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
On the Legitimating Effects of Brinksmanship
This post is the first in a four part symposium on the Cuban Missile Crisis, one of the the most studied cases of IR. With the release of documents in recent decades, historical...
Grand Strategy is Worldmaking
I think a lot of people are kidding themselves about what grand strategy is—it’s worldmaking. It’s an attempt to put the power of the state in service of grand political purpose. States big and...
Nuclear Precarity and the Russia Crisis
Everybody’s talking about nuclear war with Russia right now and it bugs me, not least because I’ve seen this nuclear frenzy before. Now, I think people have good reason to be worried about...
More US Foreign Policy Posts
Centering George W. Bush in the Etiology of the Iraq War
The second- and third-most downloaded articles at the journal Security Studies both tackle the causes of the Iraq War. This might reflect an imbalance of supply and demand: there aren't that many articles in leading international-relations journals that focus on the question of why the United States invaded Iraq. We can find a number of partial explanations. Many believe that American global dominance was at least a permissive condition; the absence of great powers prepared to deter or punish U.S. military action gave Washington a relatively free hand. A more controversial position (see the...
From “Wilsonian” to “Rooseveltian” Liberalism
Daniel Deudney and John Ikenberry recently published a ‘big think’ article in Foreign Policy. They note that the Biden administration’s approach to foreign and domestic policy – including its particular understanding of the relationship between them – is best understood as “Rooseveltian” in character. What should we make of this?
Putin-Biden summit, but make it an 18th century gossip column
Gentle reader*, People that have an itch at scribbling generally entertain their visitors with their happy projects, high flights, and wonderful publications, therefore 'tis to be supposed this blogue is in great measure the subject of many a drawing-room or a Twitteur discourse. Hence, when the handsome city of Geneva has been suffused by the members of the ton aching to catch a glimpse of the illustrious statesmen that graced its palaces with their presence, it is but no wonder that this author had to reserve quite a bit of ink to illuminate their readers on the...
Not everything outside the Pentagon is “soft power”
As someone who works on religion and politics, I encounter the term "soft power" a lot. Most of the time it's in a good way; soft power is a means to advocate for policies that draw on our values but still advance our interests. But, occasionally, the term frustrates me. Too often it's used as a catch-all to address any foreign policy that doesn't involve military force or economic sanctions. If we want to advocate for a broader set of foreign policy tools, we need a better set of terms to describe them. Soft power Soft power was famously introduced by Joseph Nye in a 1990 Foreign Policy...
Trump’s Budweiser Putsch
US President Donald Trump gestures as he arrives to a "Make America Great Again" campaign rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, on August 1, 2019. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images) This is a guest post by Emily Holland, an Assistant Professor in the Russia Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College & Hadas Aron, a Faculty Fellow at the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at NYU. This week’s violent takeover of the Capitol Building has fueled the ongoing debate on the future of American democracy. For several years analysts have...
The True Meaning of a Hot Christmas Prince
In the spirit of holiday cheer and Paul Musgrave's great Foreign Policy piece "The True Meaning of Christmas Movies Is a Cozy American Worldview" as well as our common poli sci curse of "being unable to enjoy anything without analysing it to death", here is my take on that red and green scourge that clogs your Netflix queue as well as your cable. I have watched a fair amount of those in my day (for research purposes, obvs), but might be missing something, so correct me if I am wrong. I can't refresh my memory right away, as those movies lack dinosaur subplots and that's the only type of...
Voldemort, Trump, and the other usual suspects of Putin’s press conference
Klimentyev, RIA Novosti. Sing it with me: It’s the most Putinist time of the year! For the 16th time the Dear Leader addressed the nation and the world from through their TV screens during a carefully choreographed almost 5-hour long annual press conference that could count as a State of the Union Q&A. there were some adjustments to the usual format: the lidded cup was still there, but almost no journalists in the actual room with Putin, his answers were televised from his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo. It’s almost impossible to go through all the press conference and not bore the readers...
Restraint requires more than “ending endless wars”
Voices calling for restraint in US foreign policy are getting louder. A bipartisan community has grown tired of the tired consensus on America's role in the world and--thanks partly to the excesses of the Trump Administration--has had some success in shifting policy debates. I am generally sympathetic to this community, but worry that they are focusing too much on "ending endless wars." We should also encourage a broader sense of humility in America's foreign policy. "Restraint" as a viable foreign policy orientation came together in the past few years, although it's been building for some...