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

Time to Wind Up a Long-Standing Debate?

by Jeffrey Stacey | 7 June, 2013 |

In the vein of recent graduations everywhere and the exams students had to take to get there, and thinking there is now ample evidence out there to get closer to winding up a debate that has raged in both policy and academic circles, let's keep in succinct: "Fukuyama was right. Huntington was wrong. Discuss"I said it was succinct!

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The End of Austerity…It’s Death is No Great Exaggeration

by Jeffrey Stacey | 27 April, 2013 |

Something extraordinary happened in Europe this week.  Enrico Letta, Italy's Prime Minister nominee, upon being tapped to form the next government made a bold press conference announcement that his primary objective upon taking office will be to end Italy's austerity program and join other leaders calling for an end to austerity across Europe.  Presto!  The bond markets did not go berserk.  Contrary to wide expectations, instead of punishing Italy investors remained calm and did not proceed to increase its borrowing costs.  And voila, the euro crisis has come to an end. News also spread like...

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The Syria Endgame: A Way Forward

by Jeffrey Stacey | 17 April, 2013 |

  With the increased likelihood that Assad will fall, even were he to hang on until a Gaddafi-style bitter end, pressure is mounting on the U.S., Europe, and Turkey inter alia to come up with a game plan for the post-endgame.   The good news is progress is rapidly being made:  stepped up aid from the U.S., aid from Europe, intelligence sharing among Turkey-Jordan-US-Europe, and direct training of Syrian opposition forces. All of this may be enough to tip the balance against the Assad regime, leading to its end sooner rather than later.  But it is not nearly enough to handle the widely...

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Renaming the Arab Spring

by Jeffrey Stacey | 11 April, 2013 |

I've learned to limit consumption of Tom Friedman, except when he talks about the Middle East...yesterday his column suggested that the Arab Spring should be renamed in light of recent events...I think he is on to something, but I doubt his suggestion of "The Arab Quarter Century" will fly...my suggestion is the "The Arab Turn", which connotes both the significance of current events in the region and recognition of some kind of new era in the making, but leaves open the outcome...what do you think?

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While the Ducks Are Away — Can We Bridge the Gap When They Get Back?

by Jeffrey Stacey | 8 April, 2013 |

Practically the whole roster of Duck bloggers is out at the biggest IR conference of the year--the ISA Conference is in San Francisco this year--leaving this think tank Duck in DC alone and further pondering the divide between the policy and academic worlds.  In light of this cri de coeur from a high ranking Navy officer, I had a long conversation this weekend with a former high ranking Army officer who before recently joining the private sector spent two years back in higher education studying classics/philosophy/politics. In my first and second post after joining this group blog--whose...

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Shakespeare, Cyprus, and the End of the Euro Crisis

by Jeffrey Stacey | 26 March, 2013 |

Much ado.  Investors keep getting burned in betting on the exit of members of the Eurozone, let alone the breakup of the currency/monetary union of the EU.  And econ/business experts keep getting their predictions wrong.  The simple reason:  the EU, from its econ/financial area to the vast array of its other policy areas, at heart is a political project.  Events continue to show that despite the painful strains of major economic duress, this commitment remains intact. Despite the messy manner in which its member state governments deal with crises--largely explained by institutional reasons,...

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10 Years On in Iraq: the Chance We Missed

by Jeffrey Stacey | 21 March, 2013 |

The debate is indeed on, and the Duck is paddling rapidly on this one with excellent posts from Robert, Jon, and Dan.  I take/took a slightly different tack.  I opposed the war at the time and like everyone else watched how President Bush--whose job ratings were so low on 9-10 that he was rapidly on his way to being a one-term president--relied on Karl Rove to use 9-11 to his supreme political advantage.  A la Jon's post, it took the American people six more years to wake up to the (inter)national disaster that had been wrought. But remember Colin Powell's Pottery Barn rule?  Taking that as...

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Cold War: Old or New?

by Jeffrey Stacey | 16 March, 2013 |

In the aftermath of a long war, a new degree of suspicion ensues between two powerful countries that were nominally on the same side…one rattles its sabre, threatening small countries on its borders…the other shores up relations with the very same countries… a tit-for-tat arms race begins, waged with the advantages of recent technological advances…espionage takes the form of a new battleground as the stakes move progressively higher…for the most part the top leaders of each continue to say nice things about each other in public, but a new undertone of tension has become apparent…privately...

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The Good Ol’ Cold War

by Jeffrey Stacey | 12 March, 2013 |

In the aftermath of a long war, a new degree of suspicion ensues between two powerful countries that were nominally on the same side…one rattles its sabre, threatening small countries on its borders…the other shores up relations with the very same countries… a tit-for-tat arms race begins, waged with the advantages of recent technological advances…espionage takes the form of a new battleground as the stakes move progressively higher…for the most part the top leaders of each continue to say nice things about each other in public, but a new undertone of tension has become apparent…privately...

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The Robama Doctrine

by Jeffrey Stacey | 5 March, 2013 |

Mitt Romney is back in the news with more than a little schadenfreude, talking about how he would be better not only to deal with sequestration but also with Iran.  Or so he claims.  But had he become president, it would have been interesting to see the Romney Doctrine in action—a foreign policy lodestar distinctly different from the Obama Doctrine. Normally foreign policy experts talk in terms of grand strategies—sets of guiding principles for an administration’s foreign policy—but occasionally in the world of ideas a particular set of strategic principles gets defined as a doctrine.  Here,...

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