Curated playlist
Political realists
- Colin PowellOn the 5th of February 2003, Colin Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council. He told the council: "there can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." The…
- Henry KissingerHenry Kissinger made a secret trip to China in July 1971. It helped end 23 years of diplomatic isolation.
- Adam SmithAdam Smith once walked straight into a tanning pit while talking about free trade.
- Niccolò MachiavelliMachiavelli never saw The Prince printed. It appeared in 1532, five years after he died.
- Carl von ClausewitzCarl von Clausewitz died of cholera with his masterwork unfinished. His widow published On War the next year.
- Thomas HobbesThomas Hobbes, the English philosopher born in 1588 at Westport in Wiltshire, liked to say that his mother gave birth to twins: "myself and fear." He arrived early, because news had just reached the household that the Spanish Armada was…
- ThucydidesThucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War stops in the middle of 411 BC, roughly mid-sentence.
- Sun TzuDid Sun Tzu, the reputed author of The Art of War, even exist? Scholars have doubted it since the 12th century.
- George F. KennanGeorge Kennan spent decades disowning the Cold War policy he made famous. Containment, he said, was not military.
- John Maynard KeynesAt Bretton Woods in 1944, Keynes proposed a world currency called the bancor, and the United States rejected it.