Drew Hogan answers 6+1 questions about how the United States does, and does not, support its overseas citizens.
6+1 Questions about “The U.S.: A (Mostly) Hands-Off Superpower”
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States & Regions
A reckoning with the traditional diplomatic community
Intra-elite, state-centric society is a strategic front, and ought to be defended and put to use in the continued development of a global and decolonial turn in IR.
Is Latin America “International” enough for IR?
Even when Latin Americans are allowed to speak, IR scholars and practitioners do not listen to them due to the language in which they produce knowledge, epistemic violence and access barriers.
Proxies, Pawns, and Spoilers: How Pro-Iranian Elements in Iraq use Christians and What that many Mean for Democracy
On February 21, the Federal Supreme Court of Iraq ruled on a set of cases pertaining to the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) electoral law. The Court declared that the 11 parliamentary reserved...
More States & Regions Posts
The Qatar crisis ends…in the most boring way possible
The Qatar crisis threatened to upend Middle East politics. Instead, it fizzled out. That says a lot about international relations, and how to study it. In June 2017, Saudi Arabia and the UAE--along with a few other states--announced a blockade of Qatar. Frustrated with Qatar's tolerance of revolutionary actors during the Arab Spring protests and relative friendliness with Iran, these states cut Qatar off from international travel and commerce. They issued a series of demands, including ending support for groups the Saudis deemed extremist and limiting ties with Iran. [sc name="left_call_out"...
The Boeing 737 Max Settlement: An American “Solution” to an International Disaster?
In 2018 and 2019, two Boeing 737 MAX planes crashed, killing 346 people hailing from 36 different countries across the globe. Now, some of the families who lost loved ones are challenging in U.S. federal court the Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) settlement with Boeing. No matter what the court decides, the families have already raised important questions not only about the Boeing settlement, but also how corporations are held accountable for criminal wrongdoing. The families have brought to headline news the fact that the Boeing settlement – and most corporate criminal prosecutions today –...
Textbook Reactionary Populism
I recently posted a piece at Lawyers, Guns and Money about Jonathan Swan’s two-part series on Trumpworld’s plans for a second term. The gist is that Trump and his inner circle intend to revive his Schedule F executive order. What is Schedule F? Eric Katz explains: In October 2020, just before the presidential election, Trump signed his controversial executive order creating a new class of federal employees excepted from the competitive service. The order sought to remove career federal workers in “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating”...
Book Nook: A Small State’s Guide to Influence in World Politics
Our next Bridging the Gap Book Nook features Tom Long of the University of Warwick. He discusses his new Oxford University Press book, A Small State's Guide to Influence in World Politics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glKAammexM8
Zeitenwende: Scholz Turns Back Time to Make Room for Action on Ukraine
On February 24, just hours after Russia launched its assault on Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock tweeted a simple message: “Today we are waking up in a different Europe. In a different world.” Three days later, the same could be said for waking up in a different Germany. For 70 years, Germany maintained an explicit and unyielding policy of not shipping weapons to conflict areas. This position was reversed with a single speech by Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the Bundestag. Amongst policy circles in Germany, Scholz’s February 27th speech is dubbed...
Partnered Engagement: A New Form of Ethical Policy Engagement
What happens when a research subject becomes a research and briefing partner? In 2017, I was contacted by the peacebuilding NGO Peace Direct to contribute to a policy report on community-based atrocities prevention. I invited a local peacebuilder I knew from Colombia to partner with me in the endeavor. We co-facilitated an online forum and drafted a chapter for the report. We then shared our findings – plus her experiences and my research – with NGOs and policymakers in the U.S. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, once I got involved with the Sié...
Nationalism, Weak States, and Unrealistic Realism
At its core, the current war in Ukraine reflects an incompatibility of nationalist narratives. Many Ukrainians want to escape Russia’s imperial shadow. Putin wants to reextend that shadow – to erase Ukraine as an independent national identity.
The Korea Analogy
Recent chatter about David Remnick's interview of Stephen Kotkin reminds me of another interview that Kotkin recorded in February. Kotkin draws an analogy between Putin's decision to invade Ukraine and Stalin's decision to give Kim Il-sung the "green light" to invade South Korea in 1950. The comparison not only highlights the dysfunctions of personalist regimes, but the (potential) effects of the Russo-Ukraine War on U.S. foreign policy. Back in January, Gregory Mitrovich published an excellent piece about that in The Washington Post. Though the Cold War had begun several years before the...