The Duck of Minerva

Van Jackson

Van Jackson is a professor of international relations at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, and a think tanker at lots of places around the world: a distinguished fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada; a senior associate fellow at the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Nonproliferation & Disarmament (APLN); and the defence & strategy fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies in New Zealand. He also hosts The Un-Diplomatic Podcast. Before entering academia, Van was a foreign policy practitioner, working as a strategist and policy adviser in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration and serving in the US Air Force as a Korean linguist and intelligence analyst. He is the author of two books on US-North Korea relations with Cambridge University Press, On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and the Threat of Nuclear War (2018) and Rival Reputations: Coercion and Credibility in US-North Korea Relations (2016). He has a third book forthcoming with Yale University Press titled Pacific Power Paradox: American Statecraft and the Fate of the Asian Peace.

Van Jackson

Recent Posts

The Threat to Economic Hegemony is Economic Hegemony: Part II

The Threat to Economic Hegemony is Economic Hegemony: Part II

by | 12 February, 2022 | ,

This piece is the second in a three-part series grappling with the role of political economy in making a just, sustainable international order. Writing about America’s economic strategy deficit got me pondering why the United States had such a stunted economic imagination. How could the government that many consider to be the global economic hegemon be inept at economic statecraft?   For one thing, I think the popular impression of America as the world’s economic hegemon is overstated. Yes, the United States has many economic advantages. Its domestic market is still the destination of choice...

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Economic Hegemony, Strategy, and Durable Peace: Part I of III

Economic Hegemony, Strategy, and Durable Peace: Part I of III

by | 28 January, 2022 | ,

This piece is the first of a three-part series grappling with the role of political economy in making a just, sustainable international order. hat’s America’s story for how economic policy relates to international security? I think for a long time the story was some version of the “big, dumb, beautiful dream of McDonald’s peace theory.” These days, I don’t think there is one. And while that’s not President Biden’s fault, it is his inheritance, and it hinders the task of formulating an economic strategy. The two biggest thematic criticisms lodged against Biden’s...

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Van’s Favorite Political, History, and IR Reads of 2021

Van’s Favorite Political, History, and IR Reads of 2021

by | 15 December, 2021 |

I read a lot of crap this year, but the good stuff was really good. The Causes of World War Three, by C. Wright Mills This book is from 1961, just after Mills's famous "Letter to the New Left" and just before the Cuban Missile Crisis. The book basically predicts the Cuban Missile Crisis down to the U-2 incident. But what's remarkable is his ability to marry analysis and prose. His passionate critique of power rivals the evocative language of Fanon or Du Bois, and his criticisms work at the level of both extreme specificity and general frames and mindsets. Nearly every page has memorable...

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NOW The White House Wants To Fight Kleptocracy

NOW The White House Wants To Fight Kleptocracy

by | 10 December, 2021 | ,

The Biden administration just issued the government’s first ever anti-corruption strategy. The upshot: It’s needed. It’s analytically informed. It raises the prioritization of fighting kleptocracy. The downside: It’s not all that realistic. It defines corruption so widely that it makes prioritization fanciful. And it defers most of the real work to some to-be-determined imaginary future on the other side of Republican authoritarianism.   Eons ago, during the 2020 presidential campaign cycle, anti-corruption was a major theme in the progressive foreign...

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