Millions of people around the world are watching breathlessly as teams compete in the World Cup, held in Qatar. Many others--like me--tune it out, turned off by that guy in grad school who spent a semester in Barcelona and then pretended to be a life-long Spain fan....
As someone who works on religion and politics, I encounter the term "soft power" a lot. Most of the time it's in a good way; soft power is a means to advocate for policies that draw on our values...
The broad goal of this blog, to the credit of its founders, is to bridge the gap between foreign policy practitioners and foreign policy scholars. Prior to joining it recently, I have known its...
THE CANARD"All the fake news that's fit to print."--South BostonPhotograph by Matt GratiasArea political scientist Joseph Nye of Harvard University emerged Sunday as a hero, thwarting an attempted...
Una Marson, George Orwell, T.S. Eliot and others at the World Service during WW2The reputation of the BBC World Service around the world reflects that of Britain generally. It’s an institution tied to colonial history. It aspires to global reach. Through its journalism it tries to uphold values of impartiality and objectivity, and therein lies the attractive, soft power dimension. As an institution, however, it cannot escape appearing partial – it is funded by the British state, and that state wouldn’t continue to fund it unless it was serving Britain’s interests. Therein lies the appearance...
As I always tell my World Politics 101 students, the word is "nuclear," folks. Noo-clee-ahr. No such word as "nuk-ya-lar"! Yet here we go, Sarah Palin on the stage pontificating about nukes (HT to Moira Whelan at Democracy Arsenal):Seems like a silly thing to bitch about, eh? But goddammit, the thought of listening to my President or Vice-President further embarrass our country and belittle the incredible threat posed by these weapons by mangling that word for the next four to eight years, well, let's just say my botherment is probably at least as disproportionate as the utility of nukes to...
I've expressed skepticism in the past about the idea that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization represents counterbalancing against the United States. And I still believe that the primary purpose of the organization isn't to function as a NATO-like block, but more as an alternative or "exit" option for public goods provided by the US. But The rhetoric certainly sounds an awful lot like, if not balancing, then some sort of proto-balancing. BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan - The leaders of Russia, China and Iran said Thursday that Central Asia should be left alone to manage its stability and security — an...
I've finally gotten around to reading Joseph Nye's The Paradox of American Power. Nye makes a very interesting argument, but one that I wish I had known about as late as a few months ago:Finally, as the prior example suggests, the hub-and-spokes model may blind us to changes that are taking place in the architecture of the global networks. Network theorists argue that central players gain power most when there are structural holes--gaps in communications--between other participants. When the spokes cannot communicate with each other without going through each other, the hub becomes less...
From Anders Stephanson's Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right, pp. 61: "The nation," [Seward] instructed the Senate in 1853, "that draws the most materials and provisions from the earth, fabricates the most, and sells the most productions of fabrics to foreign nations, must be, and will be, the great power of the earth." This was his basic geo-economic premise. Command over the "ultimate empire of the ocean," the only "real empire," was therefore what mattered. Britain offered a glaringly obvious lesson to this effect. Laggard by comparison, the United States...