Laura Sjoberg’s important book, Gendering Global Conflict, engages a wealth of both traditional and contemporary ‘war studies’ (as Sjoberg phrases them) to lay bare the theoretical gaps caused by omitting gender from our explanations of why individuals and collectivities fight. As Sjoberg convincingly argues, scholars cannot understand the causes and consequences of conflict and…
Journal Origins Essay (Essay 28) on “The Genesis of JoGSS (the Journal of Global Security Studies).”
JoGSS is a new security journal in the International Studies Association’s (ISA) stable of journals. Frank Gavin asked me to write a brief essay for ISSF on the origins and foundation of this new journal, which aims “to publish first-rate work addressing the variety of methodological, epistemological, theoretical, normative, and empirical concerns reflected in the…
Roundtable 8-12 on Democratic Militarism: Voting, Wealth, and War
Jonathan Caverley challenges our image of democracies – and mass publics – as being relatively averse to war. The costs of war, he correctly argues, are not distributed evenly across all citizens. Those who are taxed less heavily than others or do not serve in the military, he reasons, will be less averse to war…
Article Review 53 on “Accepting Regional Zero: Nuclear Weapon Free Zones, U.S. Nonproliferation Policy and Global Security, 1957-1968.” Journal of Cold War Studies 17:2
James Stocker offers a deep historical analysis of U.S. foreign policy towards regional nuclear weapons free zones (NWFZs) during the tenure of three American presidents — Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson— and maps its evolution over eleven years of pre-détente Cold War. He examines how the Eisenhower administration rejected the…
Article Review 52 on “The Myth of Entangling Alliances.” International Security 39:4
Do American alliances provide stability at acceptable cost and risk to the United States, or do they ensnare the U.S. in wars it need not fight? The debate is a key one: if alliances entangle, it would seem prudent for American leaders to heed the advice of President Thomas Jefferson, who prescribed “peace, commerce, and…
Article Review 51 on “The Korea Syndrome: An Examination of War-Weariness Theory.” Journal of Cold War Studies 17:3
For many, the U.S. experience in Iraq casts a large shadow over the current American willingness to utilize military force. This ‘Iraq-syndrome’ is a part of the broader war-weariness theoretical claim that following major conflicts – and particularly inconclusive or controversial ones – the public and policymakers will be hesitant to fight. If there were…
Article Review 50 on “Alliance Coercion and Nuclear Restraint: How the United States Thwarted West Germany’s Nuclear Ambitions.” International Security 39:3
In “Alliance Coercion and Nuclear Restraint,” Gene Gerzhoy offers a novel theory of how alliances can prevent nuclear proliferation. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, which holds that alliances prevent proliferation by reassuring the client state and providing a substitute for an indigenous arsenal, Gerzhoy argues that clients in threatening security environments will nonetheless be interested…
Forum 13 on “Why Isn’t There More Scholarly Evaluation of U.S. Wars?”
Our panel at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in San Francisco in 2015 was organized around the question “Why isn’t there more scholarly evaluation of war?” I’m grateful to the editors at H-Diplo for their interest in this topic, and for the invitation to continue our discussion online.
Roundtable 8-11 on Economic Interdependence and War
Dale Copeland’s Economic Interdependence and War is an ambitious book that should receive close attention from both international-relations theorists and diplomatic historians. The author’s main objective is to offer an alternative explanation of the relationship between commerce and international conflict, one that challenges both liberal and realist theories. In his view, liberals are correct to…
Article Review 49 on “Flirting with Fascism: The 1934 Report of General Renondeau.” Intelligence and National Security 30:4
This article is based on a report written by General Gaston Renondeau, who served as military attaché to the French embassy in Berlin, to the French Government and to the 2e Bureau de l’État-Major de l’Armée (EMA, the French external military intelligence agency) on 13 November 1934. Thanks to a thorough analysis of the political…