The Global Chessboard: On Geopolitics and Hegemony

Jialai She

Challenge the conventional narrative that the US dollar’s global dominance was a natural market outcome. This essay uncovers the hidden history of the petrodollar system, detailing the strategic government maneuvers and secret deals with Saudi Arabia that established the dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency. It reveals how the financialization of oil created a new form of American hegemony, with profound and lasting consequences for the global economy.

Nathan Hu

Unpack the often-overlooked role of US “shadow diplomacy” in driving one of the 20th century’s key decolonization movements. This essay argues that persistent American political and economic pressure, rooted in anti-colonial ideology and strategic self-interest, was a primary force compelling the British Empire to grant Malaysia its independence, challenging the mainstream historical narrative focused solely on local nationalist movements.

Peyson Bilimoria

Go beyond the simple anti-Communist explanation for the 1953 Iranian Coup. This investigation uses recently declassified documents to argue that Operation Ajax was not the result of a single policy, but the chaotic culmination of multiple, uncoordinated US entities with shifting agendas. It reveals how it was only when these separate interests aligned that the historic and controversial coup was finally set in motion.

Isabela Pierry

Delve into one of the most notorious examples of corporate neocolonialism in modern history. This essay analyzes the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état through the competing “Revisionist” and “Realist” perspectives, questioning the true extent of the United Fruit Company’s influence versus the CIA’s Cold War containment strategy. It offers a fascinating case study in how corporate power and geopolitics can fatally intertwine.

Bethany Zhao

Investigate the deliberate framing of the 1970 Kent State shootings, where the Nixon administration successfully portrayed student protestors as the perpetrators to preserve its Cold War image. This study reveals how the administration cultivated a narrative equating dissent with being unpatriotic, manipulating public perception to consolidate domestic power amidst national division and foreign conflict, providing a stark lesson in state-sponsored narrative control.

Cooper Schirmeier

Examine the evolving nature of state influence through Russia’s use of the Wagner Group in the Central African Republic. This paper demonstrates how private military companies can function as shadow authorities, using strategic economic and political operations to entrench a foreign power’s influence, diminish national sovereignty, and shape the future of fragile states in the absence of international regulation.