The buzzword of the first Trump administration was “Great Power Competition.” That was also a lie.
So much for “Great Power Competition”
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grand strategy
Grand Strategy is Worldmaking
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...
Ukraine, Progressive Internationalism, and the Restraint Coalition
The US needs a more restrained approach to its national security, but not all arguments for restraint – and not all policies of restraint – rest on solid foundations.
Strategies of Unusual Size
I wrapped the 2022 edition of my undergraduate “Grand Strategy” seminar this past Tuesday. This must have the eight or ninth iteration of the class. I like teaching it. I really do. But I have...
More grand strategy Posts
Is the Weakness of the Liberal Order Overblown?
Last week, Naazneen Barma, Ely Ratner, and Steven Weber offered "The Mythical Liberal Order," a provocative update to their earlier article on the world without the West. They sought to puncture certain mythologies about the strength of the liberal order, that it never was a strong as defenders thought: its decline is much exaggerated since there was not much to begin with. Moreover, they seek to offer more convincing and significant evidence that non-Western countries are "routing around" the West through currency swaps and discussion of a new multilateral bank and other actions. Both that...
Beyond Reading the Tea Leaves: Using Data to Understand Partisanship and Foreign Policy
My frequent collaborator Jon Monten and I have a guest post on the new Chicago Council on Global Affairs blog Running Numbers. As our readers likely know, the Chicago Council runs periodic surveys about public attitudes towards foreign affairs and has historically run a number of important surveys of elite opinion. I'm cross-posting our piece here. For many observers of American politics, the fight over the nomination of Chuck Hagel as the next Secretary of Defense is indicative of growing partisan acrimony in the conduct of US foreign policy. However, concerns about intensifying...
It’s a trap. No, really, IT’S A TRAP.
Change you can believe in. Or is it a trap? So our little geekfest-in-a-teacup has provoked, among other things, some additional contributions by members of The Duck focusing on additional ways that the Empire's command structure and Imperial strategy towards the Rebel Alliance doesn't make a lot of sense. The Imperial troops are feckless, letting the rebels escape on occasions when they should have been able to stop them easily. Opportunities to wipe out the rebels are missed through various kinds of incompetence, tactical or bureaucratic or otherwise. The Empire as a whole is riddled with...
The Force is strong with this one
Episode I: Spencer Ackerman over at Danger Room posts this analysis of the Battle of Hoth. Episode II: 90 e-mails and twelve hours later, this symposium goes up on the Danger Room website including a contribution by our own Dan Nexon. Unfortunately, not all of us involved in the furious e-mail thread made the cut or the deadline, so not all of our replies were posted. Which brings us to: Episode III: my piece, sadly not included in the Danger Room symposium. Below the fold. Everybody -- including, I suspect, the official Imperial histories -- acknowledges that Admiral Ozzel's decision to...
Podcast No. 19 – Interview with Daniel Drezner
The nineteenth Duck of Minerva podcast features Daniel Drezner of Tufts University.