Do nuclear weapons revolutionize world politics? For decades, the standard answer from international relations scholars has been a resounding yes. This mainstream view, known as ‘The Theory of the Nuclear Revolution,’ is associated with scholars such as Kenneth Waltz, Robert Jervis, and Charles Glaser. [1]It argues that nuclear weapons generate a condition of mutual vulnerability that…
Category: Roundtables
Roundtable 13-3 on Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War
The United States repeatedly tried to overthrow foreign governments during the Cold War. More often than not, U.S. leaders chose covert regime change rather than overt military intervention. Their persistence suggests that the story of the Cold War has as much to do with secret maneuvers as it does with nuclear strategy or conventional military…
Roundtable 13-2 on Strategic Instincts: The Adaptive Advantages of Cognitive Biases in International Politics
Strategic Instincts: The Adaptive Advantages of Cognitive Biases in International Politics by Dominic D.P. Johnson is a welcome addition to the literature on Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). The study of cognitive biases has a long and rich history within FPA, with classics penned by luminaries such as Robert Jervis, Richards Heuer, Yaacov Vertzberger, Philip Tetlock,…
Roundtable 13-1 on An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for Twenty-First-Century Order
The United States faces a host of strategic geopolitical challenges today, many of which have long been brewing as a result of structural changes and some of which have been self-inflicted by successive administrations, most recently and most especially the Trump Administration. In An Open World, Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper deliver a lucid and…
Roundtable 12-14 on Power to the People: How Open Technological Innovation is Arming Tomorrow’s Terrorists
Audrey Kurth Cronin’s new monograph, Power to the People: How Open Technological Innovation is Arming Tomorrow’s Terrorists, makes a valuable contribution to the literature on terrorism, technological innovation, and the evolving nature of national security in the twenty-first century. The book deserves to be widely read by scholars and policymakers. Deborah Avant, Boyd P. Brown…
Roundtable 12-13 on Peacekeeping in the Midst of War
Peacekeeping was born in 1948, in the midst of the American civil rights and anti-colonial movements. The basic thrust of the idea was to resolve violent conflict without resorting to violence. In that sense, peacekeeping is unlike other forms of military intervention because of its foundational principles: consent, impartiality, and the use of force in…
Roundtable 12-12 on Orders of Exclusion: Great Powers and the Strategic Sources of Foundational Rules in International Relations
To say that debates over “international order” are at the heart of a growing number of scholarly and policy concerns is an understatement. Indeed, at a time when the so-called “liberal international order” that was notionally established by the United States after World War Two is under duress from shifting power dynamics, domestic churn in…
Roundtable 12-11 on Divided Armies: Inequality and Battlefield Performance in Modern War
The oldest question in the study of international relations (IR) is: what helps armies win their battles? This is the IR question the ancients struggled over more than any other. The Old Testament, for example, is replete with discussions of armies fighting and trying to win battles, such as the Israelites hoping the Ark of…
Roundtable 12-10 on Feeding the Hungry: Advocacy and Blame in the Global Fight against Hunger
Michelle Jurkovich’s Feeding the Hungry: Advocacy and Blame in the Global Fight against Hunger explores a series of important questions around advocacy campaigns to fight global hunger. [1] Who is to blame for the persistence of hunger? What types of strategies do anti-hunger advocacy organizations employ? If the Right to Food is articulated in internationally…
Roundtable 12-9 on Information Technology and Military Power
War is a complex and chaotic business that persistently confounds the attempts of frontline forces, junior officers, field commanders, campaign commanders, policy elites, and others to understand what is happening amidst the smoke, noise, violence, and confusion. This has not, however, stopped war’s many participants from trying to discern the ebbs and flows of battle…
