American Presidents are often maligned for their rhetoric. U.S. leaders’ words are not to be trusted: they will use whatever language allows them pander, to bluster, even to deceive their audiences. Yet as Ronald R. Krebs demonstrates in this impressive new work, presidential rhetoric is far from cheap. Indeed, it lies at the core of…
Category: Roundtables
Roundtable 9-5 on Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention
In Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention, Séverine Autesserre argues convincingly that a wide variety of international peacebuilders, however different they may seem at first glance, form a distinct cultural group who share everyday practices, narratives and habits. Moreover, she argues, these shared everyday elements are counter-productive and actually contribute to…
Roundtable 9-4 on The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power
Few political scientists enjoy a level of respect within the discipline comparable to that of Thomas Christensen. His work is always theoretically informed, but also open to the insights of a variety of paradigms and approaches rather than being the captive of a single school of thought. Both of his previous books on alliance politics…
Roundtable 9-3 on Barriers to Bioweapons: The Challenges of Expertise and Weapons Development
Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley’s outstanding Barriers to Bioweapons demonstrates that while it may be relatively easy to pick your poison, there are very significant barriers to manufacturing it. Her main argument, as our reviewers so clearly explain, is that making bioweapons—that is, ‘weaponizing’ biological agents such as anthrax, smallpox, plague, and many others—has been far more…
Roundtable 9-2 on Diplomacy’s Value: Creating Security in 1920’s Europe and the Contemporary Middle East
It seems obvious that an understanding of the nature and value of diplomacy should be of central importance to the study of international relations. However, as Brian Rathbun argues in his important new book, the sad reality is that international relations theorists have devoted little time or attention to systematically exploring the value of diplomacy….
Roundtable 9-1 on Chinese Hegemony: Grand Strategy and International Institutions in East Asian History
It is a pleasure to read Feng Zhang’s Chinese Hegemony: Grand Strategy and International Institutions in East Asian History. This book is an exemplar in its serious treatment of Chinese history, its holistic approach to East Asian history covering Inner Asia as well as Korea and Japan, its simultaneous analysis of the foreign policy strategies…
Roundtable 8-19 on Near and Distant Neighbors: A New History of Soviet Intelligence
If intelligence has now received sufficient attention so that it is no longer the hidden dimension of international politics, Soviet intelligence still fits this categorization. Our three reviewers welcome Jonathan Haslam’s lively overview of the subject and commend him for drawing on so many of the documents which, although revealing as far as they go,…
Roundtable 8-18 on The Taming of Democracy Assistance: Why Democracy Promotion Does Not Confront Dictators
Every year scores of official aid agencies, foreign ministries, international organizations, transnational non-governmental organizations, private foundations, and for-profit development organizations design, fund, and implement thousands of projects aimed at advancing democracy in over one hundred countries, spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 billion. Multiply this annual activity by the fact that such assistance has…
Roundtable 8-17 on The Dictator’s Army: Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes
Scholars of political violence readily delve into policy and strategy but seldom below those levels of analysis. They usually consign concern with operations and tactics to military buffs. As Carl von Clausewitz argued, however, strategic success depends on and is ultimately reducible to tactical success.[1] So predicting how military success or failure affect political and…
Roundtable 8-16 on Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy
There are many international relations theorists in academia who opine on world order and grand strategy. There are many policy analysts in think tanks with deep understanding of military programs, budgets, and operations. There are not many, however, who combine both sorts of expertise in equal depth. Barry Posen is one of the very best…