Does Whataboutism work? A new article has answers.
6+1 Questions about “The Diplomacy of Whataboutism”
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Recent Posts
Some just want to watch the world burn
During a pivotal scene in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne talks with his butler/confidante Alfred about The Joker. Wayne suggests he can make sense of The Joker's motivation as a...
What to expect at the upcoming climate negotiations?
A reporter asked me what we should expect from the upcoming climate negotiations, known as COP28, which will be held in the United Arab Emirates starting the end of November. This is my fairly...
Judging a book by its cover II
Part I here if you are interested On the day of German reunification anniversary I bring you the sequel to the post on the new Russian history book. Only, if you read this history book, you will not...
More Recent Posts
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...
James Bond Made Redundant
There is perhaps no greater film institution than the James Bond franchise. Over 27 movies and 59 years from Doctor No (1962) to Goldfinger (1964) to the modern era of Goldeneye (1995) and Skyfall (2012), Bond is a touchstone in many people lives, although not without controversy. Bond is a threat...
Are we misinterpreting UAE foreign policy?
Anwar Gargash, a diplomatic advisor to the UAE, recently spoke to an international conference on the UAE's desire to smooth over tensions with Turkey and Iran. Turkey and the UAE found themselves on opposite sides of the Arab Spring, with the former supporting revolutionary movements around the...
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.
And Lo, the Heavens Parted to Reveal an Article on Bad Habits to Avoid in Academic Writing
If you’ve written a guest post for the Duck of Minerva recently, or published a piece at International Studies Quarterly while I was editor, you know that I really hate “heavy noun phrases.” Scholars seem to really like using them. I don’t know why. Perhaps they think it makes their writing sound more sophisticated. There’s an article at PS which is good at diagnosing the problem (but offers bad fixes).
Should the American Political Science Association Take a Stand Against Actual Attacks on Liberal Democracy? Yes!
The way that APSA leaders handled the Claremont Institute situation was troubling… will APSA, as an organization, be committed to some broadly liberal democratic values?
Episode 20: International Order
In this installment of “Whiskey Optional,” Stacie Goddard (Wellesley), Evelyn Goh (Australian Nat…
Decolonizing Corruption
Corruption is an issue largely off the radar screens of many IR scholars. How can they better theorize corruption’s pervasiveness in international politics, while avoiding the biases of past approaches?
Sophie Harman
Professor Harman joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. She starts off discussing with Brent her childhood and growing up on a farm in Buckinghamshire in SE England, her interests and aspirations during that time and the family dynamics regarding politics and who was expected to take over the farm...
The Power of Philanthropic Foundations
Divorces don’t usually send shockwaves through the global policy field. They almost never create uncertainty about the health of hundreds of millions of people. The split between Bill and Melinda Gates is doing both. It affects the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has an...
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...