Richard English’s concise, compelling book offers a nuanced response to the titular question and a nice follow-up to his previous work on the efficacy of terrorism.[2] The book intervenes in the broader scholarship on modern terrorism by offering a comparative framework for thinking about what counter-terrorism success looks like and how best to achieve it,…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Tribute to the Scholarship and Legacy of Bear Braumoeller
Bear Braumoeller died in May 2023 while on a yearlong sabbatical at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway. His sudden death surprised and shocked each of us, and it left professional and personal holes at Ohio State University and across our fields of study. We remember Bear as an eminent scholar whose work was recognized…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-54 on Inboden, The Peacemaker
William Inboden’s The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink is an ambitious book that covers the entirety of the Reagan administration’s foreign policy. Inboden is a distinguished scholar and tireless mentor who served in high-level positions in the Department of State and National Security Council staff, where he observed…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-53 on Hymans, “The Bomb as God”
In a recent book, Vipin Narang listed twenty-nine states that had taken steps to acquire nuclear-weapon capabilities at one time or another.[1] Among them, nine completed the task by establishing extensive productive capacities, deploying nuclear forces, and engaging openly in nuclear deterrence and power plays. The other twenty had gone a distance, in some cases…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Ronudtable 15-52 on Carnegie and Carson, Secrets in Global Governance
What is the role of secrecy in international relations? Does secrecy promote or stymie cooperation among countries? And what role do international organizations (IOs) play in this context? Secrets in Global Governance: Disclosure Dilemmas and the Challenge of International Cooperation by Allison Carnegie and Austin Carson takes on these questions, which are critical for both…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Article Review 171: Rittinger on Metz, “The Cult of the Persuasive”
Rachel Tecott Metz offers an invaluable contribution to a growing literature on US security assistance with this well-argued, well-structured article. Metz sets out to answer a question that is as policy relevant as it is theoretically rich: why do the foreign militaries trained and equipped by the US perform poorly on the battlefield? Why, for…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Review Essay 104: Wellerstein on Wirtz & Larsen, eds., Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications
Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3) is a mouthful of military jargon. In this edited volume, which is presented as an “unclassified primer on America’s NC3 system and the way forward to a modernized, twenty-first-century backbone of deterrence,” one finds a bewildering number of attempts at defining what exactly NC3 is, and what it is…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-51 on Haglund, Sister Republics: Security Relations between America and France
It is a great pleasure for me to introduce David Haglund’s Sister Republics: Security Relations between America and France. As a citizen of both nations, and one who has done some research on the question, I find the topic fascinating. The book covers a large expanse of time, considering the evolution of the subject since…
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 Roundtable 15-50 on Macrakis, Nothing is Beyond Our Reach
This is, admittedly, a difficult introduction to write. It is difficult not only because Kristie Macrakis’s final work, Nothing is Beyond Our Reach: America’s Techno-Spy Empire elicited complicated responses from the reviewers in this roundtable. No, this introduction is particularly difficult because I find myself unable to divorce from the discussion my own personal experiences…