The foreign policy world was abuzz this morning with the news that Antonio Guterres invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter over the Israel-Hamas conflict. This allows the Secretary General to bring an issue before the Security Council, and call on them to act. Many are cheering this, seeing it as a way to stop this conflict, but Guterres' record should leave some wary. What is Article 99? Article 99 in the UN Charter allows the UN Secretary...
Who, if anyone, rules the world? Answering a question like that requires grappling with both the character of international order and the global distribution of power—facets of political life that are related but should not be conflated. Two new datasets—one by Security in Context* and the other compiled by Amitav Acharya, Antoni Estevadeordal, and Louis Goodman—give hints about the construction of global order and...
Forced migration--the movement of people for reasons beyond their control--has become a global crisis. According to both the UNHCR and the Norwegian Refugee Council, over 100 million people were displaced by the end of 2022, a 19 million increase over 2021. There are two sides to this crisis. One is the push factors: the conditions leading individuals to flee. These include conflict, repression, gang violence, climate change, and economic...
On the sidelines of the Pacific Islands Forum, Australia and Tuvalu just signed a new, major agreement—the Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Union Treaty. It binds Australia and Tuvalu much closer together in ways that appear to be win-win. And nobody was coerced into signing it (not directly anyway). But it’s not great, Bob! The new treaty actually expands the Pacific’s ongoing sphere-of-influence problem—the only problem nobody...
Our next Bridging the Gap Book Nook features Rachel Whitlark, an associate professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She discusses her recent book, All Options on the Table: Leaders, Preventive War, and Nuclear Proliferation. https://youtu.be/dK5_o5zE2hQ
Dr. Rachel Elizabeth Whitlark is Associate Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is also a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense practice of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a Senior Fellow with the Bridging the Gap Project. Previously, she was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the Project on Managing the Atom and International...
WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE BOOK AND WHAT ARE ITS COORDINATES? Peter S. Henne, Religious Appeals in Power Politics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023 WHAT'S THE ARGUMENT? Religious appeals—references to religious standards and symbols by states used to justify policies or critique rivals—are a potent but unwieldy tool in international power politics. States will often turn to religious appeals when forming international coalitions or...
The world could use some serious thinking about the relationship between political ideology and nuclear escalation—specifically far-right pathways to nuclear war. The nuclear strategy literature is full of smart claims from many angles: entanglement risks, discrimination problems, first-use incentives, credible commitments, retaliatory v. catalytic v. asymmetric postures, the staying power of the nuclear revolution, and the escalatory...
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, Canberra, New Delhi, and Tokyo. Some worry that Xi might institute a security architecture with the ‘Middle Kingdom’ at the center rivalling the US hub-and-spokes model. Others, less apprehensive (and possibly more realistic), believe that China intends to...
Shakthi De Silva is a Non-Resident Vasey Fellow at Pacific Forum International (2023-24) and a Visiting Lecturer at the Royal Institute of Colombo and Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies where he teaches courses on International Relations. He previously served as a Lecturer at the University of Colombo (Sri Lanka) and as a Researcher for think tanks in the Sri Lankan Defence Ministry and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His publications...
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 into what U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called an “epidemic” of coups, the United States and its closest allies in the region still lack a coherent and coordinated strategy to defend democracy in Africa without sacrificing security...