Voltaire famously observed that “God is always on the side of the big battalions” (5). International relations theorists and diplomatic historians have tended to find Voltaire’s explanation persuasive but, as Paul MacDonald shows in his provocative new book, peripheral conquest during the nineteenth century was a far more complicated endeavor than conventional warfare on the…
Year: 2015
Article Review 46 on “Assessing the significance of women in combat roles.”
Discussions of gender in war have traditionally defaulted to the women-as-civilians/men-as-combatants dichotomy, but recent research has worked to debunk false and overly simplified assumptions about women and men in war.[1] Jessica Trisko Darden succinctly assesses the state of the field and highlights promising directions for future research on the significance of women in combat.
Forum 11 on “The Great Game and Great Reforms of Asia, 1850-1950.”
The theme of the Great Game for this Special Issue of The Journal of American-East Asian Relations which focuses on colonialism and anti-colonialism in Central, East, and Southeast Asia, arises from the original Great Game, which involved a clash of the British and Russian Empires in Central Asia in the nineteenth century. There are…
Roundtable 8-5 on Overreach: Delusions of Regime Change in Iraq
The simplest and most readily accepted explanation for the onset of the American war against Iraq focuses on the beliefs and actions of President George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisors. While certainly not absolving the President or the neocons of their substantial responsibility for the fiasco of the war, Michael MacDonald casts a much…
Article Review 45 on “The Inscrutable Intentions of Great Powers.”
In his recent article “The Inscrutable Intentions of Great Powers,” Sebastian Rosato argues that it is far more difficult for states to signal their intentions than existing scholarship recognizes. He claims that the various signaling mechanisms proposed in the IR literature — both domestic-level characteristics and international-level behaviors — “at best…allow for marginal reductions in…
Roundtable 8-4 on Bargaining on Nuclear Tests: Washington And Its Cold War Rivals
Preventing sovereign states from acquiring and deploying a military technology that all but guarantees their security is beyond difficult. Early in the nuclear age, many United States policymakers and analysts thought that nuclear nonproliferation efforts were, at worst, impossible, and, at best, too costly. Despite this pessimism, the U.S. has made nuclear non-proliferation a priority…
Article Review 44 on “Pakistan’s Battlefield Nuclear Policy: A Risky Solution to an Exaggerated Threat.”
In April 2011, Pakistan tested a new missile, the Hatf-9 Nasr, designed to deliver nuclear warheads to targets within a 60-kilometer range. While scholars had inferred that Pakistan’s nuclear posture might require it to employ nuclear weapons against tactical targets on the battlefield,[1] this was the first platform designed explicitly for that goal. This missile…
Article Review 43 on “Is There an Oil Weapon? Security Implications of Changes in the Structure of the International Oil Market.”
Llewelyn Hughes and Austin Long provide a thoughtful analysis of contemporary energy security. The strengths of the article make it a valuable resource for anyone interested in energy security, policymakers, and scholars. It asks some vital questions for modern international security, including how serious the risks are to any given state’s oil supply, and who…
Forum 10 on “A Decade of EU Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence: A Critical Assessment”
The Treaty on the European Union (EU) stipulates that one of the key objectives of the Union is to provide citizens with a high level of safety within an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). Given that the fight against terrorism is a prominent aspect of this general objective, it is remarkable that, in…
Article Review 42 on “British Foreign Policy and the Arab Spring.”
Since 2011, Britain’s strategy in the Middle East, in particular its response to the movements of the so-called ‘Arab spring,’ has been excoriated by voices from across the political and ideological spectrum in Britain, as well as from the region itself. Indeed, amid a push for renewed intervention in Iraq last August, Prime Minister David…