Two-time defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously remarked that there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.[2] Scholars and researchers aim at the known unknowns but should remain receptive to the unknown unknowns that may reveal themselves and upend the analysis. Be open to those who disagree; sometimes they are right. Reassessment is a virtue…
Author: S.C.M. Paine
Roundtable 13-1 on An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for Twenty-First-Century Order
The United States faces a host of strategic geopolitical challenges today, many of which have long been brewing as a result of structural changes and some of which have been self-inflicted by successive administrations, most recently and most especially the Trump Administration. In An Open World, Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper deliver a lucid and…
Policy Series 2021-51: “Sh*thole Countries”: Was Trump’s Foreign Policy Racist?
Throughout his years in the public eye, former president Donald Trump has frequently said things that reveal his belief that the construct of ‘race’ is a valid measure of human difference and human worth. In countless public utterances, he has used racist, derogatory language to insult, belittle, and abuse non-white people. He has also conflated…
H-Diplo Essay 366- Mire Koikari on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
“So how do you compare women’s status in the U.S. and Japan?” Despite advance preparation, I had not anticipated this question. I froze. No, I was not defending my master’s thesis. The question was posed by an immigration officer at Milwaukee International Airport. I was returning to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, after a winter…
Forum 28 on The Importance of Paul Schroeder’s Scholarship to the Fields of International Relations and Diplomatic History
Paul W. Schroeder, emeritus professor of history and political science at the University of Illinois and perhaps the most distinguished diplomatic historian of his generation, died last December at the age of 93. In the course of his long career Schroeder wrote four major books: The Axis Alliance and Japanese-American Relations, 1941 (1958); Metternich’s Diplomacy…
Review Essay 58- “The Untold Story of the World’s Leading Environmental Institution: UNEP at Fifty”
On Earth Day 2021, at a U.S.-organized climate summit, the Biden administration pledged to cut U.S. emissions to half of 2005 levels by 2030 and earmark billions in new development aid for environmental projects in developing countries. It was a bold recommitment to climate multilateralism, the administration argued, a restoration of U.S. leadership in the…
Policy Series 2021-50: Joe Biden, American Democracy, and the China Challenge
President Joe Biden has called the current moment an “inflection point,” both domestically and internationally.[2] In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, some forces within the Republican Party have made clear that they no longer believe democracy is in the best interests of their party. Rather than adjusting their message and policies to broaden…
H-Diplo Essay 365- Carole Fink on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
It is an honor to join my distinguished colleagues in relating my career as an historian; but it is also a daunting task to create a useful and coherent narrative of the paths I have followed.
Policy Series 2021-49: Donald Trump and the Return of Relative Gains: Should We Rethink the Neo-Neo Synthesis?
“It’s the economy, stupid!” While this phrase was initially coined by Democratic Party nominee Bill Clinton’s campaign to emphasize the importance of a struggling domestic US economy in the presidential race of the early 1990s, today, it appears applicable to the international realm as well.[1] For several decades, IR scholars have drawn a separation between…
Policy Series 2021-48: Fences Make Bad Hombres: Trump in Latin America
It starts, of course, with the wall. From its earliest moments, the campaign of Donald Trump for the presidency of the United States was predicated on hardening the border between the United States and Mexico, and by extension, between the United States and Latin America—the border where, as Gloria Anzaldúa wrote more than three decades…