Intra-elite, state-centric society is a strategic front, and ought to be defended and put to use in the continued development of a global and decolonial turn in IR.
A reckoning with the traditional diplomatic community
read more
States & Regions
Israel’s Democratic Deficit as a One-State “Solution” Emerges
I recently had the good fortune to participate in a week-long academic exchange to Israel, along with 20 or so other political scientists and historians. Because Israel isn’t one of the countries I...
Why would Scots be ambivalent about the monarchy? /s
This week, King Charles had a second coronation in Scotland, following the official one in London. He took part in a parade through Edinburgh and received the Scottish crown jewels in St. Giles...
Odesa and World Heritage Politics
The Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage (“The World Heritage Convention”) entered into force in 1975. The world heritage regime, in...
More States & Regions Posts
The Breakdown of Jewish Consensus – Ethnic Violence in Israel Explained
For Jewish Israeli politicians the temptation to draw back into what is left of the old ethnic consensus will be great. But including the Palestinian citizens in politics and society is the only way to defend Israeli democracy.
How do you kill a zombie argument? Middle East studies edition
I've started practicing mindfulness, partly to deal with the stress of being a Professor and parent of small kids in a pandemic, and partly to reduce the number of times I become unreasonably angry over bad policy arguments. I experienced a major setback this week, when I encountered yet another evidence-less argument on Saudi-Iran relations. What's worse, it looks like this zombie claim is not only refusing to die, but it is--in zombie apocalypse fashion--replicating itself and spreading. The offender was this article in Slate by Fred Kaplan. Reports have emerged of secret talks between...
Beyond the Electoral College: MMP in the USA?
Photo courtesy of Cicero Online. This is a guest post by Timothy Sisk, professor of international studies and director of the Institute for Comparative and Regional Studies at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. This post is the first in an occasional series discussing the ethical dilemmas engendered when academics engage with policymakers and the broader public. This series is part of the Rigor, Relevance, and Responsibility project of the Sié Chéou-Kang Center for International Security & Diplomacy, which seeks to...
A Marx Allergy
If you are allergic to, let’s say peanuts, you would always carefully check the packaging of the food you buy: does the factory use them? Can there be traces in the sauce? After an unpleasant experience that might have involved a trip to the hospital or an EpiPen, you would want to avoid a repeat performance. This is almost the exact attitude of the Russian intellectual elite towards even a whiff of critical theory. Imagine growing up with endless rows of Lenin’s works in the book cabinets of your history teacher and being forced through Marxist and Leninist dialectics at university, not to...
Want to Improve Equity and Inclusion in Political Science? Address White Supremacy
Last week, the American Political Science Association released a milquetoast statement on the January 6 white supremacist attack at the U.S. Capitol that got buried in the onslaught of news coverage. It resurfaced on Twitter over the weekend to outrage, with many political scientists noting that the statement omitted any acknowledgment of racism or white supremacy but did mention that “both sides” needed to “do better.” As is probably clear from my use of “milquetoast,” I was part of the outrage. I am a scholar of responses to white supremacist violence in the U.S. and Germany. I have...
Trump’s Budweiser Putsch
US President Donald Trump gestures as he arrives to a "Make America Great Again" campaign rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, on August 1, 2019. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images) This is a guest post by Emily Holland, an Assistant Professor in the Russia Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College & Hadas Aron, a Faculty Fellow at the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at NYU. This week’s violent takeover of the Capitol Building has fueled the ongoing debate on the future of American democracy. For several years analysts have...
Voldemort, Trump, and the other usual suspects of Putin’s press conference
Klimentyev, RIA Novosti. Sing it with me: It’s the most Putinist time of the year! For the 16th time the Dear Leader addressed the nation and the world from through their TV screens during a carefully choreographed almost 5-hour long annual press conference that could count as a State of the Union Q&A. there were some adjustments to the usual format: the lidded cup was still there, but almost no journalists in the actual room with Putin, his answers were televised from his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo. It’s almost impossible to go through all the press conference and not bore the readers...
Why are we so quick to dismiss the UAE-Israel peace treaty?
In September, the UAE and Israel signed "the Abraham Accords," normalizing relations between the UAE and Israel. The Trump Administration presented this as if it was equivalent to the Camp David Accords, a ground-breaking peace agreement that would transform the world. Much of the Middle East policy community, however, met it with a shrug. I'm not sure I'm joining in on that shrug. While it's true Trump exaggerated and misrepresented the deal, as he is wont to do, I worry a sneaky "common wisdom" has developed among observers that may obscure the significant impacts of this agreement. The...