Charles A. Dainoff, Robert M. Farley, and Geoffrey F. Williams answer questions about their new book
6+1 Questions about Waging War with Gold: National Security and the Finance Domain Across the Ages
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Recent Posts
And All That Jezebel
Ah, the avalanche of racism and misogyny that came after the Kamala Harris announcement. The “Kamala is not really black” narrative has been dissected by Adam Serwer in great detail. Spoiler alert:...
Was the Trump shooting terrorism?
The implications of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump over the weekend remain unclear. Will it lead him to strike a more conciliatory tone during the upcoming Republican National...
Bloody Carnival
A lot of ink has been spilled and bytes spent on the reflections over Trump's failed assassination this past weekend. I won't pretend I know better, although as a regular academic that's kind of my...
More Recent Posts
Election Observation as an Exercise in African Agency
Election observation is at a turning point. Roughly 80-85% of elections around the world are subject to election observation. The majority of these are in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. While international election observation is important for democracy promotion and electoral integrity, it has...
6+1 Questions about Medieval Sovereignty
What's the title? Latham, Andrew., 2022. Medieval Sovereignty, ARC Humanities Press. It argues that? A series of thirteenth-century contests over the locus and character of supreme authority in Latin Christendom provided the conceptual raw materials that later thinkers ultimately assembled...
Is Reactionary Populism a Form of Fascism? Does it Matter?
My most recent Foreign Affairs article, co-authored with Justin Casey, landed yesterday. The article started out as an argument about how the normalization of the far right might affect national and international security. Those issues remain a major thread, but the...
Ann Towns
Professor Ann Towns of the University of Gothenburg visits the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Towns grew up in Sweden, and was interested in playing music and especially performing classical music as a child. But by the time she was in high school, she wanted to broaden her horizons, and get...
America is the Preeminent Revisionist Power
The Biden administration’s jarring revisionism on economic policy toward China (and by extension the world) is reviving discussions (most acute during the Trump and George W. Bush years) about whether it’s right to label the United States a revisionist power. There’s a lot at...
Get off my lawn! Are journal demands for “novelty” creating a culture of low-level academic dishonesty?
A distinctly unoriginal take on the pathologies of overvaluing academic “novelty.”
Ok, students think race and climate change matter. Now what?
When I first started teaching intro to IR, I closed the semester with lectures on climate change and the second Congo war (or "Africa's world war"). This was part of my effort to include current and overlooked aspects of international relations. As time went on, and discussions spread about how IR...
Critical Strategic Studies, or Where Are the Peace Strategists?
We need a critical strategic studies, or maybe a strategic peace studies. Critical security studies, of course, is a venerable research tradition that I sometimes identify with. There are also scattered references to the phrase “critical strategic studies” out there...
Indeterminacy, Uncertain Contexts and the Dual Nature of Norms
When it comes norm dynamics and how we theorize them, uncertainty presents something of a paradox. We study norms because we think that they matter. But if norms are inherently uncertain, then how is it possible that they constitute, constrain, and otherwise shape the behavior of global actors? Unless norms produce stable and defined expectations, then how can they have the power to structure international politics?
Is the World Cup a soft power win for Qatar? It’s too early to tell
Millions of people around the world are watching breathlessly as teams compete in the World Cup, held in Qatar. Many others--like me--tune it out, turned off by that guy in grad school who spent a semester in Barcelona and then pretended to be a life-long Spain fan. But this year, the World Cup...
A Message from the Executive Editor of International Security
I write to you as the new executive editor of International Security, the first woman to hold this position. I am taking the opportunity graciously provided by the Duck of Minerva team to introduce myself to you. I also want to thank my most recent predecessors, Sebastian Rosato (pro tem), Morgan...
Say “cheese”!
The Bidens are serving the Macrons US-made wine and cheese. A cute gesture or a clumsy diplomatic move?