This is the fourth post in our series of remembrances on the late Susan Sell. Susan and I were both conducting research in Geneva in the summer of 2022, she was at the World Trade Organization, and I was working in the archives at the International Committee of the...
Scotland's independence drive won't disappear anytime soon. In "Scots Wha Hae," (from which the title of this post comes) Robert Burns calls on Scots to remember their victory over the English at...
This is the third in our series of remembrances on the late scholar Susan Sell. Professor Susan Sell was a world class scholar. But even though one of the papers she wrote (about using ideas...
This is the second in our series of remembrances on the late scholar Susan Sell. Since I learned of Susan’s untimely passing on Christmas Eve, I’ve been trying to articulate exactly how important...
This is the first in a series of remembrances on life and career of the late Susan Sell. When I think about Susan Sell, I think about a life lived unapologetically, beautifully, and gratefully. I think about International Relations theory taught with irreverence and humility. I think about relentless kindness and fiery hope personified. Susan was the first professor I had in graduate school, and although I learned so much from her class on International Relations theory, the most important lessons were those that were never actually part of the curriculum. I distinctly remember Susan coming...
In 2015, Linus Hagström, a professor of political science at the Swedish Defence University, questioned the wisdom of Sweden joining NATO in a coauthored opinion piece. After its publication, some of his colleagues, especially those in the Swedish military, ostracized Hagström. Some even accused him of being a traitor, “running errands” for Russian propaganda, and called for him to be fired. So what actually happened to Hagström? Simply put, he committed heresy. In the national security policy community, some ideas become orthodoxies in which dissent against them is profane. For...
International relations discourse tends to be a bit wonkier than domestic American political debates. While this leads to the frequent lament, from voices like Dan Drezner, that American voters don't care about international relations, it also insulates us from the more frustrating aspects of American politics. IR scholars don't usually have to deal with knee-jerk activisty hot takes. Well, we do now. Apparently leftists think the Houthis--a militant group based in Yemen--are admirable anti-imperialist activists. This is because they've been attacking international shipping in protest of...
When I arrived at the Pentagon in 2009, the Obama administration was just getting its footing as caretakers of the War on Terror. Our focus then was truly global dominion. That meant, yes, killing and capturing whatever the intelligence process coughed up as bad guys no matter who they were or where they were. But also, technologically, our fixation was on “prompt global strike”—the idea that the US should be able to reliably put warheads on foreheads anywhere at anytime without constraint. I don’t know what to say about that other than that it sounds much crazier when I say it out...