Three quarters of a century since the first and only use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the nuclear landscape has changed substantially in terms of the number of nuclear powers, the size of nuclear arsenals, and the destructiveness of the weapons themselves. Despite this transformation, the basic questions occupying both policymakers and scholars…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-32 on van Ommen, Nicaragua Must Survive
Almost five years ago, Eline van Ommen, then a PhD candidate in the final stages of writing her dissertation, co-organized a conference at the LSE to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Nicaraguan Revolution. The one-day workshop drew together seventeen papers, all of which sought to respond to the organizers’ declaration that “we still know…
H-Dipo | RJISSF Review Essay 119: Bateman on Brunet, ed., NATO and the Strategic Defence Initiative
[dropcapThe Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), more commonly known as “Star Wars,” remains one of the most controversial aspects of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Frequently misrepresented as a science fiction fantasy focused on space lasers, in reality SDI was a multi-billion-dollar group of research projects into technologies with civilian and defense applications. Technological realities aside, Reagan hoped…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-31 on Mann, On Wars
On Wars, without a subtitle, is Michael Mann’s latest contribution to a long and distinguished career as a professor of sociology on both sides of the Atlantic. He is currently Emeritus Professor at the University of California–Los Angeles. Most famous for the four-volume The Sources of Social Power, which was produced over decades, Mann has…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-30 on Bush and Prather, Monitors and Meddlers
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum Roundtable Review 16-30 Sarah Sunn Bush and Lauren Prather, Monitors and Meddlers: How Foreign Actors Influence Local Trust in Elections. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022. ISBN: 9781009204262. 4 April 2025 | PDF: https://issforum.org/to/jrt16-30 | Website: rjissf.org | Twitter: @HDiplo Editor: Diane Labrosse Commissioning Editor: Jeff Colgan Production Editor: Christopher Ball Pre-Production Copy…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-29 on Budjeryn, Inheriting the Bomb
By discussing the history of the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine, Mariana Budjeryn’s book offers a significant contribution to the literature on Russia’s war on Ukraine. The author elegantly discusses Russia’s ambition to become the only nuclear successor state to the Soviet Union and how this goal led to the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Additionally,…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-28 on Allen et al., Beyond the Wire
Reporting over the last two years has indicated China’s interest in contesting the US military presence in places where China claims “historical connections.”[1] This has involved public statements as well as attempts to stir up local opposition to the US presence, and most recently, to a study by researchers at Tsinghua University who claimed that…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-27 on Specter, Atlantic Realists
Neoconservatives used to say that they abandoned liberalism because they were “mugged by reality.” [1]The line’s rhetorical punch was easy to grasp. Some political beliefs allow you to wander the world blissfully ignorant of its dangers. Sometimes, however, these dangers become impossible to ignore. They grab you, shake you out of your dreamworld, and force…
Learning the Scholar’s Craft: “When Social History was ‘New'”
I never imagined I would become an academic, much less an historian. In high school, in west Los Angeles back in the 1960s, I hated history. I did everything possible to avoid taking history classes—I took any classes that would substitute for history. But I didn’t have much academic focus. I was a beach bum…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Review Essay 118: Athar on Kuzmarov, Warmonger
As conflict continues to escalate in the Middle East and Africa, with the United States playing a key role especially in the Middle East, scholars and the public often wonder what led to this situation. In a number of recently published works on the trajectory of United States foreign policy over several decades, historians of…