Livestream: Boiling Point: How America Brought War to Ukraine

In partnership with Northwestern Michigan College’s International Affairs Forum, the Central Michigan University Hart-Milliken Speaker Series hosts Stephen Kinzer, former New York Times foreign correspondent and award-winning writer & bestselling author. Kinzer is a Senior Fellow in International & Public Affairs, Watson School of International & Public Affairs, at Brown University. 

Until the Russian invasion in 2022, few Americans could find Ukraine on a map. Once the fighting began, however, support for its cause surged. The reason was clear: Russia was the aggressor, Ukraine its victim. Yet this war did not explode out of nowhere. For seventy-five years, Moscow and Washington have fought over Ukraine. It is the most sustained covert conflict in modern history. Both sides sought to keep this story secret. They succeeded—until now.

In his groundbreaking new book, Boiling Point: How America Brought War to Ukraine, Kinzer tells this long-hidden story. Beginning in the refugee camps of postwar Europe, where CIA officers recruited their first Ukrainian agents, it follows generations of rebels, exiles, traitors, and covert operatives through decades of clandestine missions. Although nearly all of the guerrilla warriors that the CIA sent into Ukraine were captured or killed, it never gave up. From the late 1940s through the end of the Cold War, American leaders saw Ukrainians as their most effective weapon against Moscow. They continued to press that strategy after Ukraine’s independence and the eastward expansion of the US-dominated NATO alliance.

Richly detailed and plot-driven, Boiling Point shows how the United States made Ukraine its most important European project of the twenty-first century, culminating in the escalation that led to war. From battlefields in the Carpathians to smoke-filled offices in New York to the Olympic Games, it is full of the wild stories and improbable characters that made All the Shah’s Men a classic. This is the last great untold spy-versus-spy story of our time.

This event will take place at the Dennos Museum Center Milliken Auditorium in Traverse City with a livestream at CMU in Anspach 256 moderated by CMU faculty member Thomas Greitens, chairperson of the School of Politics, Society, Justice and Public Service. The Philip A. Hart and William G. Milliken Endowed Speaker Series for Integrity in Politics is named in memory of former U.S. Senator Philip A. Hart and former Michigan Governor William G. Milliken.