Don’t tell me it doesn’t work—torture works,” then presidential candidate Donald Trump said at a February 2016 campaign event in Bluffton, South Carolina. “Okay, folks, Torture—you know, half these guys [say]: ‘Torture doesn’t work.’ Believe me, it works, Okay?”[1] Whether or not the President-elect’s promise of a return to Bush era waterboarding (or forced deportations…
Article Review 66 on “The Cold War, the developing world, and the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 1953–1957”
When the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was created sixty years ago, it was presented as a development agency turning nuclear swords into ploughshares. A small group of nuclear ‘haves’ negotiated the IAEA Statute between 1953 and 1957, securing privileged positions for themselves. Less-developed states were largely ignored during this process. Unsurprisingly, nuclear haves (states…
Policy Series: Trump The Tweeter
If Hilary Clinton had been elected President it would have been a relatively easy to describe her foreign policy commitments, preferences, and likely responses to possible challenges. She is on record at some length on numerous issues as Senator, Secretary of State, and Democratic presidential candidate. Trump, by contrast, is a newcomer to the policy…
Forum 15 on “Symposium on Counterfactual Analysis”
The essays by Niall Ferguson and Benjamin Mueller are welcome commentaries on the Security Studies “Symposium on Counterfactual Analysis.” The symposium was one of four collections published in the journal in 2015 and 2016, each of which sought to refresh scholars’ understandings of a particular approach to qualitative and multi-method inquiry. The symposia followed from…
ISSF Roundtable 9-10 on Power, Knowledge, and Dissent in Morgenthau’s Worldview
In the last fifteen years classical realism has not only become an accepted paradigm but has largely supplanted neorealism. Like all paradigms, it seeks legitimacy by claiming canonical thinkers as its founders. Ancient Greek historian Thucydides and German émigré Hans Morgenthau have been critical in this regard. Post-Cold War interest in Morgenthau transcends his relationship…
Article Review 65 on “Where Does Canada Fit in the US-China Strategic Competition across the Pacific?”
Tsuyoshi Kawasaki’s article contributes to a modest literature on Canada’s diplomatic, security, and defence relations with the Asia Pacific countries. It provides the reader with a succinct and useful review of emergent China in the larger international community with particular reference to U.S.-China relations. Derivatively, Kawasaki explores his thesis concerning its implications for Canada.
Policy Series: The Future of the Atlantic Alliance under President Trump
I accepted with some trepidation the kind invitation of the editors of H-Diplo to contribute a brief essay on the possible foreign-policy initiatives of the Trump administration. The candidate made only sporadic references to that topic during the presidential campaign—tirelessly repeating the slogan “America First” (in apparent ignorance of the historical context of that term)….
Roundtable 9-9 on Endurance and War: The National Sources of Military Cohesion
The study of military effectiveness in political science has come a long way in a short period of time. When I started graduate school in the mid-1990s, most of the key works on the subject were written by historians and sociologists rather than political scientists.[1] Beginning in the late 1990s, however, military effectiveness began to…
Policy Series: President Trump and IR Theory
I never thought that I would write the phrase “President Trump,” let alone link it to IR theory. But the former is a great opportunity for the latter. Scholars of international politics bemoan the fact that our sub-field cannot draw on the experimental method. Well, now we can. Although Trump’s election was not a random…
Policy Series: America and the World-2017 and Beyond (Introduction)
The election of a new President typically offers an opportunity to reflect upon the state of international relations and America’s role in the world. This would have been especially true of the 2016 election no matter who won: as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recently claimed, many believe that for the first time since…