The 2018 presidential election marked a watershed moment in Brazilian politics with the ascension of Jair Bolsonaro, who secured over 55% of the vote and became the primary catalyst for a novel far-right political alignment. This movement, termed Bolsonarismo, is characterized by a multidimensional political rhetoric that synthesizes reactionary stances on crime, corruption, and sociocultural issues—specifically regarding gender and LGBTQ+ rights—with militarist, economically liberal, and authoritarian inclinations. Bolsonaro’s ideological positioning oscillates between a radical, illiberal far-right and a more extreme, authoritarian posture, consistently commanding a resilient support base of approximately 20% of the electorate. This consolidation of the right-wing spectrum has effectively marginalized “third-way” alternatives, establishing him as the movement’s uncontested figurehead. Chapter 3 investigates the roots of Bolsonaro’s oratory, demonstrating that the core tenets of Bolsonarismo were embedded in his discourse before his presidency. Through a systematic analysis of his public statements and legislative rhetoric, the chapter shows how he championed positions aligned with the global far-right. Furthermore, the analysis examines his executive actions, focusing on his response to the COVID-19 pandemic and his disruption of conditional cash transfer programs as a form of policy rebranding.

This essay compares disparate responses of African Americans to “brown babies”—children of African American servicemen and German women born because of WWII—and Black Amerasians, offspring of African American servicemen and Vietnamese women born during the Vietnam War. It argues that African American assertions of transnational racial kinship with Germany’s brown babies and rejection of Black Amerasians from Vietnam informed how both groups of children grappled with illegitimacy, race, and identity. It situates the Black response to brown babies within the civil rights era and the reaction to Black Amerasians amidst the aftermath of Vietnam. Each moment forced African Americans, brown babies, and Black Amerasians to confront questions of race and responsibility for illegitimate children born abroad. African American efforts to “save” brown babies from Germany and to rescue Black Amerasians from Vietnam forced child welfare professionals in each country to reconsider transnational and transracial adoption processes. By juxtaposing African American perceptions with children’s lived experiences, the essay reveals challenges posed to notions of race and nation when war creates life.

This essay critically examines the temporality of American war and surveys the persistence of armed conflict in U.S. history. “Wartimes” structure U.S. historical memory. Wartime is thought to be episodic, followed by peacetime. Instead, military conflict is endemic in North American history. Armed conflict was a means of European settlement in the Colonial Era. It was a method of westward expansion. War enabled national survival in the Civil War. It was a means of solidifying American power and influence in the world over time. The geography of war ultimately altered the character of the civilian experience. The Civil War deeply affected civilians, but this direct experience was lost when U.S. wars in the twentieth century were distant from North America. Major twentieth-century wars nevertheless affected the home front. As technology changed warfare, however, armed conflict became an abstraction for the U.S. polity. This undermined political restraint, enabling ongoing small wars, since the nation could go to war without U.S. civilians feeling that they were in a wartime.

It is argued that war, conquest, and slavery fueled northwestern Europe’s precocious economic growth. But that argument is wrong. Slaves and colonies were not necessary for growing cotton or for industrialization. Rather than being prerequisites for economic growth, slaves and colonies were the results of northwestern Europe’s rising economic and military might. They did certainly harm economies in Africa and the Americas and thereby contributed to the great divergence. As for warfare, it damaged economies, including in northwestern Europe. But it brought indirect benefits to Europe. It created strong states and representative institutions. It encouraged urbanization and agglomeration effects as businesses sought shelter from the fighting inside walled cities. It stimulated technical change in war-related industries, such as metalworking. And it helped keep western Europe politically fragmented. That kept new ideas circulating and made it harder to stamp them out. What else kept northwestern Europe fragmented? Western Christianity’s popes and northwestern Europe’s distance from the Eurasian steppe nomads, who might otherwise have conquered and unified all of Europe.

While economic interdependence did not render war between the European great powers unthinkable, it placed significant constraints on the use of military force amongst the great powers. In addition, deepening international trade and capital markets produced new instruments for the European great powers to pursue foreign policy, provide security, and advance interests. This chapter examines the vibrant intellectual and political debates about economic interdependence, the rising costs of war, and the maintenance of peace. It then shows how the risk of war created market turmoil, drawing on two case studies: the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 and the Bosnian Crisis in 1908. Markets recovered, but after political signals demonstrated great power restraint. Using the work of Kurt Riezler, the chapter shows how contemporaries came to understand economic interdependence not merely as a constraint on military force, but as a particular field of power politics. The chapter concludes by examining, briefly, how different European states considered their foreign policy options in an economically interdependent order and how they negotiated the interdependence dilemma.

American gay military life writing emerged as a discrete literary genre in the last decades of the twentieth century. These memoirs include tales by older men who served in World War II and accounts by younger soldiers who navigated the challenges of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In this chapter, I compare these two cohorts of writers to examine their experiences of institutional life and male bonding in the American forces. Their stories, and their purpose for writing, reveal how the forces shaped sexual and political subjectivities. Gay men from the 1940s used their narratives to document the service of “fairies” and butch men attracted to one another, straight soldiers and commanders who accepted gay personnel despite official policies, and the infinite opportunities for sex and friendship. Servicemen of recent decades tell a different story of protest. Their gay life was lonelier than their ancestors, and their memoirs function as conversion narratives. In “coming out,” they craft a respectable masculine self to demand the right to serve openly. Soldiers in both eras recall experiences of prejudice and resistance in an organization hostile and conducive to sex and love between men.

Republican candidate Richard M. Nixon’s promise during the 1968 presidential election campaign to extricate the United States from the Vietnam War, combined with the loss of American domestic political support resulting from the January 1968 Tet Offensive, saw a fundamental change to how the war was conducted. The United States began a process of withdrawing their own combat forces and placing the burden for future combat operations on ARVN formations. While the Australian Government was aware of this change in policy, it was not actively included in American political deliberations and hence was unable to take an active position in the face of Vietnamisation. Left with no detailed guidance on the intended timelines for American withdrawal, the Australian Government could provide no direction to Army on the level of future commitment to the war, other than to reinforce the existing rhetoric that participation in the conflict remained vital for Australian national interests. In this policy vacuum, Army leadership concentrated on the military aspects of the war, with the CGS Exercises of both 1967 and 1968 exploring the implications of increasing the size of the force deployed to South Vietnam.

On 29 April 1965 the Australian Government announced the commitment of an Australian battalion to South Vietnam. Prior to the public announcement, discussions had taken place in Hawaii as to the nature of any future commitment in Vietnam. The staff talks, held early May to late April, were between the American Commander-in-Chief Pacific Command, Admiral U.S.G. Sharp Jr, an Australian delegation led by Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Scherger, and a New Zealand delegation headed by the Chief of the New Zealand Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Peter Phipps. The participants discussed broad American strategy and possible options as to where any future Australian and New Zealand forces could be deployed within the overall American design. Sharp strongly supported the concept of American forces being deployed in enclaves. He believed that the mere existence of American forces within these enclaves would deprive the North Vietnamese Government of an opportunity for victory and thus encourage them to begin negotiations. If the Australians and New Zealanders did deploy in an enclave, the Americans would provide all combat support capabilities (armour, artillery and air support) as well as the necessary logistic support.

The announcement by Prime Minster Holt on 8 March 1966 to send a task force to South Vietnam represented an expansion of the policy associated with the initial deployment of the battalion group. While 1RAR was making an Australian contribution to the conflict, the small size of the force meant it had operational and political limitations. A battalion was too small to conduct operations independently from an American parent unit, reducing its operational flexibility and the political effect of the Australian involvement. Increasing the size of the Australian commitment to a task force would enable Australian forces to exercise their own operational doctrine. It would also placate some criticism that under American leadership 1RAR was suffering a disproportionate number of casualties compared to the American battalions – even if such criticism was unwarranted. Politically, a task force would mark a substantial Australian contribution to the war and thus further reinforce the Australian commitment to ANZUS.

In 1962 the Australian Government deployed Australian military forces in support of the Republic of Vietnam. Before the cessation of combat operations and complete withdrawal in 1972, this commitment would escalate from an initial advisory team, to a battalion group, to a three-battalion task force with supporting armour, cavalry, aviation, artillery and associated logistics elements.After the war in Afghanistan, this would be the Australian Army’s second-longest conflict, lasting almost 11 years and surpassing the previous longest Australian commitment which was to the Malayan Emergency (1955 to 1963).