Power Problems

Renanah Joyce, Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, and Brian Blankenship, Assistant Professor at the University of Miami, explain how great power competition for foreign military bases in third-party host countries increases the costs of securing access. They discuss the strategy behind US forward basing over time, expansion into Africa in recent years, different ways of providing compen...

Charles Glaser, senior fellow at MIT’s Security Studies program and professor emeritus at George Washington University, discusses the dynamics of the security dilemma and international order. He explores how the security dilemma concept provides insights into America’s rivalry with its two great power rivals, Russia and China, and discusses U.S. policy with respect to the war in Ukraine, the dispu...

Benjamin Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities, argues that the United States should immediately begin withdrawing military forces from Europe to set the stage for European defense autonomy. He discusses the history of NATO, how it’s strategic purposes have evolved over time, what NATO costs America, defensibility problems with some Eastern European members, institutional inertia, differ...

Emma Ashford, senior fellow at the Stimson Center, discusses recent escalations in the Ukraine war, the costs to the United States and European partners of supporting Kyiv, the effect of the conflict on Russia’s economy, the problems with Biden’s strategy, why it’s unlikely Ukraine can achieve total victory, the timing of ceasefire diplomacy and peace talks, how early negotiations proved the signi...

Rachel Metz, assistant professor of political science at George Washington University, explains why security assistance, one of the most ubiquitous programs in U.S. foreign policy, so often fails. She argues that bureaucratic interests, organizational processes, and perverse dynamics of civil-military relations discourage conditioning U.S. support for partner militaries. She also discusses the rol...

Jonathan Kirshner, professor of political science and international studies at Boston College, discusses his most recent book, An Unwritten Future: Realism and Uncertainty in World Politics . Kirshner provides fundamental critiques of structural realism and offensive realism and argues for classical realism’s greater explanatory power and firmer theoretical underpinnings. He also covers rationalis...

Mark Hannah, senior fellow at the Institute for Global Affairs, the nonprofit housed at the Eurasia Group, and host of the None of the Above podcast, argues that President Biden has not used the leverage US support provides over Israel in its war in Gaza and Ukraine in its war with Russia, prolonging the conflicts instead of imposing real conditions and pressing for negotiated resolutions. He disc...

David Sterman, senior policy analyst at New America’s Future Security Program, tracks U.S. counter-terrorism airstrikes, particularly with drones. He discusses the history of drone strikes in post-9/11 U.S. counter-terrorism policy from Bush to Biden, the issue of civilian casualties, Biden’s quiet use of drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia, the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the...

James Bosworth, founder of Hxagon and columnist at World Politics Review , discusses the various "push factors" throughout Latin America and the Caribbean driving the recent upsurge in migration to the US-Mexico border. He covers US-Mexico relations as well as gang violence, poor governance problems, and other instability in Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, and beyond. Bosworth also discusses the...

Jon Hoffman, foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute and adjunct professor at George Mason University, argues for a fundamental reevaluation of the U.S.'s "special relationship" with Israel. He discusses the dire scale of Israel's siege of Gaza and why it qualifies as collective punishment, Israel's lack of clear military objectives in Gaza and plans to attack Rafah, and the widespread region...

Dale Copeland, professor of international relations at the University of Virginia and author of the new book  A World Safe for Commerce: American Foreign Policy From the Revolution to the Rise of China , talks about his "dynamic realism" theory of great power war and peace, emphasizing the critical causal role of future trade expectations. Copeland discusses case studies from the American Rev...

Stephen Wertheim, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, discusses the lack of strategic focus in the Biden administration's foreign policy and argues that genuine prioritization requires retrenchment. The U.S. should draw down from Europe and the Middle East, he argues, and step away from formal security commitments there in order to avoid getting entangled in conflicts...

Paul Poast, associate professor of political science at University of Chicago, discusses the concept of hegemony in international relations and puts forth several models to explain a state's willingness to take on the global responsibilities of a hegemon. He also explains hegemonic stability theory, analyzes the Biden administration's democracy vs autocracy rhetoric, and suggests the United States...

Elite politics shape and constrain democratic leaders in decisions about the use of force and tend to induce a hawkish bias into war-time foreign policy. So says Columbia University professor Elizabeth N. Saunders in her forthcoming book  The Insider's Game: How Elites Make War and Peace.  She explores how elite politics influenced presidential decisions in U.S. wars including Korea, Vie...

Robert Manning, distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center, discusses the increasing instability in the Middle East stemming from the ongoing Israel-Gaza war, Russia's war in Ukraine and the implications for the US role in the world, and rising US-China tensions over Taiwan. He also talks about the risks of emerging economic nationalism, middle powers, the US addiction to primacy and American exce...

William Hartung of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft explains the problem of retired military brass working for the arms industry and how this revolving door tends to militarize U.S. foreign policy. He also discusses China's military buildup and why it shouldn't automatically translate to bigger U.S. defense budgets. Other topics include the military industrial complex, Eisenhower's...

Renewed conflict in the Middle East increases the costs and risks of America's entanglement in the region, and despite the strategic case for retrenchment, there is no sign of a substantial change to U.S. foreign policy there. Jennifer Kavanagh of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace discusses America's costly, security-first approach to the Middle East, the Biden administration's suppor...

Weaponizing global supply chains is self-defeating and alters supply chain networks in ways that accelerate, rather than slow China’s rise. University of Connecticut assistant professor Miles Evers discusses how business-state relationships affect international relations. He also describes how economic coercion drives away potential allies and business, which allows China to innovate and increase...

Common but unsound conceptions of credibility and reputation in international politics have persistently promoted unnecessary militarism and prevented the United States from shedding even unnecessary security commitments abroad. Boston College assistant professor Joshua Byun explains the concepts of reputation and credibility in international politics and uses survey data to undermine the conventi...

Christopher Chivvis, director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, discusses the work of renowned realist thinker Reinhold Niebuhr. He explores Niebuhr’s views on war, politics, and American Exceptionalism, and argues that Niebuhr's restraint-oriented ideas are just what is needed in contemporary debates about U.S. foreign and national security poli...

Justin Logan, Cato’s director of defense and foreign policy studies, and Jon Hoffman, a foreign policy analyst at Cato, discuss the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas and the imperative of avoiding further U.S. entanglement in the Middle East. They talk about the deep problems with the Abraham Accords, Biden's misguided bid for a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal, how client states emplo...

The U.S.'s frequent use of force abroad erodes the international order's most fundamental principles of sovereignty and non-intervention. Yale Law School professor Oona Hathaway discusses the erosion of domestic constraints on presidential war powers and the increasing official resort to untenable self-defense doctrines to justify its military actions under international law. She also explain...

Rose McDermott, Professor of International Relations at Brown University, argues that dominant theories of nuclear brinkmanship lack a nuanced understanding of the crucial factor of human psychology. She discusses the psychology of political leaders, the rational actor model, Thomas Schelling's notion of "threats that leave something to chance," the psychology of revenge, the coercive ut...

Many countries in the Global South would like a more advantageous position in the international order. Sarang Shidore, director of Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft’s Global South Program, discusses why these countries are dissatisfied, what changes they would like to see, and how Washington can respond. He also discusses China strategy in light of the Global South and the role of BRICS...

Texas A&M associate professor John Schuessler discusses the different ideological pathways to a grand strategy of restraint. He examines realist, conservative, and progressive restrainers and speculates that the rise of great power competition will be a stress test for the survival of this coalition on foreign policy. He also discusses the foreign policy changes in the GOP and restraint differ...