On June 19, 2026, as American and Iranian negotiators were set to meet in Switzerland to work through the terms of a fragile memorandum of understanding, Israeli jets struck Hezbollah targets in Nabatiyeh and the Bekaa Valley. Iran responded by skipping the...
Like everyone else, I’m enjoying the World Cup. I’m not a fan of soccer/football, and honestly haven’t been watching the game. But I love how excited other people are for the tournament. It’s great...
In July 2025, the UK government designated Palestine Action as a proscribed terrorist under the Terrorism Act 2000, making it a criminal offence to be a member of, or...
[Editor’s Note: This is a write-up of a workshop proceedings. It is posted under my name, but the participants wrote the piece; they are listed at the end.] If Politics and IR urgently needs to...
Every year I make my third year Bachelor students read Carol Cohn’s article “Sex and Death in the rational world of defense intellectuals” and they are genuinely surprised by the number of penile metaphors one can use to describe a missile. Except this year: current Secretary of Defense (War?) has...
President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran may weaken the U.S. ability to deter great power rivals. But not because the recent U.S.-Iranian memorandum of understanding (MOU) to end the conflict makes the United States look weak. The damage has already been done. Reactions in the United...
Why did some states successfully avoid conquest by European empires? Logan Cochrane’s new, co-edited volume tackles this puzzle.
In something of a departure from my typical work, I recently published an article in International Political Sociology on Indigenous political thought in video games. As some of my prior blogging here suggests, I have been thinking about the place of video games in the study of popular...
Our community lost the inimitable Raúl Pacheco-Vega this week. Someone who knew him better than me should write a more definitive remembrance and maybe they have in some other corner of the internet. But, I haven’t seen a longer treatment yet (here is a terrific one!), so I thought I’d have a go...
Alexander Dugin is one of those figures who hover permanently in the discussions about Russian ideology, Eurasianism, empire, conservatism, and whatever else people project onto modern Russia. Contrary to popular belief, he is not “Putin’s favorite philosopher” (that would be Ivan Il’in). But...
There are two posts I could have written about the latest Eurovision song contest. One would focus on another controversy over Israel’s participation and high vote count. The other would focus on the first-time win for Bulgaria; a well-deserved win in my opinion. I choose the latter. Another...
Much of the discourse about the recent UK local elections had to do with the decline of Labour under Keir Starmer and the worrisome rise of the far-right Reform Party. This is obviously important, but the outcome in Scotland’s parliamentary elections may have just as much of an impact on the...
I’ve been meaning to write this for awhile, and unfortunately it hasn’t gone out of date. On April 29th, a man stabbed two Jewish people in London. Shortly before that someone threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of a synagogue. A string of attack preceded that, including the arson near the...
As I have discussed here, I am a proud Protestant. I was raised Lutheran, and am now Episcopalian. While there is some variation among Episcopalians and Anglicans over whether they see themselves as Protestant, both my birth and adopted traditions are united in a rejection of the Pope’s—or as some...
I have a new open-access article out in Global Studies Quarterly, “What’s at Stake in the Indigenous Empire Debate,” in which I argue against historian Pekka Hämäläinen’s claims that the Comanche and the Lakota constituted empires. Many others have provided reasons why we ought not to think of the...
The US and Israel’s war on Iran and regional instability threatens to disrupt critical global migration patterns. These serve as vital pressure release valves for overcrowded and socio-economically stagnant mega cities in the global south. Their disruption may cut off vital income for tens of...