Subversion is a “menace that spreads in the shadows…it secretly infiltrates and adversary’s society and institutions, manipulating, weakening, and disintegrating them from within” (2). Lennart Maschmeyer’s new book provides a theory of how subversion works, what its limitations are, and how it changes with technology. Maschmeyer frames subversion as an instrument of power that is…
Tag: Ukraine
H-Diplo | RJISSF Review Essay 120: Parker on Ryan, The War for Ukraine
Mick Ryan, a retired major general in the Australian Army, has written an excellent book on the Ukraine war and its implication for future warfare.[1] The first part of The War for Ukraine: Strategy and Adaptation Under Fire focuses on 2022, when the Russian Army failed to take Kiev and retreated from the Kharkov area….
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-29 on Budjeryn, Inheriting the Bomb
By discussing the history of the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine, Mariana Budjeryn’s book offers a significant contribution to the literature on Russia’s war on Ukraine. The author elegantly discusses Russia’s ambition to become the only nuclear successor state to the Soviet Union and how this goal led to the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Additionally,…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Commentary III-1: Did Boris Johnson Prevent an Early End to the War in Ukraine?
Winston Churchill was his hero and becoming British prime minister himself was Boris Johnson’s ultimate dream.[1] Yet once he became prime minister in July 2019, Johnson’s performance was rather disappointing. Relations with the European Union (EU) over Brexit became ever more poisonous and Johnson’s performance during the COVID-19 pandemic was highly inept, eventually leading to…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Commentary II-7 on the UK’s Response to Russia’s War against Ukraine
February 24th 2022 marks the beginning of a new dark era in European and international security. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is the latest manifestation of Russia as a threat to both international security and the liberal word order that began with the Russian-Georgian war in August 2008 and continued with Russia’s annexation of Crimea…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Commentary II-6 on Belarus in the UK’s Policy on the War in Ukraine
Although the political crisis in Belarus dominated global media headlines for much of 2020 and continued to attract international attention intermittently in 2021, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has pushed Belarus further down the priority list of Western policymakers, including those in the United Kingdom. Certainly, Belarus’ authoritarian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko has been condemned as…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Conference Report on “The Failure of the Post-Cold War Global Order?”
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum Conference Report on “The Failure of the Post-Cold War Global Order?” 31 May–3 June 2023, in Mainz Organizers: Andreas Rödder, chair for Modern and Contemporary History at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Helmut Schmidt Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Policy Roundtable III-3: Ukraine and Nuclear Weapons
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and Ukraine’s remarkable resistance to Russian aggression have triggered reams of analysis.[1] Perhaps no aspect of the war in Ukraine has sparked more discussion—particularly among American observers and analysts—than the nuclear dimension of the conflict and the extent to which Russian and American nuclear weapons are affecting…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Policy Roundtable II-5: The Psychology of Nuclear Brinkmanship
At the tail end of the Cold War, the journal International Security published a brilliant article by historian Marc Trachtenberg demolishing the widely held “idea that the First World War came about because statesmen were overwhelmed by military imperatives and thus ‘lost control’ of the situation.”[1] Quite to the contrary, he wrote, “The most remarkable…
Roundtable 9-12 on Return to Cold War
As President Donald Trump’s administration begins, relations between the United States and Russia make the headlines almost every day. No one seems able to agree on what Russian President Vladimir Putin did or did not do to try to influence the 2016 U.S. elections, much less on what his ultimate aims are. Trump’s own cabinet…