126 countries now publish a national security strategy or defense document, and 45 of these feature
a leaders’ preambles. How these talk about the world, or not, is surprisingly revealing of historical
global strategic hierarchies.
Security
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...
“Here Be Dragons”: Navigating the uncharted waters of AI, with lessons from the ocean
You feel the gentle touch of the sea breeze on your face. Seagulls squawk overhead whilst waves crash against the shore. You glance at the book by your side, but its pages have lost their battle...
People were hoping for Tchaikovsky, but got Wagner instead
If you spent the entire Friday night and Saturday glued to the news about Prigozhin's armed rebellion, you are either an IR-head, a Russia-watcher or the Ukrainian army running out of popcorn. The...
More Security Posts
Japan’s Strange Golf-Buddy Theory of Deterrence
So Japan’s former Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, was very friendly with Donald Trump while he was president. The two leaders even played several rounds of golf when they were both in power, despite Trump’s anti-Asian, anti-alliance (and occasionally anti-Japan) disposition. Abe was quoted recently explaining himself, noting that “golf was for deterrence.” Abe claimed that other countries wouldn’t attack Japan if he was close enough to Trump that the two played golf together. This is fascinating because if we take Abe’s words literally, then in most respects his...
Was NATO expansion a mistake?
Foreign Affairs ran a poll on the question. A few of us expressed skepticism about the debate itself.
Partnered Engagement: A New Form of Ethical Policy Engagement
What happens when a research subject becomes a research and briefing partner? In 2017, I was contacted by the peacebuilding NGO Peace Direct to contribute to a policy report on community-based atrocities prevention. I invited a local peacebuilder I knew from Colombia to partner with me in the endeavor. We co-facilitated an online forum and drafted a chapter for the report. We then shared our findings – plus her experiences and my research – with NGOs and policymakers in the U.S. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, once I got involved with the Sié...
Nationalism, Weak States, and Unrealistic Realism
At its core, the current war in Ukraine reflects an incompatibility of nationalist narratives. Many Ukrainians want to escape Russia’s imperial shadow. Putin wants to reextend that shadow – to erase Ukraine as an independent national identity.
A Tale of Two Interviews: IR Theory and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Two recent interviews in the New Yorker have received substantial attention in recent weeks. Unfortunately, taken together, they make the IR discipline look terrible. How can IR theorists demonstrate their discipline’s relevance in the face of rapidly changing historical events?
Leveling Cybersecurity Challenges with Graduate U.S. Public Policy Programs
In December of 2020, the U.S. government announced that hackers – most likely from Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU – had compromised over two hundred companies and federal agencies. What sets the SolarWinds attack apart from previous incidents is its sheer scale. The company has over 300,000 customers worldwide, according to filings made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission… Targeted institutions include the U.S. departments of Defense, Homeland Security, State, Energy, and the Treasury; all five branches of the U.S. military; the National Nuclear Security...
Escaping the Keynes Versus Neoliberalism Trap
This piece is the third of a three-part series grappling with the role of political economy in making a just, sustainable international order. Neoliberalism — the ideology of the primacy of capital — has been bad for American statecraft. It’s a major reason why we have no economic strategy. And I’m totally a get-out-of-neoliberalism stan. But where we go from here matters. The new post-liberal right, for example, also hates neoliberalism, but of course it wants to take us into a future that looks something like the Handmaids Tale. Democrats, on the other hand, see...
The Korea Analogy
Recent chatter about David Remnick's interview of Stephen Kotkin reminds me of another interview that Kotkin recorded in February. Kotkin draws an analogy between Putin's decision to invade Ukraine and Stalin's decision to give Kim Il-sung the "green light" to invade South Korea in 1950. The comparison not only highlights the dysfunctions of personalist regimes, but the (potential) effects of the Russo-Ukraine War on U.S. foreign policy. Back in January, Gregory Mitrovich published an excellent piece about that in The Washington Post. Though the Cold War had begun several years before the...