Making norms for uncertain times to come
At the 1939 World Fair in New York City, the big attraction was "Futurama," an exhibition put on by the U.S. car manufacturer General Motors. Every visitor to Futurama received a souvenir — a small blue-white badge that read “I have seen the future.” That is, the future presented by (at the time) one of most influential companies in the world, one built around its main product: the automobile. Yet the exhibition wasn't exactly wrong. It was part of an effort to sell Americans on automobile-centric planning and development: its "theory of the future" produced a future (or, in current jargon,...
Whither norms research in times of uncertainty? A Symposium
In a world of multiple and overlapping crises, can norms and rules-based institution still create order amidst uncertainty? Do existing norms and frameworks for international cooperation enjoy sufficient legitimacy to help us navigate the interacting and concatenating effects of crises? A new symposium explores the question: “Whither norms (research) in times of uncertainty?”
Some Thoughts on Turkey and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Early accounts of the Cuban Missile Crisis, including Graham Allison’s canonical Essence of Decision, tend to represent it as a two-player game in which John F Kennedy and Nikita Krushchev went, in Dean Rusk’s memorable phrase, “eyeball to eyeball” until the Soviets backed down and the crisis was resolved. Although these accounts made clear that Krushchev was bothered by the Bay of Pigs and other attempted incursions against the Cuban Revolution, Cuba was largely represented as a pawn in the rivalry of the two superpowers. As Jutta Weldes and Mark Laffey pithily characterize many early...
A Postcolonial Approach to the Cuban Missile Crisis
The October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is one of the most closely-studied events of the Cold War. For several decades, the missile crisis literature supported a largely heroic U.S.-centric narrative that relied primarily upon the perspectives of President John F. Kennedy’s administration. This U.S.-centrism is generally acknowledged today, and the literature is increasingly enriched by the emergence of Soviet sources. However, the missile crisis literature’s representation of Cuba remains partial—both incomplete and biased. Six decades after the crisis, postcolonial...