Alex Wellerstein’s Restricted Data is an extensive and impressive study of the organisational production of nuclear secrecy in the United States. The overarching rationale of Restricted Data is to trace the development of the political, social, and organisational mechanisms which limited the spread of the scientific and technical knowledge of the nuclear technology. The aim…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Essay 531: Alison R. Holmes on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
You could say I carry a genetic predilection for the living and teaching of international affairs as I am essentially the product of fin de siècle globalization. With grandparents and parents who lived the turmoil of war and chaos at the turn of the twentieth century and having seen for myself a world in crisis…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Review Essay 81: Schepers on Hecker, Hinge Points
Hinge Points is a narrative of missed diplomatic opportunities to constrain North Korea’s nuclear weapons program over the last seventeen years. Its author, Siegfried Hecker, is a nuclear scientist, professor at Stanford University, and former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Together with his former research assistant at Stanford University, Elliot Serbin, he describes six…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Commentary: “From Disengagement to Unprecedented Engagement: the US, the War in Gaza and the New World Order”
Is it just a coincidence that at the same time as President Joe Biden’s wartime visit to Israel, the Chinese and Russian leaders met in Beijing in the framework of the Belt and Road Conference? While the timing might be a coincidence, the contrast between the two events indicates some of the links between the…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-10 on Chan, Rumbles of Thunder
With the recent return of great-power politics, we are also seeing a resurrection of power transition, a realist theory in international relations.[1] Positing an inevitable war between the reigning power and the contending state, power transition seems well suited to explain the unrelenting competition between the United States and China in the last few years….
H-Diplo|RJISSF Review Essay 80: Rindzevičiūtė on Krige, ed., Knowledge Flows in a Global Age
In the context of the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine and the growing tensions with China, the question of transnational scientific cooperation has returned to the center of the debates about the future of East-West diplomacy and international relations. The last year saw many panels organised in prominent forums, where academics, experts, and diplomats explored…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-9 on Colbourn, Euromissiles
Given the uncertain fate of arms control today, and growing concerns about the ability of the United States to deter potentially two-peer nuclear weapons states, Susan Colbourn’s book on the Euromissile debate, deployment, and elimination is important, essential, and timely. Stephan Kieninger calls it “an outstanding achievement.” James Cameron agrees it is “an outstanding book…it…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Commentary II-1: “Massacre in Israel: A Transformational Moment, or More of the Same?”
H-Diplo|RJISSF Commentary Editor: Diane Labrosse | Production Editor: Christopher Ball 15 October 2023 | Vol. II: No. 1 “Massacre in Israel: A Transformational Moment, or More of the Same?” https://hdiplo.org/to/CII-1 Essay by James R. Stocker, Trinity Washington University On 7 October 2023, the Palestinian militant group Hamas shocked the world by launching attacks by land,…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-8 on Bell, Nuclear Reactions
In Nuclear Reactions: How Nuclear-Armed States Behave, Mark S. Bell offers an elegant and compelling theory that explains the foreign policy of states that have acquired nuclear weapons. His argument has rightly earned him the acclaim of scholars like Charles Glaser and Scott Sagan[1]. Bell terms his theory as “nuclear opportunism.” He argues countries use…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Essay 528: Threlkeld on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
Given the trajectory of my scholarship over the last fifteen years, this seems funny to admit, but when I started graduate school, I did not know that US foreign relations history was a thing. I enrolled at the University of Iowa in 2000 to study US women’s history with Linda Kerber. I had graduated the…