Geoffrey Roberts’s criticism of our discussion of Joseph Stalin’s personal role in facilitating the Soviet failure to correctly estimate the German threat prior to Operation Barbarossa of June 1941,[1] focused on three main arguments. First, that his behavior on the eve of the attack was not the result of unique psychological elements but of a “political rationale.” Second, that the intelligence information concerning the looming threat was not unequivocal and that there was a foundation for Stalin’s suspicion that the war warnings were the product of British deception. Third, that Stalin should not be singled out for his mistaken estimate since there were other “Soviet decision-makers” who believed that war was not imminent. I briefly address each of these reservations.
Policy Series: Canada and Donald Trump: A Midterm Reality Check
As I noted the last time I took to this platform to express my views on the meaning of President Donald J. Trump for Canada’s relationship with the United States, there were at least a few reasons for optimism, amid the general sense of gloom and doom that descended upon Canadians in the immediate aftermath of the November 2016 election. Chief among those reasons was my expectation that, just as earlier Canadian forebodings about Ronald Reagan’s meaning for Canada and its relationship with its great neighbour to the south would turn out to be wildly misplaced in the years following the November 1980 American election, so too might the most recent bout of national neuralgia disappear, once Canadians got to know more about the new president, and grew, if not to like him more, then at least to dislike him a bit less.[1]
Policy Series: Stalin, Trump, and the Politics of Narcissism: A Response to Rose McDermott’s “The Nature of Narcissism.”
Policy Series: “Inconsistent, Incoherent, and Unpredictable: U.S. Policies in East Asia under President Donald J. Trump”
Article Review 99 on “Rousing a Response: When the United States Changes Policy toward Mass Killing.”
Over the last year, the mass killing and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar has become a major international issue. More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled from the Rakhine state, the death roll exceeded 10,000 in a four month period from August to December 2017 alone, and policymakers and United Nations (UN) experts have been moving towards calling the situation a genocide.[1] In the U.S., Congress, the State Department, and public pressure has begun to mount over whether the U.S. response—thus far a combination of congressional hearings, humanitarian assistance, and withdrawal of aid to the military—warrants a shift. [2]
Policy Series: The Nature of Narcissism
Roundtable 10-15 on Intelligence Success and Failure: The Human Factor
For decades, political scientists have been taught that it is dangerous if not forbidden to search on the dependent variable. By looking only at cases in which the effect of interest occurs, we cannot infer causation because the factors that we think are powerful may be only necessary conditions, which means that they can be present in cases in which the effect does not appear. They then cannot readily be labelled as causes in the sense of distinguishing between instances in which the effect is present and those in which it is absent. Yet almost all studies of intelligence failures have looked only at the failures themselves, without making comparisons with successes. This was true even of scholars who not only knew about this problem, but had stressed it in their teaching. I can say that with some confidence because I am in that category. While I urged others to look at successes as well as failures, I did not do so.[1] Erik Dahl, one of our reviewers, recently used this methodology,[2] but our reviewers agree that until this volume, no one had sought such careful and controlled comparisons that are developed here.Continue reading
Article Review 98 on “How Civil Wars End: The International System, Norms, and the Role of External Actors.”
By Tim1965 / Tim from Washington, D.C., United States of America – Own work / Civil War Unknowns Memorial – looking E – Arlington National Cemetery – 2011, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16636644
This is a significant article which attempts to document something that many political scientists have suspected[1]—that negotiated settlements of civil wars increased greatly after the Cold War and have declined since 9/11. This finding is significant because it implies that 1990-2001 may be an atypical period in conflict resolution and that generalizations based on behavior during that time may be misleading as guides to future actions, an unsettling suggestion to scholars and practioners alike. The authors argue that this change in behavior is the result of a change in international norms, driven by changes in the international environment. I think this is interesting, but rather to my surprise I am not persuaded by the article’s empirical foundation.
Roundtable 10-14 on The Future of War: A History
Roundtable 10-13 on Constitutions and Conflict Management in Africa: Preventing Civil War Through Institutional Design
In Constitutions and Conflict Management in Africa, Alan J. Kuperman has assembled a diverse set of international scholars with different backgrounds ranging from Ph.D. candidates, to practitioners, to a distinguished professor emeritus. The book’s purpose is to contribute to a debate over whether “accommodation” or “integration” is the optimal constitutional design for African states (2-3). It is upfront in acknowledging that there are considerable methodological challenges to such a study, which Kuperman lists as “causal variable, outcome variables, endogeneity, omitted variables, selection effects, and degrees of freedom” (9).
