There is more continuity in the history of U.S. military basing policy than is typically assumed.
On Continuity in U.S. Military Basing Practices
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US Foreign Policy
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.
Why Western Conservatives are Freaking about U.S. Decline
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...
Liberal Order Beyond Neoliberalism
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.
More US Foreign Policy Posts
Mr. Trump, Choose Your Own Adventure
This post comes to us from Rupal N. Mehta, Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an alumna of Bridging the Gap's New Era Workshop and International Policy Summer Institute (Twitter @Rupal_N_Mehta); and Rachel Elizabeth Whitlark, Assistant Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Bridging the Gap associate and alumna of the New Era Workshop (Twitter @RachelWhitlark). In the coming days, President Trump is tasked with recertifying the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The...
Want to build support for ‘America First’? Try the UN.
Today's Bridging the Gap contribution comes from Theo Milonopoulos, PhD Candidate at Columbia University and alumnus of our 2017 New Era Workshop. In an often combative speech before the United Nations General Assembly last month, President Trump at times praised, and other times disparaged, an institution he once dismissed via tweet as "just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time." Although few doubt the need for reform of an increasingly sclerotic institution, President Trump's evident disdain for the United Nations is misplaced, not least because of its ability to...
The Rise of the Trauma State: Afghanistan and America’s Unwinnable War
This is a guest post by Erik Goepner, a visiting research fellow at the Cato Institute. During his earlier military career, he commanded units in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is currently a doctoral candidate at George Mason University, and his main research interests include civil war, trauma, and terrorism. Post-traumatic stress disorder afflicts 11 to 20 percent of U.S. military members after they serve in Afghanistan or Iraq. The military expends significant effort to provide them with needed care. Commanders move the psychologically injured out of the combat zone. Medical and mental health...
Magic Lines and Escalate Ladders
A colleague asked me if there will be war between the US and North Korea. I said maybe, which is pretty damned scary, given the likely consequences. Why am I worried? Basically for two reasons that intersect in bad ways, besides the Trumpiness and KJU-ness factors: the US seems awfully confident that they knew where the line is between what North Korea will perceive as an exercise and what NK will perceive as the start of an attack Escalation Ladders are finite. This weekend, the US sent some bombers and fighters to fly near North Korea but not over it. How do they know the North Koreans...
The Book Nook: The CIA and the Politics of US Intelligence Reform
Today we begin the Bridging the Gap "Book Nook," a series of short videos describing new books by scholars in the BTG network. For the first entry, our very own Brent Durbin discusses his book, The CIA and the Politics of US Intelligence Reform (Cambridge, 2017). (We hope to do a bunch of these, and we would welcome any thoughts on how to improve the format!)
Bridging the Gap at the Duck
This inaugural post from our partners at Bridging the Gap is written by Naazneen Barma and Brent Durbin, who will be coordinating contributions from BTG's network of scholars. Take a moment to think back to college – or whenever you decided to pursue the path that has brought you here, reading about world politics and sundry related topics on the Duck of Minerva. What set you on this path? What made you want to devote years of your life to studying politics, perhaps even through formal graduate training? If you’re like us, you looked out and saw a puzzling and imperfect world, and you wanted...
Basic Rules of US Civil-Military Relations and Trump’s Afghanistan Policy
Trump's speech has something for everyone ... to criticize. I will not focus here on how icky the first part on loyalty was. Instead, I focus on the rules of US Civil-Military Relations: the US military does not like to start new wars (see Deborah Avant) once involved in a war, the US military likes to escalate. They want more troops, as if more means better. More can be better, but that really depends on the strategy and the adversary and the conditions. Washington, DC establishment prefers MORE ... something. It prefers action so one is likely to see more approving nods. Everybody...
The Transgender Ban and Politics of Exclusion
The following is a guest post from Jennifer Spindel and Robert Ralston, Ph.D. Candidates in Political Science at the University of Minnesota. On 26 July 2017, Donald Trump announced, via Twitter, that the US Government would “not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US military.”[1] Notably, the tweets were sent exactly 69 years after President Harry Truman issued the order to integrate the US military. Even if Trump’s tweets do not lead to formal policies, they exemplify the narrative that “others” would disrupt cohesion, thus would negatively affect the...