When I arrived at the Pentagon in 2009, the Obama administration was just getting its footing as caretakers of the War on Terror. Our focus then was truly global dominion. That meant, yes, killing and capturing whatever the intelligence process coughed up as bad guys no matter who they were or where they were. But also, technologically, our fixation was on “prompt global strike”—the idea that the US should be able to reliably put warheads on...
With a symbolically successful COP28 and substantively significant investments in clean energy around the world, 2023 boasts some positive news on climate change. Not a moment too soon: global GHG emissions continue to rise and global warming continues to worsen. We can hardly rest on our laurels. The team at Brown University’s Climate Solutions Lab looked at where we expected better in 2023, and ought to demand better in the future. Germany is...
Jeff D. Colgan is the Richard Holbrooke Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Director of the Climate Solutions Lab at the Watson Institute for Public and International Affairs at Brown University. His research focuses on international order, especially as related to energy and the environment. His latest book, "Partial Hegemony: Oil Politics and International Order" was published in September 2021 by Oxford University...
A controversy broke out the weekend before Christmas, when Fr. Edward Beck, a Roman Catholic priest, claimed Jesus was a "Palestinian Jew" while discussing the current war between Israel and Hamas. Some may dismiss this as a disingenuous conservative freak-out; for example, the article I linked to was in the New York Post and figures such as Stephen Miller and Erick Erickson were among the outraged. This would be a mistake. Fr. Beck was...
As if there was not enough trouble around the world as it is, Nicolas Maduro, the autocratic president of Venezuela, has kept us at the edge of our seats for the last couple of weeks after calling for a referendum to incorporate Guayana Esequiba—two-thirds of neighboring Guyana—into Venezuelan territory, issuing new maps, announcing plans to drill oil from the territory, and exercising a fiery rhetoric. The reactivation of this territorial...
Schenoni is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) and Director of the Security Studies Programme at the Department of Political Science, University College London. He is also an Affiliated Professor at Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, and Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. He works on state building and international conflict, with a focus on Latin America.
The ongoing war in Gaza has stretched on for over two months after the horrific October 7 attack by Hamas against Israel, which resulted in Hamas killing over 1000 Israelis and kidnapping over 200. Israel's subsequent airstrikes and ground invasion have killed over 10,000 Palestinians (with the Hamas-run Gaza Health Authority report numbers approaching 20,000). With the war now drawing close to Christmas, some are paying attention to the status...
The Blue Pacific is far from monolithic—diverse in its politics, regime types, degrees of sovereignty, and ways of thinking about strategy. Given its bigger-than-continental scale, it could hardly be otherwise. And there are problematic sub-regional cleavages among Micronesia, Polynesia, and Melanesia. But there’s a stronger imprint here of what I recognize as an organically progressive strategic culture than elsewhere in the world. It’s not...
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...