Category

The Journal

Carrots Sans Sticks? No Bite

It has become fashionable to call for diplomacy separate from military action. During the 2020 Democratic primaries a number of candidates overwhelmingly endorsed “diplomacy” as an alternative to force. Candidate Donald Trump, too, called for restraint in use of force and expressed a preference for “negotiation,” bragging about his deal making skills and claiming that...

Compared to What? A New Strategic Rorschach

There is a reason that Alexander Hamilton was known for both economic and foreign policy; the two are connected by a common question: Compared to what? Thomas Sowell has popularized thinking of “compared to what?” as the fundamental economic Rorschach because it prompts people to think about trade-offs.  All too often in economic policy discussions,...

The New (Domestic) Voice of America

The prospect of returning to a prolonged period of successful American leadership in the world remains uncertain—regardless of the fact that America can correctly be considered “back” to playing its historical role. Long-overdue arguments are rightfully being debated within the foreign policy community about how to reframe what an active and engaged U.S. foreign policy...

The Nuclear Bubble: Rethinking Deterrence

Review of The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution: Power Politics in the Atomic Age by Keir Lieber and Daryl Press (Cornell University Press, 2020) The defining characteristics of the nuclear age are terror and peace.” [1] For Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, international relations scholars at Georgetown and Dartmouth, respectively, this is the defining paradox...

The Nehru of the Arab Spring

Review of Revolutionary Constitutions: Charismatic Leadership and the Rule of Law by Bruce Ackerman (Harvard, 2019). Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now. That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often...

Much Ado (and to Do) About Illiberalism

America  has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.” This Henry Kissinger quote is a perennial favorite of American realists, informing decades of American grand strategy. In recent years, from threatening to withdraw from NATO to praising Kim Jung-Un in search of a blockbuster nuclear deal, the Trump Administration ruthlessly implemented this adage, with the...

Fuel, Fire, Basic R&D

Two decades into the twenty-first century, the U.S. national security agenda is once again dominated by great power competition, as rivals are “contesting our geopolitical advantages and trying to change the international order in their favor.” [1] In a sharper key, this registers as alarm bells. Repeated, recent war games evidence real possibilities, if not...

Great Power & ‘The Manpower Thing’

Review of One Billion Americans by Matthew Yglesias (Penguin, 2020). In 1776, the burning policy question of the hour was what to do about slaves. Would freeing them lead to economic growth, or hinder it? In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith took the affirmative, writing that “The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it...

Chinese-Athenian Coincraft

As John Adams is purported to have said, the methods for conquering nations take two forms: debt and sword. [1] Though Adams said this in 1826, ancient Athenian foreign policy exemplified rule by the sword millennia earlier – as noted in Thucydides’s The History of the Peloponnesian War. By coming to the aid of distant...

(Enlightened) Self-Interested Idealism

Review of Shields of the Republic: The Triumph and Peril of America’s Alliances by Mira Rapp-Hooper (Harvard, 2020). So often do critics pillory this country’s alliance system. And so often do their advocates fail to mount a compelling defense. Mira Rapp-Hooper takes up the challenge and does it with aplomb in Shields of the Republic (Harvard...
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