The Duck of Minerva

– Contributor –

The Duck Quacks at Twilight

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.

        

Recent Posts

Vulgar Balancing is Bad Statecraft

Vulgar Balancing is Bad Statecraft

by | 16 September, 2021 | ,

Every self-respecting foreign policy expert who fancies themselves part of a realpolitik tradition talks as if the balance of power were everything. Now, I don't necessarily think of myself as a realist (in the IR sense), but I too think global and regional balances of power are something that policymakers ought to pay attention to. Nobody should want a single actor to achieve regional or global control (pay no attention to the United States...). And while the meaning of terms like hegemony, primacy, and domination are highly contestable — and a lot of scholarly energy suggests balancing...

read more
When 9/11 Got Hip-Hop, It Killed Dissent

When 9/11 Got Hip-Hop, It Killed Dissent

by | 12 September, 2021 | ,

I was an enlisted Airman studying Korean at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, California on September 11, 2001. When the first two planes struck, none of us had any idea whether it was a high-profile accident or an attack. It was only when a third plane flew into the Pentagon that we put 2 and 2 together. I remember feeling confused, and a bit queasy after going out to the "Day Room" to check out the news, but I had a milestone language test that morning and was trying to focus. After the test, I went outside to a smoke pit to wait for the others in my cohort to finish. I...

read more
There is No Tariff Strategy for China

There is No Tariff Strategy for China

by | 10 September, 2021 | ,

The White House is close to announcing "301s" (investigations under Section 301 of U.S. trade law) into Chinese use of industrial subsidies. It matters because 301s are the prelude to tariff imposition. If you import stuff from China that gets classified as requiring Section 301 import duties, you'll have to pay that extra margin, which means U.S. importers must either directly eat the cost of tariffs or pass those costs on to consumers (or they can appeal to the Court of International Trade for a refund of Section 301 duties, which then burdens the taxpayer and incurs administrative cost)....

read more
Neoliberals, Anti-Imperialists, and the China Question

Neoliberals, Anti-Imperialists, and the China Question

by | 7 September, 2021 | ,

Does China's more ambitious foreign policy and bid for "national rejuvenation" come at America's expense? It's a question where some neoliberals and some on the anti-imperialist left converge — in opposition to Washington conventional wisdom. Most of the D.C. Establishment now takes for granted that, obviously, China seeks to displace the United States, in Asia and the world. The Sinologist community is divided on the question. The neoliberal view of China that prevailed from roughly the Tiananmen Square massacre to the 2008 Great Recession sought to make China a "responsible stakeholder" in...

read more