Popular support for extremist parties is on the rise in liberal democracies today. In both new and well-established liberal democratic states, extremists are gaining government appointments and seats in legislative assemblies. As they gain power, they are better situated to enact their illiberal and antidemocratic goals into law and even alter their constitutions. The Fidesz…
Category: Policy Series
Policy Series: Sound and Fury, Signifying Something? NATO and the Trump Administration’s Second Year
As the Trump administration’s second year in office rolls onward, what is the state of the transatlantic alliance? Writing for H-Diplo last year, I argued that Trump’s first year in office saw the emergence of a “Trumpian NATO policy.”[1] In brief, this policy encompassed significant continuity with the substance of prior U.S. policy towards NATO,…
Policy Series: Authentic Trump versus the Trump Administration: Donald Trump as Foreign Policy Disrupter
Donald Trump’s potential to be a disruptive force in both national and international politics was fully in evidence during the 2016 election campaign and has been more than realized since his inauguration. The extent of the eventual disruption that will mark his legacy will depend on a combination of intended and unintended consequences of his…
Response to Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin, Trump, and the Politics of Narcissism: A Response to Rose McDermott’s The Nature of Narcissism
Geoffrey Roberts’s criticism of our discussion of Joseph Stalin’s personal role in facilitating the Soviet failure to correctly estimate the German threat prior to Operation Barbarossa of June 1941,[1] focused on three main arguments. First, that his behavior on the eve of the attack was not the result of unique psychological elements but of a…
Policy Series: Canada and Donald Trump: A Midterm Reality Check
As I noted the last time I took to this platform to express my views on the meaning of President Donald J. Trump for Canada’s relationship with the United States, there were at least a few reasons for optimism, amid the general sense of gloom and doom that descended upon Canadians in the immediate aftermath…
Policy Series: Stalin, Trump, and the Politics of Narcissism: A Response to Rose McDermott’s “The Nature of Narcissism.”
I was intrigued by Rose McDermott’s piece on “The Nature of Narcissism”.[1] As a narrative historian of international relations, I appreciated her call for analysis of the “influence of individual-level differences on international outcomes.” Central to narrative history is the reconstruction and analysis of the actions and interactions of individuals, as well as people’s goals,…
Policy Series: “Inconsistent, Incoherent, and Unpredictable: U.S. Policies in East Asia under President Donald J. Trump”
On 8 March 2018, National Security Advisor Chung Eui-yong of the Republic of Korea (ROK) met with President Donald J. Trump at the White House to brief him on his recent talks with Kim Jong Un, leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), in Pyongyang. Trump learned that Kim had promised not to…
Policy Series: The Nature of Narcissism
In his January 2017 introductory essay to the America and the World roundtable, “President Trump and IR Theory,” Robert Jervis wrote, “…a Trump foreign policy that followed his campaign statements would be hard to square with Realism, although it would be difficult to say what alternative theory, if any, it vindicated.”[1] We now have a…
Policy Series: Science under the Trump Administration in Historical Perspective, Part I
In 1965, four years after leaving the White House, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower published the second volume of his presidential memoirs, which covered the years 1956-1961. In it he recounted how his administration responded to the shock of the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite. Eisenhower stressed in particular how…
Policy Series: Beyond Cyber-Threats: The Technopolitics of Vulnerability
Cyber-threats seem to be everywhere these days. In the past two weeks alone, we have learned that Russia has hacked into critical infrastructure sectors upon which citizens depend for daily survival, including nuclear, water, and aviation; that Iran has stolen massive amounts of data and intellectual property from professors around the world (such activities have…