Rory Cormac’s study of covert influence, propaganda, and the United Kingdom (UK)’s Cold War operations was researched and published during a period of renewed scholarly and practitioner attention on Russian, Chinese, and many other autocratic governments’ deployment of similar methods for so-called ‘hostile foreign influence/interference.’[1] Cormac’s study also arrives concurrent to a groundswell of new…
Category: Article Reviews
H-Diplo | RJISSF Article Review 159: Michel on Allcock, “Diplomacy, the Media, and a Search for Legitimacy”
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum Article Review 159 Thomas Tunstall Allcock, “Diplomacy, the Media, and a Search for Legitimacy: Reassessing Gerald Ford’s Pacific Tours.” Diplomacy & Statecraft 33:4 (Dec. 2022): 741-771. DOI: 10.1080/09592296.2022.2143119. Reviewed by Eddie Michel, University of Pretoria 2 June 2023| PDF: http://issforum.org/to/JAR-159 | Website: rjissf.org Editor: Diane Labrosse |…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Article Review 158: McCoy on Fibiger, “Indonesia and the Third Indochina War”
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum Article Review 158 Mattias E. Fibiger, “Indonesia and the Third Indochina War: The End of Containment.” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 29, no. 3 (2022): 240–270. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/18765610-29030003. 17 May 2023 |PDF: https://issforum.org/to/jar-158 | Website: rjissf.org Editor: Diane Labrosse | Commissioning Editor: Thomas Maddux | Production Editor:…
Article Review 157- “Wargaming for International Relations Research”
In “Wargaming for International Relations Research,” Erik Lin-Greenberg, Reid Pauly, and Jacquelyn Schneider present wargames as a method for international relations research.[1] The article defines and differentiates wargames from other methods, provides guidance for using wargames for research, and concludes with an agenda for future study. The article is a generative work that provides a…
Article Review 156- “White Supremacy, Terrorism, and the Failure of Reconstruction in the United States.”
The United States is inexorably linked to the stain of white supremacy. It is a stain that has been difficult to erase despite multiple inflection points and opportunities to reckon with America’s racist past. The Reconstruction Era of 1865 to 1877 that followed the Civil War provided the first opportunity for the United States to…
Article Review 155 on “Leaning on Legionnaires: Why Modern States Recruit Foreign Soldiers.”
In “Leaning on Legionnaires,” Elizabeth M.F. Grasmeder offers a much needed overview of the recruiting of legionnaires over the last two hundred years across the world. Along with providing an original dataset on state policies to enlist foreigners in their armed forces, a novel theoretical framework to think about the drivers of legionnaires recruiting, and…
Article Review 154- “The Durability of a Unipolar System”
In his recent article in Security Studies, Yuan-kang Wang tackles a vitally important question in international relations: is unipolarity durable?[1] Two opposing views can be derived from the extant literature. Declinists posit that unipolarity is doomed due to the formation of counter-unipolar balancing coalitions, the unipole’s imperial overstretch, and the uneven growth rate between the…
Article Review 153 on “The Obama Administration and Syrian Chemical Weapons: Deterrence, Compellence, and the Limits of the “Resolve plus Bombs” Formula.”
In this article Wyn Bown, Jeffrey Knopf, and Matthew Moran examine Syria’s possession and use of chemical weapons (CW) and third-party response. In this context, they assess how compellence succeeded in Syria when deterrent efforts had initially failed. President Barack Obama had set a ‘red line’ that signaled U.S. commitment to punish the Syrian regime…
Article Review 152 on “To Disclose or Deceive? Sharing Secret Information between Aligned States.”
States in competition with each other have powerful incentives to engage in deception. Adversaries use deception to convince each other that their resolve is high and that they possess powerful military capabilities.[1] More puzzling is why states that are aligned with each other—which is understood as “a set of mutual expectations between two or more…
Article Review 151 on “The United States and the NATO Non-extension Assurances of 1990”
The November 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall ushered in myriad discussions about German reunification. In addition to questions about the domestic future of Germany, concerns over who would be responsible for Germany’s security and stability and with whom the new German state would ally persisted. Marc Trachtenberg revisits the February 1990 meeting wherein United…
