For too long, the histories of the United Nations (UN) and other international organizations were blighted by the misconception that institutional history tended to be rather inward looking and teleological in its treatment of themes and issues, offering few insights on the political functioning of organizations. In more recent years, there has been a renewed…
Category: Roundtables
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-26 on Hazelton, Bullets not Ballots
When I began my professional career in the mid-aughts, counterinsurgency, or “COIN,” was beginning to supplant counterterrorism as the most important buzzword in Washington, DC. The steadily expanding civil war in Iraq and insurgency in Afghanistan—not to mention conflicts in other countries like Somalia—convinced foreign policy elites (and wannabe elites like me) that the United…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-25 on Kaplow, Signing Away the Bomb
On 17 October 1958, Irish Foreign Minister Frank Aiken proposed a resolution at the United Nations (UN) that called on that body to explore ways to prevent the “further dissemination of nuclear weapons.”[1] After Aiken’s initial effort did not succeed, Ireland reintroduced variations of the resolution every year until the UN General Assembly, on 4…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-23 on Franczak, Global Inequality and American Foreign Policy in the 1970s
The reviewers in this forum agree that Michael Franczak’s Global Inequality and American Foreign Policy in the 1970s is a “well researched” book that offers a “skillful synthesis,” as William Glen Gray puts it, of US approaches toward Third World efforts at global economic reform in the 1970s. Franczak’s analysis begins with the campaign for…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-22 on Moore, China’s Next Act
Surfing in real time on the top of an epochal wave—China’s rise—Scott Moore’s book offers a sophisticated approach to the role of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in world affairs. Reviewers Matteo Dian and Angel Hsu concur that Moore offers an ambitious and nuanced take on the counteracting of cooperation and competition mainly between…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-21 on Hlatky, Deploying Feminism
The Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Agenda, which was engendered by United Nations Security Council 1325, is now nearly a quarter-century old. Researchers have a solid evidence base on which to judge its implementation, and Stéfanie Von Hlatky’s work is part of a now-extensive research agenda on how it has evolved.[1] Specifically, Deploying Feminism speaks…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-20 on Johnson, The Third Option
On its face, covert action—which I define for my students as “secret attempts by one country to alter conditions and events in another country”—is immoral and violates international law. For citizens of nations that are targets of covert action, such operations reek of arrogance. Just ask those Americans who accept the evidence that Russia attempted…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-19 on Cohrs, The New Atlantic Order
Patrick Cohrs’s impressive history of European and American interaction covers the late-nineteenth century through Adolf Hitler’s coming to power. The focus is on the Versailles Treaty—its negotiations and consequences—with a long running start from 1860 and an intensive study of the diplomacy that sought to manage its consequences extending to 1933. At almost 1100 pages,…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-18 on Ekbladh, Plowshares into Swords
David Ekbladh’s Plowshares into Swords: Weaponized Knowledge, Liberal Order, and the League of Nations follows the economic and financial agencies of the League of Nations until their displacement from Geneva to Princeton, New Jersey during 1940–1941. It invites us to consider their valuable statistical work and other studies during the turbulent economic interwar years as…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-17 on Pelopidas, Repenser Les Choix Nucléaires
This important and well-researched book appears at a time when concern about nuclear weapons, which lapsed after the end of the Cold War, has resurfaced because of the war in Ukraine and anxieties over Iran. The recent film Oppenheimer gives eloquent expression to these fears, with the main character worrying that the development of the…