The Duck of Minerva

Jeffrey Stacey

Dr. Jeffrey A. Stacey is currently Managing Partner of Geopolicity USA, an overseas development firm. Formerly he was Senior Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS, before which he served in the Obama Administration as a State Department official specializing in NATO and EU relations at the Bureau for Conflict Stabilization Operations. At State he founded and managed the International Stabilization and Peacebuilding Initiative (ISPI), which has over 20 government and international organization partners. Dr. Stacey is the author of "Integrating Europe" by Oxford University Press and is currently working on a follow-up book entitled "End of the West, Rise of the East?" He has been a guest blogger at The Washington Note and Democracy Arsenal, a professor of U.S. foreign policy at Tulane University and Fordham University, a consultant at the Open Society Institute and the U.S. Institute of Peace, and a visiting scholar at George Washington, Georgetown, and the University of California. He received his PhD from Columbia University.

Recent Posts

Putin is Losing the Current Round of the Ukraine Crisis

by Jeffrey Stacey | 1 July, 2014 |

If only present day global competition were confined to the World Cup. But while eyes have turned back to a new crisis in Iraq—something I’m not exactly proud of predicting here—at least there has been progress on the Ukraine crisis, which has gone from boil to simmer in recent weeks. At this stage it has become clear that Russia has blinked, and thus will not be swallowing eastern Ukraine whole. Just as important, we now have clear as day evidence that President Putin’s gambit has failed:  Ukraine has not only signed the EU trade agreement that former President Yanukovych walked away...

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Preventing Further Russian Aggression

by Jeffrey Stacey | 15 April, 2014 |

 "The hour is getting late...all along the watchtower, princes kept the view...two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl." Bob Dylan America and Russia are not engaged in a new Cold War, but Russia is playing the global menace du jour. The U.S. and Europe need to take more aggressive action to prevent the annexation of eastern Ukraine, and time is short. Beyond this crisis the West needs an updated defense posture, but for now the road ahead is clear. Russia will take as much of Ukraine as the West allows, nothing more, nothing less. Yet few in Washington and Brussels seem to...

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Russia, Ukraine, and a New Era of International Relations

by Jeffrey Stacey | 23 March, 2014 |

  The U.S. and Russia are not engaged in a new Cold War, but Russia is clearly playing the geopolitical menace du jour. The U.S. and Europe are going to need to up their game to keep Vladimir Putin’s hands off the rest of Ukraine. Beyond this crisis the West needs a new defense posture, as the world just entered a new era of international relations. Just weeks ago numerous observers dubbed the opening of the Winter Olympics in Sochi “Putin’s Triumph,” when it was anything but that. Russia may have barely edged the U.S. in total medals, but the price for Putin’s orderly Olympics was...

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The Pivot to Asia: Some Tough Questions

by Jeffrey Stacey | 15 February, 2014 |

The so-called Pivot to Asia, or "rebalance" in official parlance, has been one of the Obama Administration's signature strategic moves on the global chessboard. But for all the serious engagement of the Pacific Rim countries, the core of the pivot has always been about China and responding to its rise as a regional and proto global power. U.S. intentions aside, China has accused the U.S. of using the pivot as a form of neo-containment of itself. The containment of the Soviet Union during the Cold War ultimately proved to be a stabilizing strategic move by the U.S. and its western allies....

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France’s Re-Emergence as a Major Power

by Jeffrey Stacey | 19 January, 2014 |

If there is an Obama Doctrine in the realm of foreign affairs, it comprises robust multilateralism—being multilateral when the U.S. can, unilateral when it must. Subjected to scrutiny, however, the Obama Doctrine can only work if the U.S. has capable and willing partners. Yet under conditions of widespread fiscal austerity among western allies—and the political austerity of skeptical western citizens—meeting the challenge of securing their joint interests is formidable. While the U.S. has begun to shore up the security of its allies in Southeast Asia via its rebalance to Asia, despite...

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Avoiding the Joint Security Trap (and Countering Conventional Wisdom)

by Jeffrey Stacey | 16 November, 2013 |

The diplomatic dustup over Syria brought Russia in from the cold but simultaneously froze any notion that western allies were getting their strategic act together. Nonetheless, although the mistakes in the U.S. and UK’s approach to building support at home and abroad for an intervention in Syria confused leaders and citizens alike, these mistakes should not be interpreted as an abrupt turn-around in their and their allies' strategic thinking. In fact the Europeans, even under a prolonged condition of austerity, are making progress filling in the capability gaps made clear in the course of...

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“Breaking Bad”: Through a Literary Lens

by Jeffrey Stacey | 19 October, 2013 |

“Breaking Bad” has achieved something akin to artistic immortality, crowned by critics near and far as the finest television show in history. Such is its outsized achievement that it has taken up its perch in that rarefied stratosphere where only giants roam and even the creative gods bow down. Once Breaking Bad reached such heights it could no longer be evaluated in mere entertainment art terms. Just as Dylan is now revered with the poets, Breaking Bad began to get lionized alongside the likes if not of Bellow, Hemmingway, Morrison, and Faulkner then at least Mailer, Roth, Styron, and...

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The Complexities of Intervening in Syria

by Jeffrey Stacey | 8 September, 2013 |

Well into the Syrian civil war the Assad regime has made a costly miscalculation by staging a significant chemical weapons attack. The U.S. and its allies have been wary of a full-scale military operation in Syria, but spurred by this attack they are now preparing to intervene. To succeed western allies must be focused not only on degrading Syrian capabilities but also on avoiding mistakes beyond the short term that they made in Libya and Iraq. The U.S. needs to intervene with as much legitimacy as it can muster, which appears to have a fighting chance in Congress (though Congressional...

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Syria: Intervening Not Now But Later

by Jeffrey Stacey | 3 August, 2013 |

A full-scale US military intervention in Syria is off the table, as is a no-fly zone. The US decision to provide arms to Syrian opposition forces is nonetheless intended to shift the military initiative away from Assad regime. But the opposition is splintered, which has allowed the Hezbollah-backed government forces to level the playing field. Although the outcome remains unclear, it may be time for Western governments to begin serious planning for potential post-conflict stabilization operations. At this stage it appears the Assad regime has the momentum, aided in particular by Hezbollah...

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Democracy: de facto vs. de jure

by Jeffrey Stacey | 4 July, 2013 |

For the ultimate outcome of the Arab Spring and the prospects of moderate Islamic influence of politics....  ... is it more important that democracy not be thoroughly flouted as it just was in the removal of President Morsi in Egypt, or that a major lesson may have just been delivered to extreme Islamic parties/governments that had better govern inclusively or their people might prevent them from continuing to stay in office?

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