126 countries now publish a national security strategy or defense document, and 45 of these feature
a leaders’ preambles. How these talk about the world, or not, is surprisingly revealing of historical
global strategic hierarchies.
States & Regions
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 3" (UK, France, and Germany) taking on a role in Asia — and specifically a bigger military presence in the region....
Reparations in the Wake of the US Withdrawal from Afghanistan
Though unlikely to happen any time soon, recent calls for the US to pay reparations to the Afghan people provide an opportunity to reflect on the complexities of reparations and global justice.
How Tunisia Could still be the Arab Spring* Success** Story
Everyone is (rightly) thinking about Afghanistan, but I'm still thinking of Tunisia. Each fall I teach a Middle East politics class. And each fall I end our discussion on the Arab Spring with a...
More States & Regions Posts
If You Post It, They Will Come
I know most of you are busy watching the all-too-real reality horror show of the 45th administration, but there has been some interesting news coming out of Russia (sorry, no meteorites or Putin's nipples). On Sunday, somehow almost 90 thousand people went out on the streets in 87 cities all over Russia to protest against corruption. The unsanctioned demonstrations were met with brutal police crackdown with around 1000 protesters arrested in Moscow alone. To make matters worse, none of the TV channels reported the disturbances (apart from Russia Today, to be fair). Channel One spent about...
WPTPN: Defining the Trumpist Insurgency
This World Politics in a Time of Populist Nationalism (WPTPN) guest post is written by Simon Frankel Pratt, a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto. His research is on institutional politics, international norms, and the US's security apparatus. For further information, see his website or find him on Twitter (@simon_the_pratt) Unlike other contributions to this essay series, mine will be somewhat more informal in tone. I am going to share some concepts (and neologisms) that I find helpful for making sense of ‘Trumpism’—by which I mean Trump, his rogues’ gallery (or carnival), and...
Sending Iran Back Out into the Cold
Since the U.S. election Iranian-American relations have gone into a rapid tailspin, with Iran reacting to the triumphalist tenor of the Trump campaign and the improvised response of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn that sought to “put Iran on notice.” The arrival of his replacement in General H.R. McMaster offers the U.S. a fresh opportunity to tone down its approach to Iran, beginning with guarding against any dramatic escalation of the stakes. For unless the Administration is actually willing to go to war with Iran, this confrontation actually won't get the U.S. anywhere...
Black History Month
Do you think this person is white? If you are from Europe or North America, you might have said yes. If you are from Russia, you might have described this person as black. Most IR peeps are familiar with the fluid perceptions of whiteness and blackness that exist in the word: Sandor Gilman wrote, for instance, how Irish immigrants in the US in the beginning of the century were often considered black. The irony of blackness could not be more poignant in Russia: the famous Russian Armenian actor Frunzik Mkrtchan whose picture I put above is literally Caucasian, because he comes from the South...
Questions for Senate Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings on Judge Gorsuch
(Cross-posted on Just Security) Here’s a list of questions I hope will be asked of Judge Neil Gorsuch, the President’s nominee to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat, at his Senate confirmation hearing. Most of these questions are related to security, individual rights, executive authority and requirements that the President serve without conflicts of interest. That these are necessary questions raises a larger question about whether, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, we will keep the Constitutional republic our Founders entrusted to us, as the President's first weeks in power raise serious...
Too much empathy in Israel-Palestine?
So far, 2017 has been a tough year in Israel for its Palestinian citizen minority. From a xenophobic billboard campaign across the country to a village demolition turned violent in the Negev, the past several weeks have highlighted issues around power and inequality in a country whose democratic aspirations are weighed down by its ethno-national identity. As deep power differentials across society have come to the fore, what does the literature say about whether empathy might help to increase support for social justice? Yale psychologist Paul Bloom’s new book on empathy (called, fittingly,...
Luis Videgaray, Mexican foreign policy and the open contempt for expertise
For the past few months, I've been observing with horror all the cabinet appointments in the incoming Trump administration and the Theresa May government . As someone who originally did a PhD with the intent to become a career diplomat (and yes, I realize there's a foreign civil service pathway to achieve precisely that goal), to me expertise in top-level agencies was more than a mere technicality: it was a requirement. I wanted a PhD in international relations or political science because I wanted to be knowledgeable about the dynamics of global affairs, diplomacy and state-to-state...
WPTPN: Global Cities in a Time of Populist Nationalism
This World Politics in a Time of Populist Nationalism (WPTPN) guest post is written by Fiona B. Adamson, an Associate Professor of International Relations at SOAS, University of London. In the aftermath of the UK Brexit vote, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo issued a joint letter committing themselves to work more closely together and to deepen connections between cities in Europe and across the world, declaring that “the 21st century belongs to cities.” They are not the only ones who think so – sociologists, geographers, urban studies scholars and others have long...