Experts play pervasive and multifarious roles in shaping the international order. A sophisticated body of literature within international relations explores how experts shape governmental and international policy—including their work in framing problems, gathering and interpreting ambiguous evidence, and proposing policy solutions.[1] Separately, scholars whose work is informed by the field of science and technology studies…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-36 on Higuchi, Political Fallout
Toshihiro Higuchi’s Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis has already been the subject of an H-Environment Roundtable Review (Vol. 11, no. 5, 2021). It is a testament to the interdisciplinary character of Higuchi’s book that it is now the subject of an H-Diplo Roundtable Review. The Partial Test…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-35 on Gibbons, The Hegemon’s Tool Kit
The nuclear nonproliferation regime (NPR) is widely seen as the most powerful international organization in the world. Composed of many international agencies, think tanks, government departments, and academic institutes, and funded by major donor groups and the governments of many of the world’s most powerful countries (above all, the US), its influence and sheer institutional…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable on Murray, The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations
Rising great powers want others to recognize their greatness. They don’t always get what they want. Leading states sometimes welcome their arrival in a very elite club, satisfying their desire for status on the world stage. At other times, however, the status quo powers are unwilling to offer recognition. Much rests on such decisions, as…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-33 on Jackson, A Lost Peace
On 7 October 2023, militants led by Harakat al-muqawama al-Islamiyya (Hamas) broke through the blockade that Israel and Egypt had imposed on the Gaza strip since 2007. They killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel and seized more than two hundred hostages. In response, Israel bombarded and invaded Gaza, displacing more than a million Palestinian…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-32 on Matsuda, Voluntary Submission
Takeshi Matsuda opens his study of postwar Japanese-American relations, Voluntary Subordination, by reproducing the title of Charles Beard’s presidential address to the American Historical Association in 1934: “Written History as an Act of Faith.”[1] It is an intriguing beginning point, not least because of the timing of Beard’s assertion, and its implications. When he spoke…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Review Essay 94: d’Ambruoso on Mandelbaum, The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy
How has the United States’ foreign policy changed over time? After all, the country itself has changed dramatically in its more than two-and-a-half centuries of existence, especially in terms of its power vis-à-vis other countries. Living through the past several decades of mostly uncontested American hegemony, one can forget just how weak the United States…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-31 on Larsen, >Plotting for Peace
The 2022 release of the German film “All Quiet on the Western Front” can only lead one to again raise the salient question of whether there was a time in the history of World War I when the carnage could have been stopped. Two works have recently addressed this topic. One is Philip Zelikow’s The…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Conference Report on “The Failure of the Post-Cold War Global Order?”
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum Conference Report on “The Failure of the Post-Cold War Global Order?” 31 May–3 June 2023, in Mainz Organizers: Andreas Rödder, chair for Modern and Contemporary History at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Helmut Schmidt Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Review Essay 93: Daniels on Meijer, Awakening to China’s Rise
On both sides of the Atlantic it has become fashionable to criticize the China policies of the West over the last few decades as having been “naïve.”[1] Confronted with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s self-confident, often abrasive and confrontational style of foreign policy, the West’s hopes of “Wandel durch Handel” (change through trade)—one of the main…