As we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, the world has become complex, heterogeneous, and unstable. States do not accept a higher authority above themselves. The United Nations Security Council has hardly ever functioned with one voice and is currently immobile because of the blocking power of Russia and China. Third World countries…
Roundtable 5-5 on Power and Willpower in the American Future: Why the United States is Not Destined to Decline
Is the United States destined to decline in the twenty-first century? This is a seemingly simple question, but one that International Relations theorists seem destined to debate without resolution. How should we measure power? What are the most relevant economic and military indicators of national power? How should we weigh the various components of national…
Response to Peter Krause, “The Political Effectiveness of Non-State Violence: A Two-Level Framework to Transform a Deceptive Debate”
Thank you to H-Diplo for publishing this exchange and to Max Abrahms for taking the time to read and respond to my article. My main regret with Abrahms’s response has to do less with any of our potential disagreements that he outlines, but rather the fact that he does not engage with many of the…
Article Review 24 on “When Duty Calls: A Pragmatic Standard of Humanitarian Intervention.”
Robert Pape adds to a growing literature that is trying to develop a more cohesive approach to controlling or mitigating episodes of genocide and mass atrocity violence. His call for a more pragmatic approach is certainly laudable and his claims that the world has not fared well in preventing past genocides is certainly correct. Overall,…
Response to Article Review 21 on “Testing the Surge” and “Correspondence: Assessing the Synergy Thesis in Iraq”
Competing accounts of why violence declined in Iraq in 2007 have shaped U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, debates about force sizing and doctrines on counterinsurgency, and academic research on the dynamics of armed conflict. Nevertheless, few scholars have attempted to test these competing accounts against one another systematically. “Testing the Surge”[1] approached this issue by combining…
Roundtable 5-4 on “Democracy, Deception, and Entry into War”
H-Diplo/ISSF is honored to present a special and very unique exchange on the issue of “Democracy, Deception and Entry into War.” The editors would particularly like to express their great appreciation to Marc Trachtenberg for allowing us to publish his extended essay “Dan Reiter and America’s Road to War in 1941,” as well as to…
Response to Article Review No. 22 on “Two Concepts of Liberty: U.S. Cold War Grand Strategies and the Liberal Tradition.”
I was surprised and delighted to read Douglas Macdonald’s four-thousand-word critique of my recent International Security article. That “Two Concepts of Liberty: US Cold War Grand Strategies and the Liberal Tradition” could attract such sustained attention is more than I had hoped, but to attract it from a scholar of Macdonald’s caliber is both flattering…
Article Review 23 on “Israel’s War in Gaza: A Paradigm of Effective Military Learning and Adaptation.” International Security 37:2 (Fall 2012), and on “Just War Moral Philosophy and the 2008-09 Israeli Campaign in Gaza.”
Benjamin Lambeth and Jerome Slater share a common interest in the military meaning of Arab-Israeli confrontations of the last decade, but they come at the battles very differently. Whereas Lambeth is interested in analyzing the Israel Defense Forces’ effectiveness and learning curve, Slater is focused upon the morality of Israel’s actions, calling Operation Cast Lead…
Roundtable 5-3, “Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy”
By the accounts of the three reviewers below, Kelly Greenhill has hit a home run. Their collective view substantiates the judgment of the International Studies Association (ISA), which gave Weapons of Mass Migration the Association’s Best Book of the Year Award for 2011. In turn, the reviewers and the ISA have confirmed my judgment of…
Article Review 22 on “Two Concepts of Liberty: U.S. Cold War Grand Strategies and the Liberal Tradition.”
After World War II, the story goes, the United States parted ways with its isolationist past and asserted itself as a political and military power.[1] Recently, though, historians and political scientists have begun to question this narrative, concluding that the United States sought to avoid political and military commitments to Europe for much longer than…