In the recent Settling for Less: Why States Colonize and Why They Stop, Lachlan McNamee makes a rationalist argument—“colonization projects” are “characterized by a triangle of actors—settlers, indigenes, and the central state,” and for his purposes, we can “assume...
The government of a country makes explicit or implicit threats to another: "if you cross this line, we will inflict harm upon you." The threat fails; the government crosses the designated line. Has...
There is more continuity in the history of U.S. military basing policy than is typically assumed.
Since marginalized communities tend to suffer disproportionately when governments make contemptible policy choices, it stands to reason that those communities might develop a heightened sensitivity...
Joe Biden's "Summit for Democracy" was held last week. This summit meant to bring together the world's democracies, strengthening them and pro-democratic global norms. The hope is that this would reverse the growing trend of authoritarianism around the world. Some were hopeful. In his opening address, President Biden called on the "global community for democracy" to "stand up for the values that unite us." Some agree this gathering may be beneficial. Max Bergman of the Center for American Progress argues the United States should be gathering democracies, even if the "what next" aspect of the...
The Biden administration just issued the government’s first ever anti-corruption strategy. The upshot: It’s needed. It’s analytically informed. It raises the prioritization of fighting kleptocracy. The downside: It’s not all that realistic. It defines corruption so widely that it makes prioritization fanciful. And it defers most of the real work to some to-be-determined imaginary future on the other side of Republican authoritarianism. Eons ago, during the 2020 presidential campaign cycle, anti-corruption was a major theme in the progressive foreign...
Canadian scholar and politician Michael Ignatieff had a piece in Persuasion recently on the "collapse of liberal internationalism." For Ignatieff to admit this (as one of the strongest proponents of this foreign policy orientation) says a lot. However, he inadvertently gives too much of the argument away. Liberal internationalism is more than military interventions, something both its critics and proponents seem to have forgotten. The fall of liberal internationalism Liberal internationalism is the claim that state interests are best served by engaging with the world to advance liberal...
The US State Department recently released the lists of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) on religious freedom, part of its responsibilities under the International Religious Freedom Act (IRF). The list now includes Russia alongside countries like Burma and China. But one change angered many religious freedom advocates: the removal of Nigeria from the list. IRF advocates claim this is tantamount to abandoning Nigerian Christians, who are often the target of violence in that country. I think the situation is more complicated than that: Nigeria's addition to the list was the result of the...
In 1932, John Chamberlain lamented “the unwillingness of the liberal to continue with analysis once the process of analysis had become uncomfortable.” He was critiquing the way Wilsonian liberals drifted into World War One. Socialists and reformist progressives had thought seriously about both the causes of the war and the realistic consequences for American democracy if the nation opted in. Liberals, he charged, couldn’t stomach such analysis and instead idealized the upside of succumbing to war fever. I think about Chamberlain’s quote...
When I first started teaching introduction to international relations, I included a lecture on the use of force in my foreign policy unit. We talked about Art's four uses of force, Schelling's diplomacy of violence, etc. But I worried I was downplaying the importance of diplomacy. So beginning last year I've changed the use of force lecture to the "use and non-use of force," covering both force and diplomacy. The takeaway is that, as liberal internationalists have argued, diplomacy is not "weakness." It can be just as effective, if not more effective, in advancing interests than coercive...
Not many know that Trump was on the verge of publicly announcing U.S. withdrawal from the alliance at the 2018 summit. Congress would have prevented a formal end to U.S. membership, but Trump’s announcement itself would have caused irreparable damage. Why then did Trump change his position on NATO in 2019? And why was NATO, at least in military terms, in better state when Trump left office than when he began his term?
The United States has repeatedly used its military to overthrow foreign regimes – at least sixteen times from 1906 to 2011 – but these interventions seldom work out particularly well. So why does Washington continue to engage in violent regime change? The answer is that US leaders forcibly overthrow regimes to relieve emotional frustration.