International monetary policy is usually not a topic that lends itself to both intense academic interest and a popular general audience. Benn Steil’s The Battle of Bretton Woods, however, is clearly an exception to this general rule. As William Glenn Gray points out in his review, in less capable hands the wartime monetary negotiations that…
Category: Roundtables
Roundtable 6-6 on Reconstructing the Cold War: The Early Years, 1945-1958
H-Diplo has assembled a very impressive interdisciplinary (and international) lineup for this roundtable; all four reviewers provide, in my opinion, excellent analysis. Each of them finds much to praise about the book under review, in particular Ted Hopf’s fascinating historical account of Soviet political culture during the first thirteen years of the Cold War and…
Roundtable 6-5 on The Rise & Decline of the American ‘Empire’: Power and its Limits in Comparative Perspective
Something about the decline of great powers provokes great debates, and this roundtable is no exception. In his latest work, Geir Lundestad deploys the formidable learning he has acquired in a distinguished and prolific career as a diplomatic historian to dissect the current debate on American decline. He considers contemporary concerns in a broad historical…
Roundtable 6-4 on Trust in International Cooperation: The Creation of International Security Institutions and the Domestic Politics of American Multilateralism
Brian Rathbun’s Trust in International Cooperation is one of the more important books in recent years written about American foreign policy and multilateral cooperation in world politics. While historians of American foreign policy will find much of interest in the empirical chapters on the origins of the League of Nations and NATO, Rathbun’s primary task…
Roundtable 6-3 on Achieving Nuclear Ambitions: Scientists, Politicians, and Proliferation
Many scholars and policymakers concerned with the proliferation of nuclear weapons assume that the passage of time has made it much easier for states and terrorist groups to achieve their nuclear ambitions. For example, in their book The Nuclear Express, Thomas Reed and Danny Stillman reflect this common assumption: “Any well-industrialized society with the intellectual…
Roundtable 6-2 on Alliance Formation in Civil Wars
Over the last decade much of the best work in comparative politics and international relations has focused on explaining the onset and termination of civil wars. In her new book, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars, Fotini Christia seeks to explain the constant shifts in alliances that characterize these conflicts. With a combination of theoretical richness,…
Roundtable 6-1 on The Arc of War: Origins, Escalation, and Transformation
The book under discussion here is The Arc of War: Origins, Escalation, and Transformation by two political scientists of international relations, each with impressive track records of work drawing on both historical detail and political science theory. It is a very ambitious book that deserves close attention by an interdisciplinary audience such as the readers…
Roundtable 5-5 on Power and Willpower in the American Future: Why the United States is Not Destined to Decline
Is the United States destined to decline in the twenty-first century? This is a seemingly simple question, but one that International Relations theorists seem destined to debate without resolution. How should we measure power? What are the most relevant economic and military indicators of national power? How should we weigh the various components of national…
Roundtable 5-4 on “Democracy, Deception, and Entry into War”
H-Diplo/ISSF is honored to present a special and very unique exchange on the issue of “Democracy, Deception and Entry into War.” The editors would particularly like to express their great appreciation to Marc Trachtenberg for allowing us to publish his extended essay “Dan Reiter and America’s Road to War in 1941,” as well as to…
Roundtable 5-3, “Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy”
By the accounts of the three reviewers below, Kelly Greenhill has hit a home run. Their collective view substantiates the judgment of the International Studies Association (ISA), which gave Weapons of Mass Migration the Association’s Best Book of the Year Award for 2011. In turn, the reviewers and the ISA have confirmed my judgment of…