The government of a country makes explicit or implicit threats to another: "if you cross this line, we will inflict harm upon you." The threat fails; the government crosses the designated line. Has deterrence failed? Well, yes. Of course. By definition. It is, for example, unequivocally true that the United States did not deter Russia from invading Georgia in 2008, nor Ukraine in 2014, nor Ukraine (again) in 2022. Should you have any doubts...
We're re-upping this guest post as part of our series on changing the field. #IRChange. This is the second post (the first is here). This is a guest post from several authors including: Jessica F. Green, Associate Professor, Political Science, University of Toronto (@greenprofgreen)David Konisky, Professor, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University (@DavidKonisky)Megan Mullin, Associate Professor, Nicholas School of the...
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel de facto announced on Friday that the US will scrap deployment of ground-based ballistic-missile interceptors in Poland and Romania. At a Pentagon press conference today, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced that the planned deployment of the high-speed SM-3 Block IIB interceptor to Poland (and the corresponding 4th phase of European Phased Adaptive Approach) has been cancelled. The transcript of Hagel’s...
tl;dr notice: 1200 words. Zack Beauchamp points us to Douglas Feith's latest broadside against the administration with the tweet: LOL Feith cites @slaughteram and Sam Power's jobs as evidence that Obama wanted to limit American use of military force It turns out that the absurdity runs far deeper in Feith's piece. I know that Obama's fecklessness in the face of the Russian threat is an article of faith among neo-conservatives. As I've mentioned...
Robert Golan-Viella reflects on a tectonic shift in partisan foreign-policy debate, i.e., the fact that the Democrats have the upper hand. He chalks this up to campaign politics: the key to a Republican victory runs through the economy. I agree that there are "strong critiques" of Obama foreign policy and that "leading Republicans aren't making them." But I don't think this is "politically smart," insofar as leading Republicans are making...
Associated PressAlthough he doesn't get the European Phased Adapted Approach (EPAA) quite right, Mark Adomanis at Forbes makes the right point about the BMD portion of the Romney foreign-policy memo:I don’t think I’m being uncharitable, but if you read this paragraph and didn’t have any background knowledge about US missile defense in Eastern Europe you would come away with at least two very clear conclusions 1) Obama canceled a missile defense...
Moscow is once again expressing displeasure with US and NATO missile defense plans.Russia says it is prepared to use "destructive force pre-emptively" if the US goes ahead with controversial plans for a missile defence system based in Central Europe. The warning came after the Russian defence minister said talks on missile defence were nearing a dead end. Moscow fears that missile interceptors would be a threat to Russia's security.But the US...