Given some of the recent discussion on the Duck about the use of force in the Arabian Gulf, I thought I'd point out something interesting from the recent TRIP survey of international relations scholars. It turns out that between 60 and 90 percent of IR scholars surveyed simply reject the U.S. use of force in five hot-button regions. Asked "Would you approve or disapprove of the use of U.S. military forces in the following situations?",...
by Josh Busby | 5 Jan 2012 | Featured
So, in my last post, I critiqued Rosasto and Schuessler's realist take on the causes of World War II, repeating the IR conventional wisdom of liberal internationalism (that it was reparations and beggar-thy-neighbor policies that worsened the Depression and created the conditions for the rise of Hitler). I ran that interpretation by one of my colleagues at the LBJ School, Frank Gavin, a historian who knows this literature much better than me...
by Vikash Yadav | 5 Jan 2012 | Featured
Building on PM's earlier post, "Cultural Weapons and International Relations" I'd like to look at an example that helps to illustrate the ways in which Realism misunderstands the role of culture in global politics. In his blog post titled, "China's War Against Harry Potter," Stephen Walt analyzes President Hu Jintao's attempt to defend Chinese culture by increasing its production of local culture. What is interesting is that Walt has plenty to...
by Josh Busby | 4 Jan 2012 | Featured
In my last post, I offered a friendly critique of Nuno Monteiro's piece on how unipolarity has been less peaceful than other periods (debatable) and that U.S. power alone explains why minor states feel insecure and trigger conflicts with the unipole (same - the domestic politics of the U.S. and minor states are important in my view). In this post, I want to provide a similar albeit friendlier critique to Rosato and Schuessler's article (not...
Unless... Nothing.Nothing at all.Four years ago, we knew neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum would be president.Six months ago, we knew neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum would be president.One month ago, we knew neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum would be president.Two days ago, we knew neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum would be president.This morning, we know neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum will be president.Given the cavalcade of crazies...
At The Monkey Cage, Erik Voeten notes the ascendancy of constructivism within International Relations (although "non-paradigmatic research" is an even more popular category).I suppose that's it for realism, then. So much for the null hypothesis that every article in IR published in the past 20 years has treated as a punching bag. From now on, I hope that we can all agree that theory articles don't have to start by attacking the bogeyman of...
by Josh Busby | 3 Jan 2012 | Featured
In light of the recent exchange on the Duck about Matthew Kroenig's work on Iran and policy-relevant research, I thought I'd flag a couple of articles from three University of Chicago alums from International Security (where Nuno Monteiro has a piece on unipolarity) and Perspectives on Politics (where Sebastian Rosato and John Schuessler have an article [Ed: behind paywall] prescribing a realist foreign policy for the United States).While I...
by Dan Nexon | 1 Jan 2012 | Featured
Actual blogging soon.
by Dan Nexon | 25 Dec 2011 | Featured
Or, as SEK writes, "Somehow, it fell upon the resident Jew to wish y’all a Merry Christmas…"
by Cliff Bob | 22 Dec 2011 | Featured
The transnational battle over gay rights took an interesting turn last week when the Obama administration announced that it would work hard to promote gay rights worldwide. The gay community welcomed the news. But more strategic thinkers also raised questions. As Neil Grungras of San Francisco’s Organization for Refugee, Asylum and Migration cautioned:“In countries where U.S. moral leadership is not high and where increasingly Western values...
by Dan Nexon | 22 Dec 2011 | Featured
My colleague, Matt Kroenig, has generated a ton of buzz (and not a little vitriol) for his Foreign Affairs piece in which he advocates imminent US military action against Iran. What's probably less well known, however, is that Matt and Mike Weintraub, a graduate student at Georgetown, have a working paper in which, as they write:We argue that nuclear superiority, by increasing the expected costs of conflict, improves a state’s ability to deter...
by Patrick Porter | 22 Dec 2011 | Featured
We haven’t got all the details, but promptly after the departure of US combat troops the Iraqi Prime Minister is feuding badly with Sunni political figures, and a bomb blast suggests that Iraq may be escalating into more sectarian conflict.If so, what does this say about the surge? On one hand, the relatively quiet withdrawal of American troops on Tuesday vindicated one objective of the surge: to create more stable conditions to that America...