The Duck of Minerva

Josh Busby

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

Are Sandy and Climate Change Related? Part I

by Josh Busby | 31 October, 2012 |

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, there is much discussion about whether climate change was responsible for the storm. I'm not sure this is the right question we need to be asking, unless we think that whether we respond to climate change hinges on an affirmative answer. Let's suspend disbelief for a moment and say that it does. We need to believe events like Sandy were caused or made more likely by climate change in some way for us to feel compelled to act. If so, is that connection real? I think we have to separate what we know about the science of climate change and extreme weather...

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How to Survive a Plague

by Josh Busby | 28 September, 2012 |

I am putting the finishing touches on a new book manuscript on social movements and market transformations with my co-author Ethan Kapstein. In the process of researching that book which focuses on the global AIDS treatment advocacy movement, we tried to get our hands on any relevant material. We became aware of two important documentaries that have just been released, one is David France’s How to Survive a Plague which captures ACT UP’s mobilization for AIDS treatment in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. The other is Dylan Mohan Gray’s Fire in the Blood, which covers the global...

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Foreign Policy to the Fore: Is Romney Below the Bar?

by Josh Busby | 12 September, 2012 |

U.S. Consulate in Benghazi 9/12/2012I heard Dan Drezner in the car on NPR yesterday talking about whether foreign policy might matter in this election. And, last night and today, with the events in Egypt and Libya, he may be more right than even he anticipated.We may have an incident, in the wake of the 11th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, that will shape the contours of the election and have wider repercussions for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa. Politically, does it constitute a disqualifying moment for Mitt Romney?Like Dan, I've been of the mind that foreign...

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An AIDS-Free Generation? HIV Is Not A Fad

by Josh Busby | 24 July, 2012 |

The International AIDS Society conference began Sunday in DC, the first time the conference has been held in the United States since 1990 because of the now-lifted travel ban on HIV+ people coming to the U.S. That means that 25,000 activists, researchers and clinicians have converged on DC and what seems like a fanciful goal - an AIDS-free generation. Given that donor foreign assistance budgets are increasingly constrained around the world, what gives advocates such hope that a renewed push against AIDS will be successful? For a disease that lacks a cure, does an AIDS-free generation means...

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Should Romney Talk More About Foreign Policy?

by Josh Busby | 14 July, 2012 |

In these summer months while we wait for the Olympics to start and for Romney to pick his VP candidate, the foreign policy cognoscenti has started in on Mitt Romney's campaign with conflicting advice about whether or not his announced foreign policy trip this later this summer is worthwhile and whether or not the Republican nominee should spend much time talking about the issue.While as a citizen and foreign policy wonk, I want our prospective commander in chief to fill in the details of what he might do, as an observer of politics, I'm not sure it makes nearly as much sense for a number of...

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Peter Piot’s Memoir on Infectious Disease

by Josh Busby | 10 July, 2012 |

I just finished reading Peter Piot's lively memoir No Time to Lose of his time as an epidemiologist helping identify the Ebola virus in the 1970s through to his service as the first director of UNAIDS. It is an engaging read not least because Piot conveys a profound empathy for those affected by disease. Piot also projects additional warmth and humanity, from his appreciation for Congolese music to good beer.More substantively, Piot has a proportionate sense of the outrageousness of bureaucratic politics in the UN system, while recognizing the need to navigate in those shark-filled...

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Is International Relations Useful?

Is International Relations Useful?

by Josh Busby | 19 June, 2012 | ,

I just returned from a week long program at American University called Bridging the Gap: the International Policy Summer Institute (IPSI). Organized by the new Dean of AU's School of International Service Jim Goldgeier, Duke's Bruce Jentleson, Berkeley's Steve Weber, and Smith College's Brent Durbin, this was the faculty complement to the New Era program for graduate students that initially started at Berkeley several years ago by Steve, Brent, Ely Ratner, and Naazneen Barma.For those who haven't had a chance to participate in either program, I highly recommend them both. While the New Era...

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Is Rio + 20 Going to be a Waste of Time?

by Josh Busby | 19 June, 2012 |

This was the tone of an op-ed I pitched regarding the Rio+20 environmental summit. Below the fold, I offer a slightly more nuanced argument ...Rio+20, the twentieth anniversary of the 1992 Earth Summit, kicks off the formal part of the negotiations tomorrow as leaders of 130 countries arrive to take part. It strikes me as a misguided nostalgia tour and will probably achieve even less than the tenth anniversary that took place in South Africa. Environmental indicators continue to deteriorate but sending 50,000 people to Rio (40,000 of them environmentalists) is a waste of time and energy...

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Politics on the Water’s Edge: U.S. Elites and Multilateralism

by Josh Busby | 1 June, 2012 |

Are there major differences between Democratic and Republican elites on multilateral cooperation? This question animates a new study that I carried out with my frequent collaborator Jon Monten and my colleague William Inboden.  In mid 2011 and early 2012, we were able to conduct a unique survey of about 20 Democrats and 20 Republicans, nearly all of whom had served in fairly senior positions in the U.S. government, mostly the Executive Branch.On the Foreign Affairs website, we report on the results of that survey. There are a few surprises, both in terms of areas of shared attitudes but also...

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Just a Physician? Jim Kim’s Candidacy for the World Bank

by Josh Busby | 29 March, 2012 |

My colleague Kate Weaver has written a nuanced take on this blog on the race for the World Bank presidency, that whoever succeeds Robert Zoellick will have an especially tricky go of it ensuring the organization's relevance at a time of fiscal austerity and changes in the global balance of power.Since Kate's post, opponents of the U.S. nominee Dr. Jim Kim, currently head of Dartmouth College and formerly head of the World Health Organization's AIDS initiative, have become more vocal. There is something unseemly about the criticism being leveled against Dr. Kim, and for the record, I'd just...

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