Over the past month, U.S. President Donald Trump has shifted from misogynistic jabs to full‑scale performances of militarized authority, an evolution entirely consistent his political...
The U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean is confusing the MAGA faithful. With rumors swirling of an imminent operation to topple Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, the president’s supporters are asking...
On November 1, 2025, President Donald Trump threatened to end all U.S. assistance to Nigeria and — if he deemed it necessary — launch a military attack against insurgents in the country. As National...
I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning of “responsibility,” specifically in the context of politics and governance. We live in an age of populism, rising authoritarianism, disinformation,...
This is the first in a series of remembrances on life and career of the late Susan Sell. When I think about Susan Sell, I think about a life lived unapologetically, beautifully, and gratefully. I think about International Relations theory taught with irreverence and humility. I think about...
In 2015, Linus Hagström, a professor of political science at the Swedish Defence University, questioned the wisdom of Sweden joining NATO in a coauthored opinion piece. After its publication, some of his colleagues, especially those in the Swedish military, ostracized Hagström. Some even...
International relations discourse tends to be a bit wonkier than domestic American political debates. While this leads to the frequent lament, from voices like Dan Drezner, that American voters don't care about international relations, it also insulates us from the more frustrating aspects of...
When I arrived at the Pentagon in 2009, the Obama administration was just getting its footing as caretakers of the War on Terror. Our focus then was truly global dominion. That meant, yes, killing and capturing whatever the intelligence process coughed up as bad guys no matter who they were or...
With a symbolically successful COP28 and substantively significant investments in clean energy around the world, 2023 boasts some positive news on climate change. Not a moment too soon: global GHG emissions continue to rise and global warming continues to worsen. We can hardly rest on our laurels....
A controversy broke out the weekend before Christmas, when Fr. Edward Beck, a Roman Catholic priest, claimed Jesus was a "Palestinian Jew" while discussing the current war between Israel and Hamas. Some may dismiss this as a disingenuous conservative freak-out; for example, the article I linked to...
As if there was not enough trouble around the world as it is, Nicolas Maduro, the autocratic president of Venezuela, has kept us at the edge of our seats for the last couple of weeks after calling for a referendum to incorporate Guayana Esequiba—two-thirds of neighboring Guyana—into Venezuelan...
The ongoing war in Gaza has stretched on for over two months after the horrific October 7 attack by Hamas against Israel, which resulted in Hamas killing over 1000 Israelis and kidnapping over 200. Israel's subsequent airstrikes and ground invasion have killed over 10,000 Palestinians (with the...
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 be otherwise. And there are problematic sub-regional cleavages among Micronesia, Polynesia, and...
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 issue before the Security Council, and call on them to act. Many are cheering this, seeing it as a...
Who, if anyone, rules the world? Answering a question like that requires grappling with both the character of international order and the global distribution of power—facets of political life that are related but should not be conflated. Two new datasets—one by Security in...
Forced migration--the movement of people for reasons beyond their control--has become a global crisis. According to both the UNHCR and the Norwegian Refugee Council, over 100 million people were displaced by the end of 2022, a 19 million increase over 2021. There are two sides to this crisis. One...