The buzzword of the first Trump administration was “Great Power Competition.” That was also a lie.
So much for “Great Power Competition”
read more
Recent Posts
Israel protesters may be missing their best opportunity to help Gaza
Even though the school year is ending, protests against Israel--most prominent on college campuses--will likely continue. Beginning at Columbia University, they gained attention and spread after a...
6+1 Questions about “The Diplomacy of Whataboutism”
Does Whataboutism work? A new article has answers.
Susan Sell: The Power of Mentorship and Example
This is the fifth in our series of remembrances on the late Susan Sell. There was a terrific gathering at ISA 2024 where friends and colleagues gathered to remember Susan's wit, her contributions to...
More Recent Posts
Does IR Do Big Questions? Should It?
Jarrod is joined by Daniela Lai (Royal Holloway) and Adam to talk about the role of big questions in IR scholarship and teaching. The trio engage recent tweets by Bear Braumoeller and Tom Nichols (the latter of which Peter also addresses in a post) as they discuss the place of big questions in...
Was the Colorado nightclub attack terrorism? Does it matter?
Once again, America is enduring the horrors of a mass shooting. This time a gunman attacked a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, opening fire before patrons grabbed his weapon and beat him with it. As of the time of writing (Monday morning) five are dead, and there are fears the number will...
Podcast Recommendations
Looking for some podcast episodes to give a listen to? I’ve got suggestions.
Some Thoughts on Turkey and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Early accounts of the Cuban Missile Crisis, including Graham Allison’s canonical Essence of Decision, tend to represent it as a two-player game in which John F Kennedy and Nikita Krushchev went, in Dean Rusk’s memorable phrase, “eyeball to eyeball” until the Soviets backed down and the crisis...
A Postcolonial Approach to the Cuban Missile Crisis
The October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is one of the most closely-studied events of the Cold War. For several decades, the missile crisis literature supported a largely heroic U.S.-centric narrative that relied primarily upon the perspectives of President John F. Kennedy’s administration....
No, social science didn’t kill international relations, part 58
Earlier this week, professional opinion-haver Tom Nichols posted a "short" Twitter thread complaining that the push to make IR a social science, combined with the dominance of realism, is leading to bad takes on Ukraine. Despite my mindfulness-inspired efforts to ignore annoyances on social media,...
Reframing the Cuban Missile Crisis in (Postcolonial) Time and Space
Any veteran (or better, victim) of a US grad program in IR will be familiar with the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. The Crisis is widely considered a turning point in the Cold War, the moment when both Soviet and American leaders realized that they had come perilously close to a devastating...
The Quincy Institute is not a progressive foreign-policy think tank
The debacle over the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ letter on Ukraine reflects the underlying tensions between progressive values and realist grand strategies of restraint—as well as the danger of progressives failing to see the difference between the two.
On the Legitimating Effects of Brinksmanship
This post is the first in a four part symposium on the Cuban Missile Crisis, one of the the most studied cases of IR. With the release of documents in recent decades, historical revisions have challenged the received wisdom informed by mainstream approaches...
Grand Strategy is Worldmaking
I think a lot of people are kidding themselves about what grand strategy is—it’s worldmaking. It’s an attempt to put the power of the state in service of grand political purpose. States big and small can have grand strategies because states big and small have elites who use state power to serve...
Helen Kinsella
Professor Helen Kinsella joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Kinsella grew up in Ithaca, New York, and she reflects on what that was like, plus a reluctance or indifference to going to college. She eventually chose Bryn Mawr and she talks about what an amazing environment she experienced...
Episode 26: Anarchy vs. The Anarchy
The University of Chicago’s Paul Poast claims that G. Lowes Dickinson is was the OG “modern” theo…