The Duck of Minerva
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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. Less than four months ago, Hancock resigned in ignominy, caught breaking his own social distancing rules when he and an aide had an affair in his Whitehall office. Yet, after a brief summer holiday, he’s now been resurrected, appointed a UN special representative in sub-Saharan Africa. Why do we allow political leaders to revive their careers after they’ve failed miserably? Who, exactly, wants more of Matt Hancock?
Episode 20: International Order
In this installment of “Whiskey Optional,” Stacie Goddard (Wellesley), Evelyn Goh (Australian Nat…
Sophie Harman
Professor Harman joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. She starts off discussing with Brent her...
Latest
6+1 Questions about From Malaise to Meltdown
What is the name of the book? Michael Lee. 2020. From Malaise to Meltdown: The International...
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...
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...
Symposia
ACADEME
Grand Strategists Need to Dump Kissinger
So the New York Times reported on Beverly Gage, a history professor at Yale University, resigning...
6+1 Questions about Surviving the war in syria: survival strategies in a time of conflict
Name of the Book Justin Schon. 2020. Surviving the War in Syria: Survival Strategies in a Time of...
Classic Blog Experience
Subfields
James Bond Made Redundant
There is perhaps no greater film institution than the James Bond franchise. Over 27 movies and 59...
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.
Are we misinterpreting UAE foreign policy?
Anwar Gargash, a diplomatic advisor to the UAE, recently spoke to an international conference on...
Adam Sandler and the Rise of the Rest: Theoretical Myopia and the Liberal International Order
Film critics have approached Adam Sandler’s films the same way that IR scholars have analyzed the rise and fall of the Liberal International Order (LIO)
Vulgar Balancing is Bad Statecraft
Every self-respecting foreign policy expert who fancies themselves part of a realpolitik tradition...
Podcasts
🎧 Podcasts
Topics
Is NATO Good for Asia, or Is Asia Good for NATO?
Over the past six months or so, I’ve gotten a lot of pings about NATO and the “Big...
The End of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: Remembering the Silence
At a press conference on Sept. 20, 2011 Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) displayed a postcard. It was...
Why Addressing the Climate Crisis Can Help Build More Sustainable Peace
Climate change poses substantial national, international and human security risks, but analysts have only recently shifted their focus toward how to simultaneously build peace in post-conflict environments and grapple with the dual challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change.
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?
The Power of Philanthropic Foundations
Divorces don’t usually send shockwaves through the global policy field. They almost never create...
When 9/11 Got Hip-Hop, It Killed Dissent
I was an enlisted Airman studying Korean at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey,...
The Promise and Peril of Public-Facing Scholarship
Paul Musgrave concludes the “Lab Leaks” symposium by engaging with his interlocutors and reflecting on the challenges faced by political science in an era of public-facing scholarship.
They Blinded Them With Science
Musgrave’s identification of dangerous ideas is correct, but his metaphor risks entrenching the fundamental problem: the (inevitable) weaponization of “scientific objectivity.”