Coup d’états are less likely to succeed against rulers who “counterbalance” their militaries with presidential guards, militarized police, and other security forces outside of military command. But there may be downsides.
I’m not going to lie. When I heard that the Trump Administration was going to release its budget blueprint, I didn’t have high hopes for global health. The new administration’s commitment to global...
Following his prescient piece from last year, Tom Wright has a provocative new essay on Donald Trump's foreign policy in Politico. He suggests that Trump foreign policy has Jeckyll and Hyde...
This is a guest post from Ariya Hagh, Andrew Szarejko, and Laila Wahedi. All three authors are doctoral students in Georgetown University’s Department of Government. Author order is alphabetical by...
On Tuesday I posted a quotation from one of Peter Golden's articles on Central Asian steppe formations. The entry received some interesting commentary, but may have struck some of our readers - particularly those who don't know me - as a bit odd. How relevant can pre-Cinggisid steppe dynamics be...
Have you noticed this very odd story (from CNN)?:The [Iraqi] official [speaking to CNN on the condition of anonymity] said two unknown gunmen in full Arabic dress began firing on civilians in central Basra, wounding several, including a traffic police officer. There were no fatalities, the...
I've updated my "current reading" on the sidebar, which had gotten horribly out of date. I'm particularly enjoying Bryan Ward-Perkin's The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, which was recommended to me by Vivek Sharma during a long discussion at APSA about the need to do more...
Those of us in IR who do "constructivist" work (broadly speaking) spend a fair amount of time questioning the notion that things like states are usefully treated as more or less solid objects. Instead of treating states as relatively unproblematic territorial containers with fixed and stable...
I present... a quiz! In reverse-"SAT reading comprehension" format. Later, perhaps, someone will post on Germany's electoral mess, what may prove to be the shortest-lasting North Korean deal yet, China's courageous stance in favor of geno - er, sovereignty, or other aspects of international...
I've been meaning to blog about this for a bit.Ronald Krebs, in an exchange with Chaim Kauffman in International Security ("Selling the Market Short? The Marketplace of Ideas and the Iraq War," Vol. 29, No. 4, Spring 2005, pp. 196–207), argues that once the Bush Administration decided to go to war...
Salon pisses me off a lot these days. There isn't a single reason. It strikes me as more vapid and less incisive than it used to be... and a lot less daring. I suspect that when the pioneering on-line liberal magazine's obituaries are being written, someone will say that "blogs killed Salon" -...
My colleague, Bob Lieber, has a new book out: The American Era: Power and Grand Strategy for the 21st Century.I haven't read nearly as much of it as I should; from what I have seen, it looks to be one of the best defenses of the doctrine of prevention and aggressive US leadership written so...
Sometimes pondering over this, I am in some degree inclined to their opinion. Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less.I compare her to...
For more than 25 years, the State Department has been required to list all state sponsors of terrorism because such a designation precludes the US from providing foreign aid and exporting arms. Here's the latest list:Country and Designation DateCuba, March 1, 1982Iran, January 19, 1984Libya,...
I've been dusting off a long dormant paper on nomadic empires and international-relations theory. While doing so, I came across this discussion of one pathway of pre-modern Central Asian state formation.The centrifugal tendencies of the tribes and the nomad’s natural anarchical inclinations, could...
Walter Pincus, staff writer for the Washington Post, reports proposed changes in US nuclear doctrine.The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist...