The US needs a more restrained approach to its national security, but not all arguments for restraint – and not all policies of restraint – rest on solid foundations.
Earlier this week, Mustafa Kassem, an American held in Egypt, died. The Trump Administration did little to help him. That wasn't surprising. What was surprising was that the international religious...
We've all spent the weekend processing the killing of Iranian official Qassim Suleimani by a US airstrike. While this is obviously very important, we should think about a secondary implication of...
Depending on your Twitter addiction, you either went to sleep or woke up with the news that America had assassinated Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran's Quds force. Suleimani was one of the...
Yesterday, I posted about my canceled debate with Colin Dueck on the Obama Administration's foreign policy. In part 1, I reflected on the Bush administration's legacy. Here is part 2 of what would have been my defense of the administration's achievements.  Again, it was a debate, where each of us were tasked to assume a side, and I wrote this to be delivered as oral remarks with attempts to dramatize things for a live audience. My thinking is in keeping with a number of recent evaluations of the administration's foreign policy, notably essays that appeared in Foreign Affairs by Gideon Rose,...
Well, I was supposed to be debating Colin Dueck on the Obama administration's foreign policy tomorrow, but the residue of last week's weather took much of the Austin airport out of commission, leaving his flight to be canceled. So, I'm going to be posting my prepared remarks in a series of posts as well as my quick take on Dueck's 2015 book The Obama Doctrine which sought to critique the administration's grand strategy and offer up an alternative of "conservative American realism." The debate may get rescheduled for the spring, but in the meantime, I thought I'd get my thoughts out...
I have spent much time here at the Spew discussing various analogies and kinds of analogies, including how IR can be like tacos and how to make a good IR pop culture analogy. I love using analogies, and have often used them in my teaching, even as I know that they have their limits (thanks, Robert Jervis). But if I had to nominate one analogy to kill, to kill with fire, to destroy utterly, it would be the use of the occupations of Germany and Japan to discuss 21st century state-building/nation-building/post-war reconstruction. I was inspired/depressed by this chain of tweets: Entirely...
Done. Here is the transcript. You can scour it for an odd line from Christie about "isolationism" or "ISIS." There was a question about climate change which lasted for all of a minute where Christie fumbled something about investing in clean energy but not through the government. There was a bit more in undercard debate, mostly introduced by Lindsey Graham who wanted to talk about defense spending, terrorism, and tie Secretary Clinton to Obama's foreign policy. As usual, Senator Graham was hyping threats "I’ve never seen so many threats to our homeland than I do today." There was actually a...
I just read David Edelstein and Ron Krebs' provocative piece ($) in Foreign Affairs on how the practice of grand strategy leads to threat inflation. One section struck me as somewhat problematic in that it seemed to derive little influence for ideational factors in the construction of the liberal order, as if the United States was materially driven to choose that path. They write: Indeed, the United States has acted as a liberal hegemon, more or less coherently, ever since World War II. But this is less the product of a formal grand strategy than the result of enduring structural features of...
The controversy surrounding the coalition airstrike in Kunduz continues to rumble on this week after military investigators drove an armoured personnel carrier into a hospital’s front gate. A spokesperson for the Pentagon was quick to apologise for any damage caused, telling reporters (without a hint of irony) that the team were simply trying to gain access to the facility so that they could assess the structural integrity of the buildings hit earlier in the month. This latest incident will do little to ease tensions between the United States and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which...
So, after breaking out and analyzing the foreign policy aspects of the two Republican presidential nominee debates, it's finally time for the Democrats to take center stage. I'll be working off the transcript posted at the Washington Post. The foreign policy starts early, with candidates touting their cred: Chafee notes that he voted against the Iraq war and served on the Foreign Relations Committee; Webb offers up his service in Vietnam and as Assistant Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the the Navy, as well as his early support of the "pivot" to Asia. The debate swings into domestic...
My overall view of the first democratic debate of the 2016 nomination contest probably tracks with the consensus. I should disclose that I've contributed to the Sanders campaign and support it, even though my views on some issues are more conservative. In brief, Clinton showed herself a capable and exceedingly well-prepared politician. I jokingly commented on social media that this encapsulates her biggest advantage and her biggest liability. But, to be honest, it really is much more of an asset than anything else. She's extremely smart, experienced,  and skilled at politics. She is also...