Because Germany is Europe’s most populous country (excluding Russia), its most productive economy, and the European Union’s indispensable member, its elections are necessarily significant. Yet even by this standard, the federal election held on 26 September was particularly consequential and unusual. It marked the end of Angela Merkel’s sixteen-year tenure as Chancellor, during which she…
Policy Series 2021-55: “Mr. Brexit”: Donald Trump and the UK’s Departure from the European Union
The two electoral shocks of 2016 – the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union (‘Brexit’) and Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States – left observers aghast or elated. For those who found themselves in the former category, the outcome of the Brexit referendum represented a crisis that dwarfed any other…
H-Diplo Essay 376- Robert J. Lieber on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
Reflecting on a scholarly career that began more than a half century ago, I’m struck by the confluence of social and historical context, personal inclination, and serendipity. Unlike friends and colleagues who were part of the post-World War II baby boom, I was born just weeks before U.S. entry into the conflict. The war engaged…
Article Review 150- “Selective Wilsonianism”
In America’s Mission, Tony Smith contends that the “central ambition of American foreign policy” since the Spanish-American war has been centered on promoting democracy, or in President Woodrow Wilson’s formulation, “making the world safe for democracy.”[1] Challenging this narrative, Arman Grigoryan argues in “Selective Wilsonianism,” that this ‘Kantian narrative’ that originates in liberal theory does…
H-Diplo Essay 374- John Prados on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
Many of my colleagues have contributed essays revisiting their graduate school days, full of commendations to friends and collaborators. I could do that too—and, in fact, my friends include many of the very authors of these essays—but I thought it more useful to spend this time on tools and methods. As I sit to write…
Policy Series 2021-54: Stuck: “America First” and the Middle East
At the time of writing, it is only six months since Joe Biden became President of the United States. Yet there is already one notable contrast between Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, that deserves more attention. In a nutshell, Trump promised an overhaul of U.S. foreign policy but couldn’t deliver. Biden is trying to…
Article Review 149 on “Security Studies in a New Era of Maritime Competition”
Contested freedom of navigation, welcome back. Absent from mainstream debates about the relevance of military power in international politics since the end of the Cold War, until recently naval power had come to embody the linear progression underwriting Francis Fukuyama’s ‘end of history.’[1] Since the United States had no major enemy left to fight as…
H-Diplo Essay 372- Kathryn Stoner on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
I was supposed to be a lawyer. That’s what my parents had told me; I was good at arguing, I liked school, and I was really interested in politics. But something went terribly wrong (or right, depending on your perspective) and my professional life took another path into political science and specifically the study of…
Policy Series 2021-53: The Trump Administration and Economic Sanctions
Evaluating the significance and effects of economic sanctions is a serious challenge for scholars. For one thing, appraising the outcomes of sanctions raises the question of perspective: from whose vantage point do we observe their use and effects? While U.S. policymakers often change their approach to sanctions, to targeted countries the continuities in attitude are…
Policy Series 2021-52: The Trump “Legacy” for American Foreign Policy
We cannot calculate President Trump’s “legacy” for United States foreign policy simply by describing his diplomacy while he was in power. Virtuous fathers can fritter away family wealth, and Mafiosi can leave ill-gotten gains to charity. It is still too early to know what long-term consequences might emerge, and it is difficult to sort out…
