Post Archives

In this episode of Diplomatic Immunity, Kelly is joined by historian and journalist Stephen Kinzer to discuss his book The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire. They dig into the Spanish-American War, the fierce imperialist vs. anti-imperialist debate it sparked, and how those same arguments still echo through American foreign policy today. Find The True Flag here: https://www.amazon.com/True-Flag-Theo… Listen to the episode The opinions expressed in this conversation are strictly those of the participants and do not represent the views of Georgetown University or any government entity. Diplomatic Immunity, a podcast from the Institute…

What if the Civil War’s most consequential diplomacy didn’t happen in London or Washington — but in the back offices of Bahamian merchants, the shipyards of Liverpool, and the harbors of Nassau? In this episode, Kelly McFarland sits down with historian and Army veteran Beau Cleland to discuss his award-winning book “Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy” — winner of the 2026 Wiley Silver Prize for the best first book in the history of the Civil War. Beau reveals how a decentralized network of blockade runners, private merchants, and colonial opportunists…

In this episode of Diplomatic Immunity, our host Kelly McFarland sits down with Dr. Amy Greenberg, professor at Penn State and author of A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico, to explore one of the most consequential — and least remembered — wars in American history. We trace the origins of the Mexican-American War from the Texas Revolution and the annexation debate, through James K. Polk’s deliberate provocation of conflict, to the rogue diplomacy of Nicholas Trist, whose defiance of presidential orders ultimately shaped the modern American Southwest. Listen to the episode The opinions…

In this episode of Diplomatic Immunity, host Kelly McFarland sits down with presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky, executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon, to explore one of the most consequential partnerships in American foreign policy history: James Monroe and his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams. They dig into the origins of the Monroe Doctrine, why Adams famously turned down a British alliance offer, and what it actually meant to declare the Western Hemisphere off-limits to European imperial expansion in 1823. From the Adams-Onís Treaty to the Greek War of Independence, this conversation reveals just how…

In this episode of Diplomatic Immunity, host Kelly McFarland sits down with Dr. Tyson Reeder, assistant professor of history at Brigham Young University and author of Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison’s America (Oxford University Press, 2024 — winner of the 2025 George Washington Prize). Together, they explore the presidency of James Madison as part of our 2026 Road to 250 series, examining key turning points in American foreign policy. Topics covered: The opinions expressed in this conversation are strictly those of the participants and do not represent the views of Georgetown University or any…