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.
US Foreign Policy
The Iraq War didn’t kill liberal internationalism, just our ability to debate it
Twenty year recollections of the 2003 invasion of Iraq are popping up. Some are debating whether there were any positive outcomes from the war, others reflecting on what it meant for those who...
On Washington’s China Fetish
What follows is my general philosophy on China issues, by way of answering the hardest of hard defense framing questions regarding China. After my most recent piece in Foreign Affairs, I...
Is Reactionary Populism a Form of Fascism? Does it Matter?
My most recent Foreign Affairs article, co-authored with Justin Casey, landed yesterday. The article started out as an argument about how the normalization of the far...
More US Foreign Policy Posts
Want to Start a National Security Think Tank?
You're going to need some help. Since 2017, when I departed the Beltway in favor of (literally) greener pastures, I've been trying to figure out how to create an institutional presence for alternative (ok, progressive) voices on foreign policy. Why? Although I don't like the "Blob" epithet, there is a lot of consensus thinking in Washington — especially circa 2017 — and it's historically really difficult to promote competing perspectives without your invitation to the cocktail party getting lost in the mail. Worse than that though, I was appalled watching the "ideas industry" line up to...
6+1 Questions about Finding Faith in Foreign Policy
WHAT’S THE NAME OF THE BOOK? Gregorio Bettiza. 2019. Finding Faith in Foreign Policy: Religion and American Diplomacy in a Postsecular World (New York, Oxford University Press) WHAT’S THE ARGUMENT? Since the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy has increasingly “desecularized,” such that it is now deeply intertwined with religious agendas, interests, and organizations. We see this trend in efforts to advance international religious freedom, mobilize faith-based actors for humanitarian and development purposes, fight global terrorism by promoting ‘moderate Islam,' and solve...
We Are Not Capable of Learning the Lessons of Afghanistan
It seems like everyone has an opinion to offer about the "lessons" that the United States needs to learn from the war Afghanistan. “Here’s what we must learn,” asserts the former NATO Commander, James Stavridis. Anthony Cordesman, one of the war’s great chroniclers, asks readers to “examine the full range of civil lessons as well as the military lessons.” Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haas worries that “we could learn the wrong lesson.” The Heritage Foundation suggests “Biden’s Afghanistan exit ignores lessons from Iraq,” while President Biden counters by asking his...
Failing Upwards and Global Elitism
Matt Hancock, a Conservative MP and the UK’s Health Secretary during most of the Covid lockdowns, has failed upwards.
Fighting Analogies in International Relations
“Kuzushi” is the concept of off-balancing. It refers to a tactic of getting your opponent out of a fixed position where he’ll be vulnerable, maybe getting his weight tilted too much to one side or making him overcommit to a move. With kuzushi, you aren’t achieving anything; you’re opening up a window of opportunity. Window ajar, you have a split second to advance your position. A sweep or submission attempt that would’ve been impossible under normal conditions suddenly works against an unbalanced opponent.
Grand Strategists Need to Dump Kissinger
So the New York Times reported on Beverly Gage, a history professor at Yale University, resigning from her post as head of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy because of donor pressure. There's a lot at stake in this. As an academic field, grand strategy has a reputation for being very conservative, and for advocating a didactic, great-man view of history. The Yale program has not only been the premier school for grand strategy, inspiring a few similar programs at similarly prestigious universities; it has also been the premier focal point for critics of grand strategy who see it as...
Vulgar Balancing is Bad Statecraft
Every self-respecting foreign policy expert who fancies themselves part of a realpolitik tradition talks as if the balance of power were everything. Now, I don't necessarily think of myself as a realist (in the IR sense), but I too think global and regional balances of power are something that policymakers ought to pay attention to. Nobody should want a single actor to achieve regional or global control (pay no attention to the United States...). And while the meaning of terms like hegemony, primacy, and domination are highly contestable — and a lot of scholarly energy suggests balancing...
Misreading the post-9/11 consensus: the dangerous allure of emergency politics
Numerous pundits have lamented the that Americans have not responded to the Covid pandemic with the unanimity they demonstrated after 9/11. But do we really want to return to the post-9/11 era of emergency consensus?