Eteri (Etuna) Tsintsadze-Maass is Assistant Director of the Graduate Program in International Studies (GPIS) at Old Dominion University, where she also teaches in the Department of Political Science and Geography. She earned her PhD from the University of Kentucky (2020). Dr. Tsintsadze-Maass’ primary research focuses on the effects of national narratives and mobilization on states’ foreign policy and security choices, and the politics of the...
Most versions of the left gain little and sacrifice much in accepting a realist epistemology. Theories of international relations are just tools for making sense of patterns and puzzles in the world; they don’t need groupies.
This has been either a bad week for Israel, or a great week for Israel, depending on whom you ask or what your Twitter feed looks like. In the end, this may matter more for the relevance and impact of Middle East studies than anything else.
The volume calls on international-relations instructors to make use of “subversive pedagogies” — ones that embrace a more holistic understanding of teaching. It invites academics to interrogate what we teach, how we teach, where we teach, and whom we teach.
Claire Timperley is Lecturer in Political Science at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her teaching and research interests include feminist political theory, gender politics, critical pedagogy, and the politics of Aotearoa New Zealand. Her articles have appeared in Politics, Groups and Identities, Contemporary Political Theory, International Studies Perspectives, and PS: Political Science and Politics. She is...
Kate Schick is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her teaching and research interests lie at the intersection of critical theory and international ethics. She is author of Gillian Rose: A Good Enough Justice (2012) and co-editor of The Vulnerable Subject: Beyond Rationalism in International Relations (with Amanda Russell Beattie, 2013), Recognition in Global Politics:...
Two recent interviews in the New Yorker have received substantial attention in recent weeks. Unfortunately, taken together, they make the IR discipline look terrible. How can IR theorists demonstrate their discipline’s relevance in the face of rapidly changing historical events?
In December of 2020, the U.S. government announced that hackers – most likely from Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU – had compromised over two hundred companies and federal agencies. What sets the SolarWinds attack apart from previous incidents is its sheer scale. The company has over 300,000 customers worldwide, according to filings made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission… Targeted institutions include the U.S....
This piece is the third of a three-part series grappling with the role of political economy in making a just, sustainable international order. Neoliberalism — the ideology of the primacy of capital — has been bad for American statecraft. It’s a major reason why we have no economic strategy. And I’m totally a get-out-of-neoliberalism stan. But where we go from here matters. The new post-liberal right, for example,...
Recent chatter about David Remnick's interview of Stephen Kotkin reminds me of another interview that Kotkin recorded in February. Kotkin draws an analogy between Putin's decision to invade Ukraine and Stalin's decision to give Kim Il-sung the "green light" to invade South Korea in 1950. The comparison not only highlights the dysfunctions of personalist regimes, but the (potential) effects of the Russo-Ukraine War on U.S. foreign policy. Back...
Watching recent events (and inspired by this tweet about Latvia's PM's take on this), I am reminded of a famous misquotation from the American war in Vietnam: "we had to destroy the village in order to save it." Seems like Putin's Russia is killing the kin in order to save them. The attacks on the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine are hurting those that Russia is supposedly trying to help. This speaks to a variety of ethnic/irredentist...
The COVID-19 virus scrambled the plans of social scientists whose research depends on field work, including many who use and reflexive methods. It became almost impossible to do research that depends on face-to-face interviews, personal interactions, and participant observations. It's difficult to imagine how someone like Elisabeth Jean Wood, who spent months in El Salvador (in a conflict zone, no less), could do inspiring field research during...