Katie Couric, in a tweet last month about the Olympics , wrote: “I do think the Olympics is unique in that it transcends politics.” This view is pervasive in Couric’s formulation, but takes on a subtler tone in the argument that the Olympics is political only in circumstances of the “exceptional.” For example, writing for the Atlantic in 2012, Armin Rosen constructs a narrative of Olympic politics within the context of Cold War rivalries. For...
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NATO and the Classic Problem of Measuring Inputs vs. Outcomes
I tend to complain a lot about the NATO 2% expectation--that members are supposed to spend 2% of their GDP on defense stuff, which probably makes more more Canadian than anything else I do (I don't skate or watch hockey much). This is aspirational and countries are supposed to reach it by 2024. I have written much about why this is problematic (it tends to make Greece look good, which is a clue; doing is more important than spending, etc),...
What, Me Worry? The Trump Administration and Pandemic Preparedness
Imagine if your town had been especially fire prone with fires that threatened to spread to the rest of the city. City officials created a fire prevention fund for nearly 40 parts of town prone to fire. While work remained to be done, the funds ran out. Elected political leaders decided that since the town had not experienced a significant fire for two years, there was no need to spend any more money. That strategy make little sense, but it...
Donald Trump is trying to refute my new book before it’s even come out.
The past week has not been a good one for global health. What gives? I can only come up with one explanation: the Trump Administration is doing its darnedest to disprove the argument in my new book. In Global Health Governance and International Society (out on the 8th! Perfect for Valentine’s Day!), I argue that the emergence, growth, and ‘stickiness’ of global health politics reflects a shift in an international consensus about our collective...
The legacy of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Why ‘great inspiration’ is not quite enough
A co-authored post by Dr Leena Vastapuu and Dr Maria Martin de Almagro. The first elected woman head of state in Africa, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, has just stepped down from her office in Liberia. Her successor George Weah assumed the position on 22 January 2018. In a recent interview with CNN entitled “Why Africa owes a debt of gratitude to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf”, President Sirleaf and journalist Chude Jideonwo had the following...
Has Sunshine Returned to the Korean Peninsula?
Ahead of the 2018 Winter Olympics, the media has become fascinated with a common narrative that the erstwhile “bitter enemies,” North and South Korea, will march under one flag. The identity and political relations of the Koreas are more complicated than the “enemy” rhetoric conveys. Emblematic of this complexity are the families that are separated by the border, with living siblings that pre-date the division of the peninsula. The current thaw...
“Steel in America’s Spine”: The State of the Union, Security, Discourse
Umberto Eco, writing about an “Ur-Fascism” in the New York Review of Books in 1995, quoted Eugène Ionesco, who said “only words count; the rest is mere chattering.” Donald Trump was certainly not at a loss for words in Tuesday night’s State of the Union speech. He gave us plenty of words. Beautiful words. The best words. Words that would have likely worried Eco. This is not a post about Trump-as-fascist. We have read plenty of those takes, many...
You Can Leave Your Hat On
With an avalanche of news about the government shutdown, DACA, CHIP and Stormy Daniels, the American news media did not have too much time to cover Putin’s nipples (this time around), even though it was a great opportunity to update the famous horse riding photograph. On the Russian Orthodox Epiphany night Putin was photographed bathing in ice cold water in the Seliger Lake, displaying both his Orthodox Christian devoutness and manly sass. Why...
On Writing the IR Dissertation
Partly in response to Steve Saideman’s post today with advice on dissertation topics, and partly also in response to a pretty enthusiastic discussion of advice to graduate students on Twitter yesterday, I thought I’d write a few things about getting started on the path of researching a dissertation in a field as unwieldy (and a job market as uncertain) as IR. Here is where my perspective comes from. I finished my dissertation in 2016 and got a...
Beware of Irrelevant Topic? Advising Phd Students to Surf the Wave
In the past couple of days, an academic issue has played out on twitter: are advisers doing a disservice to students and to the creation of knowledge by warning them off of topics that are deemed less relevant, less in the moment? Damned if I know. On the one hand, I have heard plenty of tales of former/current students elsewhere that say that they were interested in a topic, but their adviser told them it was not so relevant or interesting,...
The Return of Geopolitics
Geopolitics has returned with a vengeance. The end of the Cold War wrought a moment in which there was no credible alternative to liberal democratic capitalism. Russia was seemingly fatally weakened, and China was not yet the economic powerhouse it would become. By the late 2000's, Russia, with power and resources concentrated in the hands of Vladimir Putin, was newly assertive in its near abroad and attempted to restore its authority over...
Turning the Lights Out on American Leadership
What a time to be alive. By some accounts, we are witnessing a power transition between the United States and China, with the United States voluntarily relinquishing its claim of global leadership despite having a sizable advantage in hard power over all of its rivals. Evan Osnos, who spent many years in China writing for the New Yorker, has a provocative piece that sums up his view of Trump’s foreign policy one year in, “Making China Great...