Few issues arouse as much debate as the Iraq War. The decision to invade in 2003 was a milestone for U.S. foreign policy and Middle Eastern politics. Advocates of the war believed that the prior status quo was unsustainable, and that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime was a ruthless anachronism. The fact that Saddam had…
Category: Forums
Policy Forum on the 2018 Italian Election
The Italian political elections of March 2018 seem to have marked a profound discontinuity in the country’s political history. The clear winners—namely the Five Stars Movement and the League—were two (relatively) new political forces which had very little in common with each other, except their outspoken intention to steer the path of Italian politics in…
Forum 18 on Bob Woodward. Fear: Trump in the White House.
Anyone reading these reviews will already be familiar with the basic picture of the Donald Trump White House that Woodward presents, and even if they have not read the book most will be able to recite at least a few of the choice anecdotes. But our two reviewers highlight points that need emphasizing. They are…
Policy Forum on the Gender Gap in Political Science
Political scientists have grown increasingly worried about the gender gap in their profession. According to data provided by the American Political Science Association, while women make up 42 percent of graduate students in the field, they account for only 24 percent of full time professors. While there are far more women in the discipline than…
Forum 16 on “New Light on 1914?”
In introducing this Forum, I am reminded of the joke that when the latest entry into heaven is told that each newcomer is expected to tell the others about a major event in his life, he says that he will talk about a flood he witnessed. His guardian angel nods, adding “Just remember that Noah…
Forum 15 on “Symposium on Counterfactual Analysis”
The essays by Niall Ferguson and Benjamin Mueller are welcome commentaries on the Security Studies “Symposium on Counterfactual Analysis.” The symposium was one of four collections published in the journal in 2015 and 2016, each of which sought to refresh scholars’ understandings of a particular approach to qualitative and multi-method inquiry. The symposia followed from…
Forum 14 on “Obama’s World: Judging His Foreign Policy Record”
Foreign Affairs recently featured a forum on “Obama’s World: Judging His Foreign Policy Record.” Gideon Rose, editor of the journal, started the discussion with an overall positive assessment of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy through August 1, 2015 and the agreement with Iran on its nuclear program.[1] The Islamic State (ISSIL) seized Mosul, the second…
Forum 13 on “Why Isn’t There More Scholarly Evaluation of U.S. Wars?”
Our panel at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in San Francisco in 2015 was organized around the question “Why isn’t there more scholarly evaluation of war?” I’m grateful to the editors at H-Diplo for their interest in this topic, and for the invitation to continue our discussion online.
Forum 12 on “Special Issue: Traditions of British International Thought”
Over the last twenty years, interest in past thinkers and theories has grown, and the history of international thought has emerged to stand alongside the history of political thought. A series of studies of canonical thinkers,[2] schools of thought,[3] and key periods have appeared,[4] advancing our knowledge of past international thought. At the same time,…
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…