In “The Spread of Military Innovations,” Andrea Gilli and Mauro Gilli question the importance of organizational factors in explaining whether violent non-state actors decide to use suicide bombing. Instead, they argue that the strategic environment faced by groups generates tactical incentives that better explain who adopts suicide bombing. While they are right to point out…
Article Review 29 on “Still notable: Reassessing theoretical ‘exceptions’ in Canadian foreign policy literature”
I was surprised to be asked to write a review article of “Still notable: Reassessing theoretical ‘exceptions’ in Canadian foreign policy literature” by David R. Black and Heather A. Smith. This article that introduces the 2014 annual John W. Holmes issue of the leading Canadian journal International Journal is itself a review article on the…
Roundtable 7-9, The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World
In Charles Tilly’s oft-cited formulation, “War made the state, and the state made war.”[1] In other words, the relationship between insecurity and state capacity is a direct one. As was the case in Europe, the need to fight wars caused states to develop economically and build strong state capacity, which led to the modern state….
Roundtable 7-9, The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World
In Charles Tilly’s oft-cited formulation, “War made the state, and the state made war.”[1] In other words, the relationship between insecurity and state capacity is a direct one. As was the case in Europe, the need to fight wars caused states to develop economically and build strong state capacity, which led to the modern state….
Roundtable 7-8, Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan
In Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan, Henry Nau has written a book that will undoubtedly provoke impassioned debate among political scientists and historians. Despite all that has been written about the grand traditions of American foreign relations, Nau argues that scholars have thus far failed to acknowledge the distinctive tradition…
Review Essay 25 on Logics of War: Explanations for Limited and Unlimited Conflicts
The book produced by Alex Weisiger is a substantial contribution to rationalist theory in international relations. Weisiger investigates the effects of commitment problems in international bargaining on the conduct, duration, and destructiveness of wars. The book is among only a few works that closely analyze international history from the perspective of recent developments in the…
Roundtable 7-7, The Triumph of Improvisation: Gorbachev’s Adaptability, Reagan’s Engagement, and the End of the Cold War
Debates over the origins of the Cold War have long been a staple of graduate and undergraduate courses on historiography. Tracing the shifting interpretations of such an important era demonstrates how the writing of history influences and is influenced by the periods in which the history is written. The result has been a familiar tripartite…
Roundtable 7-6, American Allies in Time of War: The Great Asymmetry
The defining characteristic of modern international politics is unipolarity. Never before has one state achieved such a remarkable lead in economic capacity and military capability. American power today is unrivalled and durable, even after the economic crisis of the last decade. It will be a very long time before another state qualifies as a peer…
Roundtable 7-5, External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation: China, Indonesia and Thailand, 1893-1952
The modern state is the most fundamental unit of international politics but the literature on comparative state formation has relatively recent origins.[1] This literature builds on Western European cases and has slowly expanded its comparative scope to cover Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Scholars have debated the role of various factors such as war, religion,…
Forum 3 on “Audience Costs and the Vietnam War”
H-Diplo/ISSF is honored to publish a very special forum on “Audience Costs and the Vietnam War.” The foundation for the forum is two original essays on the topic by Marc Trachtenberg and Bronwyn Lewis. Richard Betts, Robert Jervis, Fredrik Logevall, and John Mearsheimer then offer their own thoughts on both the theoretical and historical issues…