The world could use some serious thinking about the relationship between political ideology and nuclear escalation—specifically far-right pathways to nuclear war. The nuclear strategy literature is full of smart claims from many angles: entanglement risks,...
The global distribution of material power changes from time to time. It’s something that happens, not something we should spend any amount of time pursuing or avoiding. I say this as someone who...
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...
It turns out that it’s hard to write a roundup of happenings at the Duck of Minerva when there aren’t many to speak of. Much of that’s on me. What’s my excuse? Well, the kid finally contracted...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
This is a guest post from Manuel Reinert, a PhD candidate in international relations at American University and consultant with the World Bank. As the COVID-19 crisis illustrates, international cooperation is crucial to address global issues. International organizations (IOs), created in the so-called rules-based “liberal international order” (LIO) after WWII, have been extensively involved in the response. The United Nations (UN) launched a global humanitarian response plan. UN’s agencies, principally the World Health Organization (WHO), have provided worldwide data, guidelines, and...
This is a guest post from Ryan Beasley, Senior Lecturer at the University of St Andrews, with research interests in political psychology and foreign policy: Juliet Kaarbo, Professor at the University of Edinburgh, who works on personalities, parliaments and parties in foreign policy; and Consuelo Thiers (Twitter @Consuelothiers), a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, who is completing her doctorate on beliefs and emotions in enduring rivalries. For those of us who study leaders’ personalities and how they affect their actions while in power, President Trump has really been a...
In September, the UAE and Israel signed "the Abraham Accords," normalizing relations between the UAE and Israel. The Trump Administration presented this as if it was equivalent to the Camp David Accords, a ground-breaking peace agreement that would transform the world. Much of the Middle East policy community, however, met it with a shrug. I'm not sure I'm joining in on that shrug. While it's true Trump exaggerated and misrepresented the deal, as he is wont to do, I worry a sneaky "common wisdom" has developed among observers that may obscure the significant impacts of this agreement. The...