If you’ve spent any amount of time in Washington, there’s a good chance you’ve internalized a rosier narrative of the Cold War than the actual history warrants (I certainly had). To correct that, I have an essay out in Foreign Affairs with...
As the world rushes to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, international relations scholars have a lot to say. We are not public health experts, or pathologists. But we can speak to the way states...
"The blob" has become a common term during the Democratic Primary. The DC foreign policy establishment, so the argument goes, has an overwhelming effect on all who engage with it, sucking them in...
I got an alert from the Foreign Policy app on my phone the other day: Tunisia had fired its UN ambassador after he opposed Trump's Israel-Palestine "peace plan." Tunisian foreign policy doesn't...
The Paris terror attacks have brought the issue to the fore in awful, dramatic fashion. It's inevitable that the topic will feature in tonight's Democratic debate and the wider campaign. With world leaders set to convene in Paris in a few weeks time for the global climate negotiations, French vulnerability to terrorism has taken on added significance. While ISIS does not pose an existential threat to the United States, attacks on civilians are a more tangible security threat than potential peer competitors that politicians ignore at their peril. The attacks, which claimed the lives of more...
While last night's debate was focused on the domestic economy, there was a bit more discussion of foreign policy than in the previous debate (i.e. none). So let's see what the candidates had to see! Once again, I'll be working off of the Washington Post's transcript. I'll ignore the snarky back-and-forth about defense spending because there was no substantive content there, which means that the first real discussion of foreign policy concerned trade policy and the recently completed TPP: BAKER: ...Mr. Trump, can I ask you about... TRUMP: ...Yes... BAKER: ...the U.S. just concluded an...
Following on my last point which tried to understand the logic of ISIS's role (if indeed it is responsible) in the bombing of a Russian charter plane int he Sinai, let's turn our attention to the confusion surrounding the recent activity in the South China Sea. In an (alleged...more on this later) effort to counter China's claims of expanded territorial waters and recent island building in the South China Sea, the US Navy sent the destroyer USS Lassen within 12 miles of Subi Reef, a part of the Spratley archipelgo claimed by several regional actors. China responded by asserting its...
So, this is third installment of my series on defending Obama's foreign policy, part of an extended set of remarks for a debate with Colin Dueck that one day, weather permitting, we shall have. In part 1, I laid out the legacy of the Bush years and in part 2, I identified the Obama administration's strategic inclinations and achievements. Here, in part 3, I try to identify lines of critique from Dueck and other folks critical of the Obama administration's policies. On Russia, Defense Spending, and US Standing Finally, let me say three things about Russia, US defense spending, and US standing...
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...