The Duck of Minerva

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Joshua Busby is a Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. From 2021-2023, he served as a Senior Advisor for Climate at the U.S. Department of Defense. His most recent book is States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (Cambridge, 2023). He is also the author of Moral Movements and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2010) and the co-author, with Ethan Kapstein, of AIDS Drugs for All: Social Movements and Market Transformations (Cambridge, 2013). His main research interests include transnational advocacy and social movements, international security and climate change, global public health and HIV/ AIDS, energy and environmental policy, and U.S. foreign policy.

Recent Posts

Remembering Lee Ann Fujii, a Friend and a Fighter

Remembering Lee Ann Fujii, a Friend and a Fighter

by | 10 March, 2018 |

This is a guest post from Erin Tolley an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Professor Lee Ann Fujii passed away unexpectedly in Seattle on March 2, 2018. This loss is personal because it has robbed me of a brilliant friend and colleague, but it is also public because of all that Lee Ann contributed to the discipline and to her scholarly community. Lee Ann was an expert on race, ethnicity, and political violence. Her first book, Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, focuses on the social context of the Rwandan genocide. She shows...

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International Organizations and the Trump Administration’s New Budget Proposal

International Organizations and the Trump Administration’s New Budget Proposal

by | 10 March, 2018 |

This is a guest post from Tana Johnson, an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Duke University. She is the author of Organizational Progeny: Why Governments Are Losing Control over the Proliferating Structures of Global Governance (now available in paperback, Oxford University Press). Van Nguyen is an undergraduate at Duke University, majoring in Public Policy and Political Science. She is completing a senior honors thesis on inter-governmental institutions and immigrant integration. Within its first year in power, the Trump administration has transformed the U.S.’s...

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Trauma in Common: US Gun Violence and Violence in Armed Conflict

Trauma in Common: US Gun Violence and Violence in Armed Conflict

by | 21 February, 2018 |

This is a guest post by Betcy Jose, Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Colorado-Denver “This is a really good school, and now it’s like a war zone.” This is how one parent reacted when picking up his son from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL after a shooter murdered 17 students and staff. It is a description often used in the aftermath of mass shootings. At first blush, it seems a remarkable comparison to make, especially given that the United States is not embroiled in anything resembling a traditional armed conflict within its borders. The...

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Are IR Schools Broken? Nah.

Are IR Schools Broken? Nah.

by | 21 February, 2018 | ,

IR program rankings are out in Foreign Policy. Discuss. Steve Walt has a provocative column in the same issue that I'm sure he didn't title that suggests "America's IR Schools Are Broken." The argument isn't strictly the familiar one from him about methods but that scholars seeking influence in policy circles have rallied around conformist consensus positions: But perhaps the biggest limitation in today’s schools of international affairs — at least here in the United States — is their tendency to reinforce the stale bipartisan consensus behind “liberal hegemony” and the necessity for “U.S....

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What, Me Worry? The Trump Administration and Pandemic Preparedness

What, Me Worry? The Trump Administration and Pandemic Preparedness

by | 4 February, 2018 |

Imagine if your town had been especially fire prone with fires that threatened to spread to the rest of the city. City officials created a fire prevention fund for nearly 40 parts of town prone  to fire.  While work remained to be done, the funds ran out. Elected political leaders decided that since the town had not experienced a significant fire for two years, there was no need to spend any more money. That strategy make little sense, but it appears to be the one the Trump administration is adopting by failing to renew funding for CDC and USAID disease prevention efforts in about 40...

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The Return of Geopolitics

The Return of Geopolitics

by | 12 January, 2018 |

Geopolitics has returned with a vengeance. The end of the Cold War wrought a moment in which there was no credible alternative to liberal democratic capitalism. Russia was seemingly fatally weakened, and China was not yet the economic powerhouse it would become. By the late 2000's, Russia, with power and resources concentrated  in the hands of Vladimir Putin, was newly assertive in its near abroad and attempted to restore its authority over Georgia and Ukraine. It would seek influence over events further afield by supporting the Assad regime in Syria and through vigorous efforts to...

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Turning the Lights Out on American Leadership

Turning the Lights Out on American Leadership

by | 11 January, 2018 | ,

What a time to be alive. By some accounts, we are witnessing a power transition between the United States and China, with the United States voluntarily relinquishing its claim of global leadership despite having a sizable advantage in hard power over all of its rivals. Evan Osnos, who spent many years in China writing for the New Yorker, has a provocative piece that sums up his view of Trump’s foreign policy one year in, “Making China Great Again.” The Chinese, he writes, have a clear-eyed assessment of what the Trump administration has become: After the summit, the Pangoal Institution, a...

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ICAN’s Road to the Nobel Peace Prize

ICAN’s Road to the Nobel Peace Prize

by | 8 December, 2017 |

This is a guest post from Rebecca Gibbons, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Bowdoin College.  On Sunday, December 10, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) will accept the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for calling attention to the “catastrophic humanitarian consequences” of nuclear use and for promoting the recently adopted Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This movement grew out of great frustration with a lack of progress on nuclear disarmament through traditional channels such as the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) or the Geneva-based Conference on...

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Philosophy of Law and the Decline of War

Philosophy of Law and the Decline of War

by | 2 December, 2017 | , ,

This is a guest post from Simon Cotton, Australian National University, where he is a Visitor in Philosophy, and the University of New South Wales, Canberra, where he teaches in Humanities and Social Sciences. Much of the commentary on Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro’s recent book, The Internationalists, including at Duck of Minerva, has focused on the empirical basis for their controversial thesis. Hathaway and Shapiro do not just claim that much of the decline in major interstate war that we have seen since the Second World War is down to mere reformulation of black-letter law, but that...

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2018 Duckies

2018 Duckies

by | 29 November, 2017 |

This is a guest post from Laura Seay, among other things chair of the Online Media Caucus for ISA. It’s Duckies time! ISA 2018 is right around the corner. The Online Achievement in International Studies Reception and Awarding of the Duckies will take place on Friday, April 6 at 7:30pm.  We’ll feature three speakers in the ever-popular Ignite series and enjoy honoring our winners together.  The ISA Online Media Caucus (OMC) appreciates the generous support of SAGE Publishing in sponsoring the awards. Now is the time to submit your nominations for the 2018 Duckies.  Send your nominations...

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