Harkness Semester 2 Summaries

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

The global transition to "clean," green energy is built on a foundation of modern-day slavery, human degradation, and neocolonial exploitation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). He argues that the convenient, high-tech lives of billions of consumers—and the massive profits of Western tech and auto giants—are directly subsidized by the blood and suffering of the Congolese people.

Why Nations Go To War

Wars are not caused by abstract, impersonal forces like economic systems, alliances, or historical inevitability; rather, they are the direct result of personal misperceptions, hubris, and fatalistic decisions made by individual political and military leaders. Stoessinger rejects the traditional structural explanations for World War I (such as the rigid alliance system or the arms race) and firmly places the accountability on the shoulders of the flawed human beings who held power in July 1914.

How to Be A Dictator - Mussolini

A cult of personality is not a peripheral byproduct of a dictator's megalomania, but rather a rational, indispensable tool of governance placed at the very heart of tyranny. Dikötter argues that no dictator can rule through raw violence and fear alone over the long term. Instead, they must enforce global sycophancy to manufacture the illusion of popular support, which functions primarily to paralyze opposition, subdue rivals, and preserve power.

Barbarossa

World War II in Europe was primarily driven by the pathological personality and distorted self-image of Adolf Hitler, but it was actively enabled by Joseph Stalin's catastrophic psychological blindness and mirror-imaging. While Chapter 1 established that weak leaders can blunder into war through shared miscalculations, Chapter 2 introduces a more dangerous variable: the "War Lover"—a leader driven by an inherent, unappeasable urge for destruction—and contrasts him with an adversary who completely misread his psychology.

The Cultural Revolution

Mao Zedong deliberately unleashed the chaotic, violent impulses of China's youth to bypass the traditional Communist Party apparatus, dismantle civil society, and establish absolute psychological dominance over the population through a weaponized cult of personality. Dikötter emphasizes that the atrocities committed during this period were not an accidental breakdown of law and order, but a direct result of explicit top-down encouragement mixed with grassroots fanaticism.