How can we understand Tump 2.0 foreign policy? It’s the product of the fusion of two different forces: Christian Nationalism and Personalist Rent-Extraction.
Trump’s Foreign Policy and the Purpose of the MAGA State
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Recent Posts
Sebastian Kaempf
Professor Sebastian Kaempf of the University of Queensland joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast this week. Seb grew up in Germany, with the fall of the Berlin Wall happening when he was entering his...
On reckoning and repair in the international: revisiting imperialism and race in IR
THe short-term contributions of the Special Issue have been worthwhile, but there remains a continued concern and challenge that with greater attention paid to race and imperialism in IR, these issues will become co-opted into the game of academic production, sanitised as intellectual curiosities, instead of being treated as matters of life and death that need to be opposed practically and not just on paper.
On the politics of decolonization theory and practice
International institutional policy, shaped by a globally entrenched explanatory framework of development and underdevelopment, perpetuates the suppression of knowledge production aimed at challenging social, economic, and political injustices by elites across the global South
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Phill Scott demonstrates what’s wrong with Biden’s Democracy Summit
Joe Biden's "Summit for Democracy" was held last week. This summit meant to bring together the world's democracies, strengthening them and pro-democratic global norms. The hope is that this would reverse the growing trend of authoritarianism around the world. Some were hopeful. In his opening...
NOW The White House Wants To Fight Kleptocracy
The Biden administration just issued the government’s first ever anti-corruption strategy. The upshot: It’s needed. It’s analytically informed. It raises the prioritization of fighting kleptocracy. The downside: It’s not all that realistic. It defines corruption so widely...
6+1 Questions about Armed Guests: Territorial Sovereignty and Foreign Military Basing
The practice of maintaining a long-term, peacetime military presence in another state (or “sovereign basing”) only developed in the last century. Before World War II, a foreign military presence usually meant one of three things: occupation, colonization, or a wartime alliance. This changed radically in the years after 1945.
Robert Jervis
As many of our readers have likely already heard, Robert Jervis died yesterday. The field has lost a gentle intellectual giant. Unlike many of my friends from Columbia, Bob wasn't on my dissertation committee; I only took one course from him. But I'll remember him as both brilliant and very...
Tarak Barkawi
Professor Tarak Barkawi joins Brent this week. He discusses growing up in Orange County in the 1970s and 1980s, in a very politically aware family, and his varied interests in military history but also LA’s punk rock scene, having a school that doubled as a fallout shelter and his first encounters...
What’s Left of Liberal Internationalism without military intervention? …A lot
Canadian scholar and politician Michael Ignatieff had a piece in Persuasion recently on the "collapse of liberal internationalism." For Ignatieff to admit this (as one of the strongest proponents of this foreign policy orientation) says a lot. However, he inadvertently gives too much of the...
Did Biden Really Abandon Nigerian Christians?
The US State Department recently released the lists of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) on religious freedom, part of its responsibilities under the International Religious Freedom Act (IRF). The list now includes Russia alongside countries like Burma and China. But one change angered many...
Professing Abroad: European Academia 101
Willardson and Sullivan’s recent article here provided numerous useful tips for Americans who want to “profess abroad.” They also asked scholars outside the United States to weigh in with thoughts. As a European, I thought I’m a good position to furnish relevant information for those who may be a...
Who’s Afraid of China’s Nukes?
In 1932, John Chamberlain lamented “the unwillingness of the liberal to continue with analysis once the process of analysis had become uncomfortable.” He was critiquing the way Wilsonian liberals drifted into World War One. Socialists and reformist progressives had...
We Urgently Need to Support Girls’ Education in Afghanistan
Since the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan in August 2021, there have been growing calls by many Afghans, along with the international community, to protect the rights of women and girls. Questions remain about how Afghans want to see women’s rights protected. A notorious Afghan proverb...
Are you writing an MA thesis at APSIA-type program? Here are some things to consider
Many MA programs at so-called professional schools of international affairs require students to complete a thesis. The purpose of this is not always clear-cut for students in terminal and interdisciplinary degree programs. Having supervised dozens of students in this pursuit, I have a few thoughts...
Do Liberals Believe in Diplomacy or Not?
When I first started teaching introduction to international relations, I included a lecture on the use of force in my foreign policy unit. We talked about Art's four uses of force, Schelling's diplomacy of violence, etc. But I worried I was downplaying the importance of diplomacy. So beginning...