This post is the first in a four part symposium on the Cuban Missile Crisis, one of the the most studied cases of IR. With the release of documents in recent decades, historical revisions have challenged the received wisdom informed by mainstream approaches to nuclear strategy and a US-centric perspective. However, these revisionist accounts are not well incorporated by IR narratives of the crisis. Sixty years...
I think a lot of people are kidding themselves about what grand strategy is—it’s worldmaking. It’s an attempt to put the power of the state in service of grand political purpose. States big and small can have grand strategies because states big and small have elites who use state power to serve their visions. When you think of grand strategy this way, most of what passes for grand strategic categories and policy prescriptions are exposed as...
Professor Helen Kinsella joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Kinsella grew up in Ithaca, New York, and she reflects on what that was like, plus a reluctance or indifference to going to college. She eventually chose Bryn Mawr and she talks about what an amazing environment she experienced there. Professor Kinsella also spent some time at Reed college, then after college she went to Seattle and worked with victims of domestic abuse, and...
The University of Chicago’s Paul Poast claims that G. Lowes Dickinson is was the OG “modern” theo…
Many around the world are on edge over the possibility of Vladimir Putin using tactical nuclear weapons to stem Ukraine's battlefield successes. This has revived calls, present since before Putin invaded Russia's neighbor, to negotiate a way out of this war. Those issuing these calls see themselves as defenders of peace, but they are missing a major portion of what peace requires. Calls for "peace" Many in America have urged restraint in our...
Everybody’s talking about nuclear war with Russia right now and it bugs me, not least because I’ve seen this nuclear frenzy before. Now, I think people have good reason to be worried about Russian nuclear use, as I wrote some five months ago. But what gets me about “the discourse” is that a tremendous amount of it is ahistorical. On the one hand, the conversation is weighted down with the opinions of people with large...
Initial speculation about Nord Stream reveals both the strengths and limitations of using international-relations models to make sense of unfolding events
Dozens of regimes around the world are anti-liberal—autocratic to varying degrees—but also big fans of a "rules-based" international order, which for the past 50 years or so has been a neoliberal economic order. Not a coincidence. The reason an anti-liberal might also be a neoliberal seems rather obvious: Because they're kleptocrats and oligarchs who are getting paid! A regime doesn't need to embrace democracy in any meaningful...
Like many, I've finally gotten back on schedule after the American Political Science Association conference last week. The travel was easier for me than most others; the site, Montreal, is only two miles from home so I didn't have to deal with any airline mishaps. But I still, as always, wonder if the trip was worth it. Even though it's covered by my research budget, do I get enough out of these conferences to justify the time away from my...
I was on a refreshingly contrarian panel recently as part of Victoria Forum, this big shindig in Canada (at University of Victoria in British Columbia, not to be confused with Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, where I teach). The topic was “Trust-Building in Asia in an Era of Great Power Competition.” Unlike most panels on “great power competition,” and I've been on a few, this one didn’t have anyone cheerleading for a new...
Some more excerpts from G. Loews Dickinson’s writings on international affairs.
It’s no surprise that current events regularly lead us to update our syllabi. That doesn’t mean we can’t make “surprise” an important feature of our courses.