Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter/X @MWPalen

From food weaponization’s deadly comeback to the short-lived NATO-Russia honeymoon, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history.

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Food Weaponization Makes a Deadly Comeback

Zach Helder, Mike Espy, Dan Glickman, Mike Johanns, and Devry Boughner Vorwerk
Foreign Affairs

Food is a weapon of war. Like nuclear weapons, the weaponization of food can bring about mass civilian deaths and unthinkable horrors, provoking rightful moral outrage at the prospect of its use. But unlike nuclear weapons, food weaponization is routinely used in warfare. And in our globalized world, this tool has become more dangerous than ever.

Conflict has long been a central driver of global hunger. This enduring pattern is on tragic display today in places such as the Gaza Strip, Haiti, and Sudan, where millions of civilians are now on the brink of famine. [continue reading]

Palestine at Bandung: How the historic Asian-African conference challenged imperialism

Joseph Massad
Middle East Eye

The Palestinian people’s fight for independence and self-determination has not ceased since World War One. In 1919, the Palestinians appealed to the imperialist powers meeting at the Paris Conference, demanding independence. But like those of many other colonised peoples who appealed to the conferees, their demands were ignored.

Imperial support for the Zionist settler-colonial project went into high gear when it was formally supported by the League of Nations, which included the Balfour Declaration in its official Mandate over Palestine that was handed over to the British. After World War Two, struggles and calls for independence and self-determination increased all over the colonised world. [continue reading]

Amsterdam to mark role of tram system in transportation of Jews to death camps

Senay Boztas
Guardian

On 8 August 1944, an Amsterdam tram took Anne Frank from Weteringschans prison, past the “secret annexe” where she had hidden from the Nazis, on the start of a journey to her death. It was one of a series of Dutch night trams that deported 48,000 Jewish Amsterdammers during the Holocaust, trams commissioned by the Nazis and paid for with the Jewish wealth they stole.

Two weeks after the release of a documentary by the Emmy award-winning film director Willy Lindwer, showing the complicity of the city’s transport service, Amsterdam has announced it will mark the network’s role in the Holocaust with memorial boards at key stations. In Lindwer’s film, Lost City, which has been subtitled in English, Lindwer and the author Guus Luijters ride a historic tram 8 around the city, interviewing Holocaust survivors about the role of trams in carrying away 48,000 of the 63,000 Jewish Amsterdammers who were murdered. [continue reading]

War looms for Europe, warns Poland’s Donald Tusk

Claudia Chiappa
Politico

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that Europe is in a “pre-war era” but still has a “long way to go” before it’s ready to face the threat ahead. “I don’t want to scare anyone, but war is no longer a concept from the past,” Tusk said in an interview with several European media outlets. “It is real, in fact it already started more than two years ago.” Tusk said what’s most worrying right now is that “literally any scenario is possible,” adding that Europe has not faced a situation like this since 1945.

“I know it sounds devastating, especially to people of the younger generation, but we have to mentally get used to the arrival of a new era,” he said. “The pre-war era. I don’t exaggerate. This is becoming more and more apparent every day.” [continue reading]

The Short-lived NATO-Russia Honeymoon

Svetlana Savranskaya and Thomas Blanton
National Security Archive

Top NATO and U.S. officials worked out cooperative agreements with senior Russian leaders including the defense minister of the newly independent Russian Federation during three years of high-level dialogue and hands-on engagement from 1992 to 1995, according to previously secret Russian and American documents published today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

Marking the 75th anniversary of the signing of the NATO Treaty in April 1949, the new publication illuminates the all-too-brief period of close U.S., NATO, and Russian security cooperation in the 1990s, which dramatically reduced nuclear arms and risks, addressed peacekeeping challenges in the Balkans, and held out hope of Russia’s eventual integration into Europe and partnership with NATO. [continue reading]