Pierre Atlas

Pierre Atlas

United States
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I am a Senior Lecturer at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs…

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  • O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs Graphic

    O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs

    Indianapolis, Indiana, United States

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    Indianapolis, Indiana, United States

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    United States

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    Indianapolis, Indiana, United States

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    Indianapolis, Indiana, United States

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    Washington, District of Columbia, United States

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    Indianapolis, Indiana, United States

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    Indianapolis, Indiana, United States

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    Defense Language Institute, Presidio of Monterey, CA

Education

Volunteer Experience

Publications

  • American gun culture is based on frontier mythology – but ignores how common gun restrictions were in the Old West

    The Conversation

    Contrary to the imagery of the Wild West, many towns in the real Old West had restrictions on the carrying of guns that were, I would suggest, stricter than the New York law recently invalidated by the Supreme Court. The historical reality of the American frontier was more complex and nuanced than its popular mythology. But it’s the mythology that fuels American gun culture today, which rejects the types of laws that were commonplace in the Old West. Hardcore gun owners, their lobbyists and…

    Contrary to the imagery of the Wild West, many towns in the real Old West had restrictions on the carrying of guns that were, I would suggest, stricter than the New York law recently invalidated by the Supreme Court. The historical reality of the American frontier was more complex and nuanced than its popular mythology. But it’s the mythology that fuels American gun culture today, which rejects the types of laws that were commonplace in the Old West. Hardcore gun owners, their lobbyists and many members of the Republican Party refuse to allow the thousands of annual gun deaths and the additional thousands of nonfatal shootings to be used as justifications for restricting their rights as law-abiding citizens. They are willing to accept gun violence as an inevitable side effect of a free and armed but violent society.

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  • Book Review: Sand Creek and the Tragic End of a Lifeway, by Louis Kraft

    Great Plains Quarterly

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  • Book review: A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada-United States Border across Indigenous Lands, by Benjamin Hoy

    History: Reviews of New Books

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  • Frontier Violence and Law and Order: Historical and Geographical Variance in the Great Plains of the North American West

    International Journal of Canadian Studies

    Stark differences between the United States and Canada in the post-Civil War/post-Confederation frontier West of the Great Plains and Prairies regarding the role of government, levels of interpersonal violence, and access to firearms (especially handguns) helped to shape the two countries’ divergent developmental paths. Utilizing the alternative approaches of Seymour Martin Lipset’s “origins thesis” and borderlands studies to structure its analysis, this article contrasts the frontier…

    Stark differences between the United States and Canada in the post-Civil War/post-Confederation frontier West of the Great Plains and Prairies regarding the role of government, levels of interpersonal violence, and access to firearms (especially handguns) helped to shape the two countries’ divergent developmental paths. Utilizing the alternative approaches of Seymour Martin Lipset’s “origins thesis” and borderlands studies to structure its analysis, this article contrasts the frontier experiences of both countries in the nineteenth century concerning gun laws, violence, and the enforcement of law and order. Canada’s frontier West was demonstrably more orderly and peaceful than was the American frontier, yet the closer one came to the 49th parallel, the more rowdy and violence-prone were the Canadian towns and settlements. Nevertheless, despite occasional instances of lawlessness, even the Alberta borderlands were not as violent or unruly as the American frontier, due in large measure to a strong central government and the effectiveness of the North-West Mounted Police.

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  • Of Peaceable Kingdoms and Lawless Frontiers: Exploring the Relationship between History, Mythology and Gun Culture in the North American West

    American Review of Canadian Studies

    The United States is more violent than Canada and it always has been. Even in the face of mass shootings, most Americans remain culturally and politically resistant to the sorts of gun control measures that have long existed in Canada. America’s unique gun culture is embedded in the history, imagery, and especially the mythology of the American frontier. Canada had its own frontier experience and has its own history of gun ownership, but it does not have a parallel gun culture. This article…

    The United States is more violent than Canada and it always has been. Even in the face of mass shootings, most Americans remain culturally and politically resistant to the sorts of gun control measures that have long existed in Canada. America’s unique gun culture is embedded in the history, imagery, and especially the mythology of the American frontier. Canada had its own frontier experience and has its own history of gun ownership, but it does not have a parallel gun culture. This article presents a comparative analysis of post-Civil War/post-Confederation frontier history and mythology, and examines the construction of contrasting cultural narratives of America’s “Wild West” and Canada’s “Mild West.” It suggests that US–Canadian differences in gun laws and gun culture—even in the borderlands region of Alberta/Montana—are better explained by the countries’ two different frontier mythologies than by their actual western histories.

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  • Constructing and Enforcing the “Medicine Line”: A Comparative Analysis of Indian Policy on the North American Frontier

    American Review of Canadian Studies

    The national self-images of the United States and Canada have been shaped, in part, by their contrasting histories and mythologies of westward expansion and nation-building. Those narratives are most distinct with regard to government policies toward aboriginal peoples on either side of the 49th parallel, what Indians called “the medicine line.” The purpose of this article is two fold: (1) to specify and develop a three-part conceptual framework (consisting of the Turnerian discourse, the…

    The national self-images of the United States and Canada have been shaped, in part, by their contrasting histories and mythologies of westward expansion and nation-building. Those narratives are most distinct with regard to government policies toward aboriginal peoples on either side of the 49th parallel, what Indians called “the medicine line.” The purpose of this article is two fold: (1) to specify and develop a three-part conceptual framework (consisting of the Turnerian discourse, the Lipset Thesis, and Borderlands Studies) for examining the history of the North American frontier and (2) utilizing a wide range of scholarly literature, to apply that framework in a comparative analysis of national policies toward Indians and First Nations in the post–Civil War/post–Confederation period on the Great Plains and Prairies. Several explanatory factors for cross-national difference will be identified and examined, including variance in geography and geology; demography, demographic trends, and political pressures in each country; the types of national political institutions and their impact on policymaking; and the types of forces deployed in the West (the Mounties and the US Army).

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  • U.S. Foreign Policy and the Arab Spring: Balancing Values and Interests

    Digest of Middle East Studies

    The rapid and unpredictable changes in the Middle East collectively known as the “Arab Spring” are posing tremendous challenges to U.S. policy formation and action. This article will explore and evaluate evolving U.S. policy in the Middle East and its potential implications. There has always been a tension in American foreign policy between pursuing American “values” (foreign policy idealism) and protecting American “interests” (foreign policy realism). For decades, the United States has sought…

    The rapid and unpredictable changes in the Middle East collectively known as the “Arab Spring” are posing tremendous challenges to U.S. policy formation and action. This article will explore and evaluate evolving U.S. policy in the Middle East and its potential implications. There has always been a tension in American foreign policy between pursuing American “values” (foreign policy idealism) and protecting American “interests” (foreign policy realism). For decades, the United States has sought to “make the world safe for democracy,” while at the same time often supporting repressive, nondemocratic regimes because of national security or economic self‐interest. The tension between these two fundamentally distinct policy orientations has become even more pronounced as the United States tries to respond to the Arab Spring uprisings. Why did the United States actively support the rebels in Libya but not the protestors in Syria or Bahrain? Is there an emerging, coherent “Obama Doctrine” on intervention in Arab countries, or was Libya just a “one‐off” event? These are some of the questions that this article will attempt to answer.

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  • Atlas and Licklider, Conflict among Former Allies after Civil War Settlement: Sudan, Zimbabwe, Chad, and Lebanon

    Journal of Peace Research

    The interesting theoretical question about civil war in general is not why it begins (the possible reasons are surely too many to enumerate) or why it stops (all sorts of contingent explanations from simple fatigue to outside force may apply) but why it so often does not resume when it might. We need to comprehend this process of conflict transformation, whereby the conflict either becomes less important or is pursued without using mass violence. Understandably, most analyses and prescriptions…

    The interesting theoretical question about civil war in general is not why it begins (the possible reasons are surely too many to enumerate) or why it stops (all sorts of contingent explanations from simple fatigue to outside force may apply) but why it so often does not resume when it might. We need to comprehend this process of conflict transformation, whereby the conflict either becomes less important or is pursued without using mass violence. Understandably, most analyses and prescriptions for peacemakers focus on relationships between former enemies and attempts to reduce incentives for them to take up arms again. However, a recent analysis of four negotiated settlements of civil wars (Sudan in 1972, Zimbabwe in 1980, Chad in 1987, and Lebanon in 1989) reveals that in all four cases the critical conflict was actually between former allies. The compromises required in negotiated settlements, combined with the other problems of post-civil war societies, make such conflicts likely. In some cases they led to violence; in Zimbabwe and Lebanon conflict again reached the level of civil war. However, the ironic results was that the countries that had experienced the most violence subsequently produced new settlements which essentially confirmed the original ones and appear to be holding. In Sudan, interallied violence was quite low, but the result was that the government changed its policy, the first settlement was undermined, and the original civil war began again. Outsiders should not assume either that wartime cooperation will continue in peace or that `normal' peacetime behavior will naturally appear of its own accord. Indeed, they should probably anticipate that ad hoc wartime alliances are likely to dissolve with the risk of renewed civil violence.

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