The H-Diplo editors have asked about the “formative years” of scholars’ interest in international affairs. I honestly don’t know where it all started. I was a nerdy kid interested in history, natural and (I guess) unnatural, and politics very early on. I was an avid reader of Time, despite its “strange inverted Timestyle” (“Backward ran…
H-Diplo|ISSF Commentary: Avey, “The Biden and Trump National Security Strategies: Continuity, Change, and the Implications for Scholars”
Despite a sense that most formal strategy documents do not matter much, there is a great deal of attention to a President’s National Security Strategy (NSS) when it is released.[1] Scholars, think tank analysts, and pundits are quick to comment on its strengths and, more commonly, highlight its flaws. The release of President Joe Biden’s…
H-Diplo | ISSF Roundtable 14-5: Zegart, Spies, Lies and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence
Amy Zegart’s book Spies, Lies and Algorithms: The History of Future of American Intelligence, provides a well-written and easy to read overview of the multiplicities of American intelligence; everything from what intelligence is, to intelligence in classrooms and the effects of “spytainment,” and of course, intelligence of the digital age. Zegart describes the initial concept…
H-Diplo|ISSF Roundtable 14-4: Young, Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World
Few actors in international relations evoke caricature and misunderstanding like North Korea. A country that has long vexed US policymakers, North Korea has become the go-to adversary of convenience for the American imagination. The Pentagon pinned its post-Cold War force structure to the assumption of a second Korean War, meaning that a decade of US…
H-Diplo|ISSF Roundtable 14-3: Teaching Critical Approaches to International Relations
I very much enjoyed reading the four contributions to this roundtable. The theme that runs through all four is the different journeys, taken by different people, that nonetheless led to similar conclusions about how we can teach International Relations (IR). Underlying all this, for me at least, is a disquieting feeling that, over the last…
H-Diplo|ISSF Commentary “Fear and the Logic of Othering: Decoding the Biden Administration’s 2022 National Security Strategy”
As result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration delayed the release of the new National Security Strategy (NSS) until October 2022.[1] At first glance, it is impossible to avoid noting that the entire NSS—which analysts have described as a disappointing document and “a laundry list of challenges, threats, and responses”[2] —revolves around…
Roundtable 14-2 on The Frontlines of Peace: An Insider’s Guide to Changing the World
Promoting peace is something everyone endorses – from the United Nations to rich foundations to idealistic schoolchildren. But what is peace? How does it unfold? How can those who want to promote it help? In a book that is more revolutionary than its straightforward language belies, Séverine Autesserre wants to change how we answer each…
H-Diplo | ISSF Forum 36 (2002) on the Scholarship of Walter LaFeber
“Walt” Let me begin by talking about a picnic in one of Madison’s beautiful parks near a lake in midsummer 1957. It was ideal weather and the three of us (Walt LaFeber, Tom McCormick, and myself) were talking with our wives about our graduate school experience, the profession, and the unknown future. I was surprised…
H-Diplo Essay 450- J. Samuel Walker on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
I came to a career as a professional historian naturally but indirectly. I began my college education at the University of Delaware as a pre-med major. The curriculum was heavily weighted toward the sciences, and I quickly concluded that biology was tedious, chemistry was bewildering, and physics was incomprehensible. By contrast, my history courses were…
Roundtable 14-1 on Why Nations Rise: Narratives and the Path to Great Power
“Is China Rising”? When Sheena Chestnut Greitens and Iain Johnston posed this question in 2009, it seemed beside the point.[1] Everyone knew China was rising. But when Chestnut Greitens and Johnston parsed the discourse to see what analysts meant by “rising,” they discovered a baffling array of meanings. Translating these different definitions into indicators, they…
