beyond . . . This book is also a welcome addition to the literature on the rise of the American Right, and should interest an audience as diverse as the ‘Cold War coalition’ itself."—Diplomacy and Statecraft"For Might and Right....offers a rich contribution to the study of the Cold War’s consequences in the realm of domestic political economy." —Diplomatic History
Select Articles and Op-Eds
"How America Broke its War Machine"
Privatization and the Hollowing Out of the U.S. Defense Industry
Foreign Affairs, July 3, 2023
"Progressives and a New Global Order"
The daunting task of Ukrainian reconstruction demands new frameworks for humanitarian assistance and development.development.
Boston Review, April 25, 2023
"A Known and Unknown War"
A retrospective on the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq
Contingent Magazine, March 20, 2023
The war in Ukraine offers a chance to re-imagine US foreign policy. Restrainers should not let it go to waste.
Foreign Exchanges, December 19, 2022
Rivalry with China and Russia reinforces the real causes of American decline.
Foreign Affairs, July 14, 2022
Review of Samuel Moyn's book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War.
Tocqueville 21, September 7, 2021
Review of Christopher Capozzola' book Bound By War: How the United States and the Philippines Built America's First Pacific Century
Jacobin, August 13, 2021
"How Biden can Reinvest in America While Avoiding a New Cold War" (co-authored with Michael Franczak)
.Competition with China doesn’t have to mean ‘we win, they lose.’
Responsible Statecraft, July 8, 2021
A century of failed liberal attempts at policing reform in Minneapolis supports the view that none of the city council’s current proposals will prevent there from being another George Floyd.
Boston Review, April 26, 2021
"Legacies of Cold War Liberalism" (co-authored with Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins)
See the response by Kevin Mattson to our essay here.
Read our reply to Mattson here.
To promote democratic and egalitarian ideals today, we need to break with the anxieties that drove U.S. politics during the Cold War.
Dissent, Winter 2021 edition (print)
Centrist Democrats who blamed the left for election losses would do well to remember the people who have fought for and shaped the party’s history.
The Nation, December 9, 2020
World War I wasn’t a war for democracy — it was a catastrophic, barbaric conflict that left tens of millions of people dead and set the stage for anti-democratic rollbacks for years to come. Anti-war socialists were right to oppose it.
Jacobin, November 11, 2020
What “Defund the Police” can learn from the six-decade effort to radically demilitarize U.S. foreign policy
The New Republic, June 18, 2020
Any attempt to revive solidarity between rich and poor nations must begin by recapturing the commitment to social and economic rights on which the WHO was founded.
Boston Review, May 4, 2020
Cutting dysfunctional programs offers a start to ending American primacy.
Foreign Policy, February 11, 2020
“A Moral Stain on the Profession” (co-authored with Daniel Bessner)
See the responses to our essay by James Grossman and Allison Miller here and here.
Read our reply to Grossman and Miller here.
As the humanities collapse, it’s time to name and shame the culprits
The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 26, 2019
It’s not a pipe dream.
The Nation, February 26, 2019
How liberals, over decades, worked to undermine a proposal that has long enjoyed public support
The New Republic, May 11, 2018
If he had won in 1968, the Vietnam War would have ended sooner, and America would be a much different place today.
The New York Times, March 23, 2018
Recent Public Talks and Events
Thursday, January 25, 2024, 4:30-5:30pm
Temple University, Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy, Lecture Series
This talk will examine how the fight against global communism during the Cold War transformed the politics and political economy of the United States. Drawing on his book, For Might and Right, Michael Brenes shows how U.S. military spending and the creation of a permanent “military-industrial complex” created a powerful and enduring political coalition in the United States, one that sought to profit from or exploit Cold War foreign policy to serve its interests. This “Cold War coalition” mobilized around calls for increased defense spending throughout the Cold War, and united an array of actors across the United States, including defense workers, community boosters, military contractors, current and retired members of the armed services, activists, and politicians. When confronted with economic austerity and uncertainty surrounding America’s foreign policy after the 1960s, the Cold War coalition championed military spending as a bipartisan solution to create jobs and stimulate economic growth over the expansion of social welfare programs. The Cold War coalition ultimately paved the way for the American Right to take power during the 1980s, remaking American democracy in ways that now resonate in an era of “great-power competition” during the presidency of Joe Biden.
Select Media Appearances
July 25, 2022
November 15, 2021
August 23, 2021
March 31, 2021
February 11, 2011
January 15, 2021
December 8, 2020
December 3, 2020
June 29, 2020
January 7, 2018
