Under the Paris Agreement, states submit Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) outlining their commitments to reducing emissions. These documents are important window in the international politicization of climate change policy.
The second installment of our live taping at the British International Studies Association annual…
The Indo-Pacific is an increasingly contested space. Literature on the region revolves around the notion that China’s deepening regional footprint has exacerbated apprehensions in Washington,...
Ongoing instability in the Sahel – involving worsening insurgent violence, deepening great power competition, and frequent coups – is exposing weaknesses in U.S. Africa policy. In fact, three years...
Why and how do authoritarian regimes manage their image abroad?
The Duck has a new look and a new lineup of our core group, what we used to call "permanent contributors." We haven't yet settled on a new term. Blog Jedi Masters came to mind. In this post, I wanted to thank long-time contributors who are stepping away from the core group but who may blog...
American Dove makes pragmatic case for a dovish foreign policy. The use of force is a terrible foreign-policy instrument: it’s expensive and hardly ever works.
Ah, those days when you did not feel guilty for reading something that does not contain the term “poststructuralism” and/or footnotes. Back in my teenage years, I used to devour all the books I could get during the summer. I had some favorites: Alexandre Duma’s The Count of Monte-Christo...
I get the sense that lots of scholars are viewing the return (sooner or later) of in-person conference with a good deal of ambivalence. Is it time to take all conference online?
Arnold Wolfers is one of the most important figures of “mainstream” mid-20th century internationa…
I just published a piece in Foreign Affairs, which draws on my new book, Bullets Not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare. After two decades, the United States is finally leaving Afghanistan, and only 2,500 U.S. troops remain in Iraq. In both countries, the insurgencies continue. It...
The second- and third-most downloaded articles at the journal Security Studies both tackle the causes of the Iraq War. This might reflect an imbalance of supply and demand: there aren't that many articles in leading international-relations journals that focus on the question of why the United...
Is there still room for a traditional academic international-relations blog? An overview of relevant history and the Duck’s approach to blogging.
Daniel Deudney and John Ikenberry recently published a ‘big think’ article in Foreign Policy. They note that the Biden administration’s approach to foreign and domestic policy – including its particular understanding of the relationship between them – is best understood as “Rooseveltian” in character. What should we make of this?
The Duck of Minerva is getting a reboot. What’s changing, and why? This posts begins the process of providing answers.
In this episode, Dr. Toni Haastrup of the University of Stirling joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Dr. Haastrup was born in Aberdeen, but moved to Nigeria when she was very young. She talks about primary and then secondary school there, the decisions she had to make early on about language...