126 countries now publish a national security strategy or defense document, and 45 of these feature
a leaders’ preambles. How these talk about the world, or not, is surprisingly revealing of historical
global strategic hierarchies.
US foreign policy
Fighting Analogies in International Relations
“Kuzushi” is the concept of off-balancing. It refers to a tactic of getting your opponent out of a fixed position where he’ll be vulnerable, maybe getting his weight tilted too much to one side or making him overcommit to a move. With kuzushi, you aren’t achieving anything; you’re opening up a window of opportunity. Window ajar, you have a split second to advance your position. A sweep or submission attempt that would’ve been impossible under normal conditions suddenly works against an unbalanced opponent.
Misreading the post-9/11 consensus: the dangerous allure of emergency politics
Numerous pundits have lamented the that Americans have not responded to the Covid pandemic with the unanimity they demonstrated after 9/11. But do we really want to return to the post-9/11 era of emergency consensus?
Reparations in the Wake of the US Withdrawal from Afghanistan
Though unlikely to happen any time soon, recent calls for the US to pay reparations to the Afghan people provide an opportunity to reflect on the complexities of reparations and global justice.
More US foreign policy Posts
The “Israel Lobby” and the Nixon Administration
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Eric Grynaviski, who is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. When Mearsheimer and Walt wrote the Israel Lobby, I was skeptical. I bought the argument that supporters of Israel influenced US policy, but because I am not a realist, I did not buy the argument that this necessarily deflected the US from pursuing specific policies during the cold war or afterwards. The primary reason for my skepticism was the evidence: because of how recent US support for Israel is, there are few archival documents that have been...
Syria and the Politics of Prudence
According to the Washington Post, the Obama Administration is meeting to "reassess" US policy toward the Syrian conflict. Hezbollah's intervention appears to have tilted the balance in favor of the Assad regime. Sectarian violence is on the rise. This has, naturally enough, led to hand-wringing about growing Iranian influence throughout the region. Defenders of the Obama Administration's foreign policy sometimes stress its general commitment to prudence and deliberation. John McCain and Lindsey Graham may call for 'strong' and 'decisive' US commitments at the drop of a hat, the argument...
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...
Thinking the Unthinkable?
Yesterday, climate activist and environmental writer Bill McKibben tweeted a link to this eye-opening graphic: In many ways, this chart is merely another disturbing bit of information about weather in a year of shocking weather news. The United States experienced a record drought this summer -- and many areas are still facing tremendous water shortages. As a fairly direct consequence, the U.S. also suffered near-record wildfires this year, burning a total area "roughly the size of the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined." The Weather Underground Director, Dr. Jeff Master,...
Snap Reaction: Foreign Policy and the 2nd Presidential Debate
Topics covered: Process arguments about Libyan attack; Obama likes to kill Islamic terrorists; Energy independence is good, because... jobs; and Romney wants to start a massive trade war with China, Obama just wants to keep it low-level. That's pretty much all, folks.
The Stupidest Article in Foreign Policy?
tl;dr notice: 1200 words. Zack Beauchamp points us to Douglas Feith's latest broadside against the administration with the tweet: LOL Feith cites @slaughteram and Sam Power's jobs as evidence that Obama wanted to limit American use of military force It turns out that the absurdity runs far deeper in Feith's piece. I know that Obama's fecklessness in the face of the Russian threat is an article of faith among neo-conservatives. As I've mentioned on numerous occasions, I think there's a case for the administration overestimating the willingness of Moscow to accomodate US policy priorities. But...
Friday Morning Debate Reaction
I scored the Romney-Obama debate as a tactical win for Romney. As of now, it looks more like a strategic one. The lesson for me, I think, is not to assess the political ramifications of debates. So in this post, I'll simply stick to reflecting on the foreign-policy component of the debate, which turned out to be much more prominent than most of us expected. The bottom line is that, with the exception of the earlier Libya exchange, Biden owned Ryan. Indeed, the debate continued to underscore the vacuousness of much of the Romney campaign's "political" critique of Obama foreign policy. I...
Inside the Bubble, Round II
Richard Grenell was pushed out as Mitt Romney's national-security spokesman. In The Daily Beast, he attempts to defend his former boss.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got it right. The Middle East desk at the State Department got it right, too. And so did Mitt Romney. All three correctly rejected the initial Cairo Embassy statement on the developing violence in Egypt and Libya as weak and inappropriate. And yet Romney was the only one to become the focus of media ire for it.Again with "the media." That horrible, terrible, no-good lamestream liberal media that also appeared in Erik...