Just over 21 years ago, the United States invaded Afghanistan. Just over one year ago, the United States withdrew from Afghanistan. Understanding the two decades in between, which became by almost any measure America’s longest war, will continue to occupy and often bedevil scholars and policymakers for years to come. The two books under review…
Category: Roundtables
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 14-8: Schrader, Badges Without Borders
Of the many significant achievements of Stuart Schrader’s excellent book Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing, one of the most substantive is that it asks readers to challenge a seemingly foundational geographic assumption underpinning diplomatic relations: the view that the foreign policy sphere is fundamentally distinct from the domestic one. In contrast,…
H-Diplo | ISSF Roundtable 14-6 on Stewart, Governing for Revolution: Social Transformation in Civil War
In Governing for Revolution, Megan A. Stewart examines variation in rebel governance, asking why some rebel movements undertake expansive and costly governance initiatives during war, while others refrain from doing so until the conflicts end. According to Stewart, governance can be both extensive and intensive. Intensive governance refers to intrusive projects that have the potential…
H-Diplo | ISSF Roundtable 14-5: Zegart, Spies, Lies and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence
Amy Zegart’s book Spies, Lies and Algorithms: The History of Future of American Intelligence, provides a well-written and easy to read overview of the multiplicities of American intelligence; everything from what intelligence is, to intelligence in classrooms and the effects of “spytainment,” and of course, intelligence of the digital age. Zegart describes the initial concept…
H-Diplo|ISSF Roundtable 14-4: Young, Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World
Few actors in international relations evoke caricature and misunderstanding like North Korea. A country that has long vexed US policymakers, North Korea has become the go-to adversary of convenience for the American imagination. The Pentagon pinned its post-Cold War force structure to the assumption of a second Korean War, meaning that a decade of US…
H-Diplo|ISSF Roundtable 14-3: Teaching Critical Approaches to International Relations
I very much enjoyed reading the four contributions to this roundtable. The theme that runs through all four is the different journeys, taken by different people, that nonetheless led to similar conclusions about how we can teach International Relations (IR). Underlying all this, for me at least, is a disquieting feeling that, over the last…
Roundtable 14-2 on The Frontlines of Peace: An Insider’s Guide to Changing the World
Promoting peace is something everyone endorses – from the United Nations to rich foundations to idealistic schoolchildren. But what is peace? How does it unfold? How can those who want to promote it help? In a book that is more revolutionary than its straightforward language belies, Séverine Autesserre wants to change how we answer each…
Roundtable 14-1 on Why Nations Rise: Narratives and the Path to Great Power
“Is China Rising”? When Sheena Chestnut Greitens and Iain Johnston posed this question in 2009, it seemed beside the point.[1] Everyone knew China was rising. But when Chestnut Greitens and Johnston parsed the discourse to see what analysts meant by “rising,” they discovered a baffling array of meanings. Translating these different definitions into indicators, they…
Roundtable 13-13 on Armed Guests: Territorial Sovereignty and Foreign Military Basing
Since the end of World War II, the US has relied on a vast network of military bases to project its power across the globe. So ubiquitous are these bases that they often melt into the background of US grand strategy, and are treated “as part of the given background conditions on which contemporary international…
Roundtable 13-12 on Restraint in International Politics
Manners constitute a restraint.[1] Toward the end of Second World War, the British defense intellectual Basil Liddell Hart began publishing extensively on fashion and manners. In part, this reflected his much-diminished standing in policy circles: personal scandal, an emotional breakdown, and political maneuverings had taken their toll on Britain’s one-time ‘unofficial Chief of the Imperial…
