Aug 21, 2025 | During his second term, Donald Trump has railed against the United States’ closest allies. He has imposed tariffs, threatened to upend security commitments, and openly challenged the borders of Canada, Panama, and Greenland.
Historians often look to the past for insight about the present and future. But although alliances have collapsed for many reasons over past centuries, Margaret MacMillan argues in a recent essay for Foreign Affairs that Trump’s current behavior toward allies has little precedent. His approach, she writes, “does not suggest a clever Machiavellian policy to enhance American power; rather, it shows a United States acting against its own interests in bewildering fashion, undermining one of the key sources of that power.”
A renowned historian and professor emeritus of international history at Oxford University, MacMillan is one of the greatest chroniclers of the grand alliances of the twentieth century and the world wars they fought. She joined Editor-at-Large Hugh Eakin on August 18 to discuss the normalization of conquest and the war in Ukraine, how U.S. allies are calculating their next steps, and what the United States’ approach to its alliances will mean for the future.
Nov 12, 2014 | International historian Margaret MacMillan returns to The Agenda to discuss the events that led to the First World War, as chronicled in her book "The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914." MacMillan tells Steve Paikin why Europe's major powers made decisions that resulted in The Great War.
Oct 17, 2013 | Thursday, September 19, 2013 at 8:00 pm in the Humanities Theatre, Hagey Hall. Professor Margaret MacMillan is regarded as a leading historian of the British Empire at the turn of the 20th century. She is an officer of the Order of Canada, a member of the Royal Society of Literature, and a professor of history at Oxford University. In addition to numerous articles on Canadian and world affairs, Professor MacMillan has written several award-winning books, including The Uses and Abuses of History and Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World.
Nov 12, 2014 | International historian Margaret MacMillan returns to The Agenda to discuss the events that led to the First World War, as chronicled in her book "The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914." MacMillan tells Steve Paikin why Europe's major powers made decisions that resulted in The Great War.
