You're going to need some help. Since 2017, when I departed the Beltway in favor of (literally) greener pastures, I've been trying to figure out how to create an institutional presence for alternative (ok, progressive) voices on foreign policy. Why? Although I don't...
WHAT’S THE NAME OF THE BOOK? Gregorio Bettiza. 2019. Finding Faith in Foreign Policy: Religion and American Diplomacy in a Postsecular World (New York, Oxford University Press) WHAT’S THE...
It seems like everyone has an opinion to offer about the "lessons" that the United States needs to learn from the war Afghanistan. “Here’s what we must learn,” asserts the former NATO Commander,...
Matt Hancock, a Conservative MP and the UK’s Health Secretary during most of the Covid lockdowns, has failed upwards. Less than four months ago, Hancock resigned in ignominy, caught breaking his own social distancing rules when he and an aide had an affair in his Whitehall office. Yet, after a brief summer holiday, he’s now been resurrected, appointed a UN special representative in sub-Saharan Africa. Why do we allow political leaders to revive their careers after they’ve failed miserably? Who, exactly, wants more of Matt Hancock?
Matt Hancock, a Conservative MP and the UK’s Health Secretary during most of the Covid lockdowns, has failed upwards. Less than four months ago, Hancock resigned in ignominy, caught breaking his own social distancing rules when he and an aide had an affair in his Whitehall office. Yet, after a brief summer holiday, he’s now been resurrected, appointed a UN special representative in sub-Saharan Africa. Why do we allow political leaders to revive their careers after they’ve failed miserably? Who, exactly, wants more of Matt Hancock?
“Kuzushi” is the concept of off-balancing. It refers to a tactic of getting your opponent out of a fixed position where he’ll be vulnerable, maybe getting his weight tilted too much to one side or making him overcommit to a move. With kuzushi, you aren’t achieving anything; you’re opening up a window of opportunity. Window ajar, you have a split second to advance your position. A sweep or submission attempt that would’ve been impossible under normal conditions suddenly works against an unbalanced opponent.
So the New York Times reported on Beverly Gage, a history professor at Yale University, resigning from her post as head of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy because of donor pressure. There's a lot at stake in this. As an academic field, grand strategy has a reputation for being very...
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...
Numerous pundits have lamented the that Americans have not responded to the Covid pandemic with the unanimity they demonstrated after 9/11. But do we really want to return to the post-9/11 era of emergency consensus?
Taking my children to their dance class yesterday morning in Quincy, MA I found, as the traffic ground to a halt, the town center draped in red, white, and blue bunting. A giant flag hung suspended from two cranes. A parade, I was told, was in the offing. To anyone not looking at a calendar the...
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,...
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...
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.
I was just about to block "Afghanistan" as a key word in my Twitter timeline when I saw several people asking why British conservatives were even more freaked out about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan than American conservatives. The question was in response to the UK defense secretary saying...
G. John Ikenberry is one of the most influential scholars of “liberal international order.” It’s likely that he, along with Dan Deudney, is responsible for popularizing the phrase. John’s most recent book, A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism and the Crises of Global Order has reportedly shaped the thinking of the Biden foreign-policy team. I interviewed him for a recent podcast.
Political Science isn’t sterile laboratory. The discipline is riddled with politics and deeply influenced by policy concerns.