I get emails. Sometimes they find me well; sometimes they try to convince me that I need to bring artificial intelligence (“AI”) into the classroom. “AI is going to revolutionize higher education!”…| The Duck of Minerva
Drew Hogan answers 6+1 questions about how the United States does, and does not, support its overseas citizens.| The Duck of Minerva
The foreign policy world is still making sense of the Trump Administration’s massive cuts to the US State Department last week. Under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, nearly 1500 employeesR…| The Duck of Minerva
By now it’s clear that the attack on a Buffalo, NY supermarket was a case of right-wing terrorism. An individual targeted the store because many of its customers were black, and hoped to use the at…| The Duck of Minerva
Kenneth Waltz famously claimed that anarchy—i.e., the absence of a global sovereign—is the ordering principle of world politics, and much International Relations (IR) scholarship since then has aimed to debunk the claim that anarchy defines IR as a subject. Today, some aim to do so by offering new conceptual foundations for IR. This post is […]| The Duck of Minerva
Over two decades have passed since the horrifying 9/11 attacks. Do we have a consensus understanding of the radicalization process in communities that supported or filled the ranks of jihadist grou…| The Duck of Minerva
I dislike the term “soft power.” We owe the term to the late, great Joseph Nye. He popularized it in his 1990 book, Bound to Lead. Nye’s book was, first and foremost, an intervention in the “declinism” debates of the later 1980s. Japan was at the peak of its influence; some projected that its economy […]| The Duck of Minerva
Dominant theories of international political economy leave little room for the influence of individuals. They also never anticipated that the United States might seek to completely upend the global economic order.| The Duck of Minerva
I’ve had four potential posts on Israel, anti-Israel actions and antisemitism this week. As new events occur, the old post falls to the wayside. I was stuck on whether I should pick one, or t…| The Duck of Minerva
Renowned international relations scholar and practitioner Joseph S. Nye passed away last week. Numerous tributes have been written, noting his high quality scholarship and influence on US foreign p…| The Duck of Minerva
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in” is something I would say at the risk of alienating the younger readership of this blog, but given that most of us are old here, it should be fine. I have been busy working on Russian Neo-Nazis, so I almost forgot that back […]| The Duck of Minerva
Charles A. Dainoff, Robert M. Farley, and Geoffrey F. Williams answer questions about their new book| The Duck of Minerva
On Easter Monday, Pope Francis died at the age of 88. His passing marked the end of a 12-year papacy characterized by a commitment to the poor, an insistence on peace over posturing, and an often-c…| The Duck of Minerva
I was born a proud Protestant. A Lutheran in a town still marked by Catholic-Protestant tensions, with Catholic friends who told me I don’t worship right, neighbors who claimed Catholics were polytheists, and a grandmother who wore orange on St. Patrick’s Day (I never quite got that, as we had no connection to Ireland). But […]| The Duck of Minerva
It’s hard to keep track of the problems confronting Americans these days. But, just in case a reminder is needed, climate change is still a thing. Casual observers may have noted that US climate policy has been…underwhelming, see-sawing between ‘Build Back Better’ aspirations and climate denialism. Now climate policy wunderkind Varun Sivaram has called for a rethink […]| The Duck of Minerva
This a crosspost from Saideman’s Semi-Spew. This week, we found out that Brandon Valeriano died. It is quite gutting as he had such a terrific spirit, and he was too damned young. Brandon stood out from the crowd at all the conferences as he was literally bigger than most of us, and he was also one of […]| The Duck of Minerva
Donald Trump’s second term in office is causing great concern about the future of the Liberal International Order (ILO) in Western capitals and headquarters of international organizations (IOs). Over the course of the last months, Trump fundamentally attacked international institutions such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Paris Agreement, and the World Trade […]| The Duck of Minerva
With the news avalanche that is Trump, it’s hard to keep track of all the outrageous things he says and does. With his recent very vocal attempts at land grabs (that we are not entirely sure will stay rhetorical) that are already being normalized in both right-wing and mainstream media, it’s important to look back […]| The Duck of Minerva
I published an article yesterday in Real Clear Defense. The title is “The Road to Securing European Cooperation on China Runs Through Ukraine”, but I suppose I could have called this piece, “How t…| The Duck of Minerva
The buzzword of the first Trump administration was “Great Power Competition.” That was also a lie.| The Duck of Minerva
Can human-rights organizations avoid accusations of racism when they criticize certain governments? Can they avoid fueling racism? Zoltán I. Búzás and Lotem Bassan-Nygate test the effectiveness of …| The Duck of Minerva
The counterfactual analysis used in debates about NATO expansion is far too limited. It makes the untenable assumption that the world would like mostly the same. This piece offers an alternative.| The Duck of Minerva
US President Jimmy Carter’s funeral is being held today in Washington, DC at the National Cathedral. Since he passed away shortly after Christmas, tributes have abounded about a man once deri…| The Duck of Minerva
As someone who studies terrorism and religion, I approach each Christmas with dread due to the possibility of terrorist attacks around the holiday. A string of bombings hit churches in Indonesia an…| The Duck of Minerva
Like many who follow the Middle East, a lot has been going through my head since the civil war there suddenly reignited and Bashar al-Assad’s regime even more suddenly fell. Will the victims …| The Duck of Minerva
On October 23rd, militants attacked a Turkish aerospace facility near the capital of Ankara. The Turkish government blamed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)–a Kurdish insurgent group&#…| The Duck of Minerva
America is reeling from the horrific attack on a synagogue in Pennsylvania, in which an anti-Semitic man killed 11 people. And we were already reeling from a series of attempted mail bomb attacks b…| The Duck of Minerva
“A specter is haunting strategic studies—the specter of peace.” These bizarre words are from Richard Betts, who provocatively presented peace itself as a problem in a largely forgotten article…| The Duck of Minerva
The implications of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump over the weekend remain unclear. Will it lead him to strike a more conciliatory tone during the upcoming Republican National Conventi…| The Duck of Minerva
