More than two decades after the Cold War supposedly came to a peaceful conclusion,Russia’s encroachment on Ukrainian sovereignty and its outright annexation of Crimea have occasioned a retro flashback. A byproduct of this geopolitical turmoil is NATO’s renewed importance to foreign policy.

The sign outside the new visitor centre reads simply “The Battle of Bannockburn” as though one had rolled up in time for the fight, instead of 700 years too late. The approach to the site goes through the dull suburbs of Stirling, via a northerly spur of Scotland’s patchy motorway system.

When Iranian militants seized the United States Embassy and took dozens of Americans hostage on an overcast Sunday morning in November 1979, I assumed it was just a brief anti-American sit-in. My main concern, I told my editors at Newsweek, was not how dangerous Tehran would be.

Professor Mohammed S. Dajani took 27 Palestinian college students to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland a few weeks ago as part of a project designed to teach empathy and tolerance.

The United States and Canada are far more integrated than most people think. In fact, a merger between the two countries isn’t just desirable—it’s inevitable. We share more than just the world’s longest border. We share the same values, lifestyles and aspirations. Our societies and economies are becoming similar in significant ways.

Last week I joined several hundred other scholars at the 2014 International Studies Association convention. As expected, opinions on events in Ukraine abound. I was struck by the multiplicity of versions of the same events. More interesting still was how readily scholars were to label different versions as “propaganda.”

In a sign of the warmth of relations between two countries with a troubled history, Ireland’s president, Michael D. Higgins, is to arrive here Monday for the first state visit to Britain by an Irish president.

Mainland academics argued that China was the first to discover the disputed Diaoyu Islands and insisted this be taught in schools, days after Japan declared the contrary in its elementary school textbooks.