By Michele Acuto
International theorists and commentators nowadays are quite accustomed to, as Charles Tilly put it in a landmark text for political science, “big structures, large processes, huge comparisons.”1 Yet attention to the inherent complexity of these large phenomena is often lacking in this “big picture” mentality.
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By Michael Morrison
As the Chinese Communist Party prepares for a major leadership transition, China’s foreign policy think tanks are poised to contribute to the conceptualization and propagation of major foreign policy initiatives. This article examines the degree to which Party and State leaders look to think tanks for analysis, and how think tanks can be used as a window into Chinese decision-making.
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By Stephen M. Walt
Most social scientists would like to think that their work helps solve important problems. For scholars of international relations, there is certainly no shortage of issues to address: ethnic and religious conflict, managing a fragile world economy, global terrorism, climate change, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the Euro crisis, etc.—the list is endless.
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By Bernard Yudkin Geoxavier
China will likely take a conservative and self-interested approach toward the UN Security Council and future humanitarian interventions, and will thus address international and regional crises through a pragmatic case-by-case strategy. Yet within this case-by-case strategy, while China’s actions may vary, its rationale does not.
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By Paul Carroll
North Korea poses serious international security risks that have increased since it demonstrated a nuclear weapons capacity in 2006. Nations like China and South Korea have clear interests and vulnerabilities vis-à-vis North Korea, as does the United States; these relationships are based on historical and geopolitical factors that will endure.
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By Patrick Mendis
A series of Chinese-built ports and airfields across the Indian Ocean comprises a grand “string of pearls” strategy within which Sri Lanka has become a crown jewel. The new forces of global power are geoeconomic, in which every capital in the world—from Washington, Beijing, London, and New Delhi to Karachi, Tehran, and Tokyo—seeks out Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, as part of the twenty-first century’s latest “Great Game.”
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By John Teton
The long-recognized human right of freedom from hunger remains unrealized because traditional remedies for addressing it continue to prove inadequate. Nonetheless, the goals of ending starvation and malnutrition worldwide can be achieved through a global commitment to the International Food Security Treaty, which will place that right under the protection of enforceable national and international laws, and catalyze the development of systems necessary to effect those goals.
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An Interview with David S. Cohen on the Treasury’s role in addressing terrorist threats, terrorism financing, and the efficacy of sanctions.
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An Interview with Alexander Evans on his career as an academic and diplomat, as well as policy-making and diplomacy in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India.
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By Francis J. Gavin
International relations scholars and foreign policy makers often look at each other’s profession the way a bored spouse might gaze upon a forbidden but tempting lover. To the policy maker, the impenetrable walls of the Ivory Tower seem mysterious and exotic, a place of deep reflection and refined dialogue where they can escape the vicious and politicized battles that often dominate government life.
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By Robert Jervis
I have been interested in politics, especially international politics, for as long as I can remember. The times in which I grew up and my personal surroundings were permeated by politics.
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By John M. Owen IV
Insofar as I remember my own thinking before I was trained in political science, my natural inclination concerning political life was toward idealism. I tended to believe that ideas—especially political ideas or ideologies—were where the action was, and I assumed that ideologies motivated people more than material interests did.
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By Marc Trachtenberg
I started college at Berkeley in 1962 and by the end of my first year there I pretty much knew that I wanted to become an historian, and that in particular I wanted to study the history of international politics. There were times when I was not sure I would actually be able to spend my life in this field, but I did ultimately manage to get a good job and it still strikes me as a little amazing that society was willing to pay me, quite generously in fact, for doing something I really wanted to do.
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