Although for over a quarter century an increasing number of states have acquired and used cyber capabilities, and cyberspace has become an increasingly important arena for international security interaction, far too many national intelligence and defense scholars, practitioners, and policymakers have sidestepped its vital role, either claiming that the technical barriers to entry are too…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-16 on Walton, Spies
Spies! What a great title! I could feel the ground shift within the first few pages of Calder Walton’s blockbuster accounting of the twentieth century “epic intelligence war between east and west.” Cold War historiography is again on the move and Walton, who is the assistant director of the Belfer Center’s Applied History Project, at…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Review Essay 111: Yaacob on Guan, Reassessing Lee Kuan Yew’s Strategic Thought
Singapore’s first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, was one of Asia’s strategic thinkers.[1] He was a prominent political leader and statesman who played a crucial role in transforming Singapore into a prosperous modern nation-state. Washington elites often sought the views and advice of this statesman and global strategist on strategic issues relating to Asia. When…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-15 on Kassenova, Atomic Steppe
An academic book editor once said to me that it usually means no good when a history book becomes timely. While publishers certainly hope that their books are widely read, unfortunately it is often an international crisis that makes the media, and a general audience, turn to history books for advice. In Europe, a new…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-14 on Edwards, Prisoner of their Premises
George C. Edwards’s Prisoners of their Premises: How Unexamined Assumptions Lead to War and Other Policy Debacles tackles a central question in the study of foreign policy making: how do we explain decisions that have observably catastrophic outcomes? Edwards’s argument is that a vital step in the making process–problem identification–provides significant purchase on this question….
H-Diplo | RJISSF Commentary III-2 on Marc Trachtenberg, “Operation Farewell and the Siberian Pipeline Explosion”
It is a treat to read something, anything, that Marc Trachtenberg writes. The reasons go beyond the originality and authority of his substantive contributions to international history and international relations. Trachtenberg focused on European foreign relations before shifting to the United States, and, as is well known, trained in history and a titan in the…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-13 on Rindzevičiūtė, The Will to Predict
In her new signal history that spans early modern science, the positivism of the Russian Revolution, Cold War cybernetics, and ends with the post-Soviet period, Eglė Rindzevičiūtė has accomplished something extraordinary, as is affirmed by this roundtable of experts and scholarly specialists. In The Will to Predict: Orchestrating the Future through Science, she outlines a serious history…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Review Essay 110: Douthitt on Harper, Underground Asia
Underground Asia explores a clandestine global network of anti-imperialist revolutionaries and their struggles against empire in early twentieth century Asia. The text looks beyond any one nation-state; instead, it shifts attention to the interpersonal network that was forged between various revolutionaries that spanned Asia, Europe, and the Americas from the 1890s until the 1930s. Harper…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Review Essay 109: Greentree on Stoker, Why America Loses Wars
With war and the prospect for more upon the world, this may seem an inopportune time to delve into a book titled Why America Loses Wars. It is not. Wars shape our world, threatening a descent into chaos while promising a better peace. China’s rise, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s revanchism, the US involvement in the…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-12 on Daly, Violent Victors
In Violent Victors, Sarah Zukerman Daly poses a question crucial to understanding what happens as countries emerge from civil war: Why does the winning side, whose hands are often stained with the blood of wartime atrocities, so often win the first postwar election? Daly’s answer is at once surprising and intuitive: beleaguered citizens, having endured…