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.
![Leaders’ preambles and world ordering in national security strategy documents: the (un)surprising global strategic ambitions of the US and UK](https://i0.wp.com/www.duckofminerva.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Elite-Leaders-Photo.jpeg?resize=1080%2C675&ssl=1)
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.
The Blue Pacific is far from monolithic—diverse in its politics, regime types, degrees of sovereignty, and ways of thinking about strategy. Given its bigger-than-continental scale, it could hardly...
The foreign policy world was abuzz this morning with the news that Antonio Guterres invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter over the Israel-Hamas conflict. This allows the Secretary General to bring an...
On the sidelines of the Pacific Islands Forum, Australia and Tuvalu just signed a new, major agreement—the Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Union Treaty. It binds Australia and Tuvalu much...
You feel the gentle touch of the sea breeze on your face. Seagulls squawk overhead whilst waves crash against the shore. You glance at the book by your side, but its pages have lost their battle against the summer heat. You go for a swim. The feel of the cold salt water against your body brings back childhood memories of family trips to the seaside. When you return to your beach blanket, you catch sight of a hulking shadow cutting across the horizon: a merchant ship carrying goods that may well eventually make their way to your own doorstep. The colossal creature continues its journey across...
If you spent the entire Friday night and Saturday glued to the news about Prigozhin's armed rebellion, you are either an IR-head, a Russia-watcher or the Ukrainian army running out of popcorn. The avalanche of hot-takes about the start of a civil war, theoretical debates about a coup or not a coup and an army of blue-check grifters with the latest FSB letters reigned the day. The pundits who rushed to their keyboards with the news of Russia's impeding collapse saw their takes turn to pumpkins even before midnight: after Wagner's mostly unobstructed march to Moscow and seizing Rostov on Don...
I just returned from a two month fellowship at Edinburgh University, accompanied by my family. The trip included talks in Germany, Italy and England. These side-trips required a lot of packing, and generated a lot of souvenirs, specifically snow globes to mark each place we visited. This led to a problem when going through airport security, however. Snow globes count as liquids, and have to be included in those annoying little plastic bags; as a result, we had to find tiny snow globes to avoid the wrath of security agents. Failure to do so runs the risk of your bag being pulled aside to be...
As a Turkey follower (I studied the country in grad school and wrote on it for my dissertation and first book) I've got thoughts on Turkey's elections. But as someone not interested in hot takes, I'm going to wait until the election is over to provide some analysis. Instead, I want to talk about Pope Francis' "peace talks" between Russia and Ukraine. The Pope recently announced "secret" peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, although neither side seemed to be aware of this. His efforts have progressed, however, with Ukraine President Zelensky's recent visit to Italy. I should be a fan of...
The professional bureaucracies of both the US and Chinese national security states encourage mistrust, jingoistic attitudes, pessimistic assumptions, and hawkish policies. This is a growing source of war risk, and the only near-term fix is a security dilemma sensibility. Let me explain. The Security Dilemma Sensibility Some time ago, Kenneth Booth and Nicholas Wheeler wrote of a “security dilemma sensibility” that policymakers could (and should) cultivate in order to better manage the interactive processes that can lead to crisis and war, even between two actors who have only...
Feminist foreign policies (FFP) are considered the latest contribution of feminism to global governance. Eleven countries around the world have embraced FFP, aiming to “systematically integrate a gender perspective throughout” foreign policy agendas. In recent years, FFP has spread to Latin America: Mexico introduced an FFP in 2020 and the newly elected Chilean and Colombian governments have expressed their intentions of adopting the framework. This growing interest in FFP across Latin American raises important questions: What exactly is this feminist foreign policy and what is there to gain...
The government of a country makes explicit or implicit threats to another: "if you cross this line, we will inflict harm upon you." The threat fails; the government crosses the designated line. Has deterrence failed? Well, yes. Of course. By definition. It is, for example, unequivocally true that the United States did not deter Russia from invading Georgia in 2008, nor Ukraine in 2014, nor Ukraine (again) in 2022. Should you have any doubts about this, you can always go read a nearly four-thousand word Foreign Policy article on the subject. I agree with its authors, Liam Collins and Frank...
Since marginalized communities tend to suffer disproportionately when governments make contemptible policy choices, it stands to reason that those communities might develop a heightened sensitivity about the merits of new policies. At the very least they have reason to cultivate a perspective and preferences that differ from people with resources (money, power, societal standing) to buffer them from the consequences of poor policy stewardship. That perspective has a kernel of wise counsel. There’s an abundance of evidence that policies ranging from de-industrialization since the 1970s to the...