I’m writing in late April 2020 during a nation-wide shutdown in response to the public health threat of the COVID-19 virus. Travel has ceased; shops are closed; universities are quiet and empty. Three million people around the world have tested positive for this highly contagious and deadly virus. In less than three months, it has…
Article Review 139 on “Substate Organizations as Foreign Policy Agents: New Evidence and Theory from India, Israel, and France.”
Nicolas Blarel and Jayita Sarkar have written a valuable article on the intra-state politics of foreign policy. An extensive line of research in recent years has examined how domestic political competition (i.e. elections and parties), public opinion, and leaders can shape foreign policy. Yet bureaucracies within the state – what Blarel and Sarkar refer to…
H-Diplo Essay 235- James Goldgeier on Learning the Scholar’s Craft: Reflections of Historians and International Relations Scholars
Some people might know when they are in college that they want to go to graduate school and get a Ph.D. I did not. I thought initially after college, I would pursue campaign work, and my first job—which I started in February of my senior year—was managing a city council campaign in Boston. We lost…
H-Diplo Roundtable XXI-42 on “Recentering the United States in the Historiography of American Foreign Relations.”
It is not typical for H-Diplo to publish a roundtable on an article. But Daniel Bessner and Fredrik Logevall’s “Recentering the United States in the Historiography of American Foreign Relations” is not a typical article. Before it was published, it was already provoking hallway conversations at conferences. The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations…
H-Diplo Essay 233- Elizabeth Cobbs on Learning the Scholar’s Craft: Reflections of Historians and International Relations Scholars
I thought of myself as calm. Competing for a grant that paid for three years of graduate study at any university in the nation seemed straightforward, even though $100,000 was at stake and I had at most $500 in savings. The interview should have been easy, plus I was hard to rattle.
H-Diplo Essay 232- J. Ann Tickner on Learning the Scholar’s Craft: Reflections of Historians and International Relations Scholars
My journey towards becoming a feminist scholar has taken a somewhat unusual route. My interest in international affairs, especially working towards a more peaceful and just world, began when I was a child experiencing the bombing of London during World War II. After the war we moved to the United States where my father worked…
Roundtable 11-16 on Diplomacy: Communication and the Origins of the International Order
Robert Trager’s Diplomacy: Communication and the Origins of the International Order focuses on the role of communication in diplomacy with emphasis on the role of costless exchanges such as private discussions between two foreign policy ministers versus costly signaling such as moving troops to the frontier of an adversary or a drone strike on a…
H-Diplo Essay 230- Warren F. Kimball on Learning the Scholar’s Craft: Reflections of Historians and International Relations Scholars
On Becoming Me. I can’t think of a better title. Being an historian is an essential, but not the only, part of ME. I’m writing this professional obituary during the COVID-19 pandemic which drives home the tenuousness of ‘normal.’ I cannot imagine that my rather peculiar and idiosyncratic stumbling into becoming a professional teacher-historian will…
Article Review 138 on “The Sturdy Child vs. the Sword of Damocles: Nuclear Weapons and the Expected Cost of War.”
With the advent of nuclear weapons came the question of how their very existence changed the way we conduct and think about warfare. Nearly seventy five years after their first (and, to date, only) use at the end of World War II, the question remains far from resolved, as nuclear ‘optimists’ and ‘pessimists’ continue to…
H-Diplo Essay 228- Kathleen Burk on Learning the Scholar’s Craft: Reflections of Historians and International Relations Scholars
I have seldom followed a straight road in my writings on history. Rather, I have wandered where my interests at the time led me, leading a military history friend to urge that I concentrate my forces. The one constant in my working life has been an abiding interest in diplomacy. From the research and writing…