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…
Roundtable 8-10 on The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations
Barry Buzan and George Lawson have produced a book of grand scope that examines the multiple ways modernity has influenced the world and our theories about it. What they call the ‘global transformation’ brought about a shift from a polycentric world to a core-periphery order centered on the West. In the process, according to…
Roundtable 8-9 on Armed State Building: Confronting State Failure
In this important study, which should be of interest to both scholars and policymakers, Paul Miller examines the practice of armed state building by both the United States and the United Nations. While acknowledging that there are some characteristics of armed state building by liberal powers that are similar to the theory and practice of…
Article Review 48 on “The Making of a Non-Aligned Power: India’s Proliferation Drift 1964-8.”
In the aftermath of India’s five nuclear tests in May 1998, one analyst suggested that the motivations underlying its quest for nuclear weapons could be traced to ideas of national modernity and the lack of suitable scrutiny of a secretive scientific enclave. The same assessment argued that explanations that adduced material factors such as extant…
Roundtable 8-8 on Rivalry and Alliance Politics in Cold War Latin America
Transitions from rivalry to alliance within bilateral relationships have received considerable attention from historians of U.S. foreign relations. Or, more accurately, some alliances have received considerable attention; it remains unusual for works on inter-American relations to be cast principally as examinations of alliance politics. There are at least two interrelated reasons. First, the vast…
Article Review 47 on “Soldiers, Civilians, and Multilateral Humanitarian Intervention.”
Four years after the United States’ invasion of Iraq, former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott wrote that one word summed up the U.S. failure in Iraq: “unilateralism.”[1] Scholars have largely agreed with this reading of international cooperation—or lack thereof—in the run-up to the war. As Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth note, such unanimity is…
Forum 12 on “Special Issue: Traditions of British International Thought”
Over the last twenty years, interest in past thinkers and theories has grown, and the history of international thought has emerged to stand alongside the history of political thought. A series of studies of canonical thinkers,[2] schools of thought,[3] and key periods have appeared,[4] advancing our knowledge of past international thought. At the same time,…
Welcome Frank Gavin
The H-Diplo/ISSF Editors are delighted to welcome Francis J. Gavin, Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy Studies at MIT, as managing editor of International Security Studies Forum (ISSF). Members of the larger H-Diplo community will, of course, be familiar with Frank and his distinguished work, as well as his ability to bridge the disciplines…