Diane Labrosse’s Post

New H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable on Allison Carnegie and Austin Carson's _Secrets in Global Governance: Disclosure Dilemmas and the Challenge of International Cooperation_. https://lnkd.in/ezjYHhCE Contents Introduction by Matthew Fuhrmann, Texas A&M University Reviews by Natalie Bryce, UCLA, and Leslie Johns, UCLA Melinda Haas, University of Pittsburgh GSPIA Response by Allison Carnegie, Columbia University, and Austin Carson, University of Chicago   From the introduction by Matthew Fuhrmann, Texas A&M University   What is the role of secrecy in international relations? Does secrecy promote or stymie cooperation among countries? And what role do international organizations (IOs) play in this context? _Secrets in Global Governance: Disclosure Dilemmas and the Challenge of International Cooperation_ by Allison Carnegie and Austin Carson takes on these questions, which are critical for both academic research and public policy. It presents a novel argument: international organizations can facilitate cooperation when they are better equipped to keep sensitive information confidential. This challenges the conventional wisdom, popularized by political scientists in the 1980s, that international organizations promote cooperation by sharing information and bolstering transparency. The book develops and tests this argument in several contexts: nuclear proliferation, international trade, war crimes, and foreign direct investment. It deliberately chooses IOs that function in three different areas—security, economics, and humanitarian issues—thereby showing the scope and breadth of the book’s arguments. In this roundtable, both reviews zero in on the book’s central conundrum: when should countries share sensitive information with IOs? Doing so can greatly enhance the efficacy of the IO, providing an incentive to share information freely. However, if the IO is unable to keep shared information confidential, it can also harm a state’s interests by revealing its sources and methods, which is a central challenge in the world of intelligence. Solving this dilemma is crucial for helping IOs function effectively, and Carnegie and Carson convincingly document how this can be done. As Melinda Haas writes, they have produced the “definitive work” for how IOs can use secrecy to enhance compliance....

New review by Eric Rittinger of Rachel Tecott Metz's “The Cult of the Persuasive: Why US Security Assistance Fails.” _International Security_ 47:3 (Winter 2022/23): 95-135. Reviewed by Eric Rittinger, Salisbury University   https://lnkd.in/d3XPyPA9 Rachel Tecott Metz offers an invaluable contribution to a growing literature on US security assistance with this well-argued, well-structured article. Metz sets out to answer a question that is as policy relevant as it is theoretically rich: why do the foreign militaries trained and equipped by the US perform poorly on the battlefield? Why, for instance, did the Afghan National Security Forces crumble before the Taliban in 2021 or the Iraqi Army suffer defeat at the hands of the Islamic State in 2014? It is this latter case that Metz draws on to develop her argument. She argues that US security assistance failed in Iraq (and presumably elsewhere) because it followed the wrong approach. It could have relied on conditionality, “us[ing] carrots and sticks” to push recipient militaries into adopting necessary reforms (102). Instead, US Army advisors relied on persuasion, “no-strings inducements, argumentation, demonstration, and interpersonal relationships” (102), an approach that generally fails at generating influence. Without facing accountability for failing to reform their militaries and insulated by “anticolonialism and sovereignty norms” (110-111), recipients of US security assistance in Iraq were free to misuse it—to their ultimate detriment when confronted by determined Islamic State militants. The crucial insight of this article is why persuasion dominates as the mode of enforcement despite its record. It does so, Metz argues, because it serves the US Army’s bureaucratic interests, particularly its desire to ensure “autonomy against civilian intrusion” (98)....

New Review: Harold James on Mark Thomas Edwards's, _Walter Lippmann: American Skeptic, American Pastor_. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. https://lnkd.in/dbtqJKBg Review by Harold James, Princeton University This stimulating and thought-provoking book appears in a series entitled “Spiritual Lives,” which offers “biographies of prominent men and women whose eminence is not primarily based on a specifically religious contribution.” Walter Lippmann was the great interpreter, analyst, and critic of twentieth century America’s self-understanding. Verbally gifted, he either invented or popularized the key concepts that Americans used to understand the world they were shaping, including globalism, stereotypes, and the Cold War. Mark Thomas Edwards presents a fascinating interpretation of a man whose analyses were constantly changing, yet seemed founded on a moral certainty that Lippmann was always struggling, unsuccessfully in Edwards’ view, to explain. This is not a comprehensive biography—Ronald Steel’s masterful work supplied that quite definitively—but it is an attempt to make sense of an overly fecund and contradictory mind by bringing the discussion back to an analysis that is grounded in a post-religious world. Lippmann’s parents were agnostics from a German-Jewish background, who nevertheless attended synagogue. Lippmann was confirmed rather than bar mitzvah-ed. He rarely talked about his Jewish heritage. He started as a socialist, then became a Wilsonian, and for some time appeared to flirt with anti-modern Catholic natural law doctrines. But he could never completely commit, because, fundamentally, Harvard had left him with the powerful impression of the thought of William James and American pragmatism. That provided a basis in which any kind of belief might be assimilated; even socialism, natural law, classic liberalism, New Deal liberalism, and the British universal historian Arnold Toynbee’s mystic prophesying. Edwards argues that “Wedding James, Wallas, Nietzsche, and Keynes to Hamilton, Hayek, Toynbee, and Burke, Lippmann attacked the New Deal from the standpoint of a post-Christian humanism that prioritized decentralization of both the state and the economy” (162). Thus it looked as if Lippmann was always trying to bring together opposites; and then failing. In the 1960s he was close to Washington power in the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson but fell out with the latter and became _persona non grata_ in the White House because of his criticism of Vietnam...

New H-Diplo|RJISSF Review Essay: Alex Wellerstein on James J. Wirtz and Jeffrey A. Larsen, eds., _Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications: A Primer on US Systems and Future Challenges_. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2022. https://lnkd.in/ekkgDWhZ Review by Alex Wellerstein, Stevens Institute of Technology Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3) is a mouthful of military jargon. In this edited volume, which is presented as an “unclassified primer on America’s NC3 system and the way forward to a modernized, twenty-first-century backbone of deterrence,” one finds a bewildering number of attempts at defining what exactly NC3 is, and what it is not.[1] The first attempt uses official US Air Force guidance, which starts by defining Nuclear Command and Control (NC2) as consisting of five functions: force management, planning, maintain situational awareness, decision-making, and force direction (5). These are each in turn defined by their “activities” that contribute to Command, Control, and Communications (C3). NC3, then, is “the means to execute these mission essential functions,” as provided by “an integrated system comprised of facilities, equipment, communications, procedures, and personnel.”[2] Clear as mud, and impressively circular, even for the US military. Reading through the essays, of course, one pieces together a somewhat clearer picture of this elephant, but, ultimately, NC3 is inherently poorly defined and this, perhaps, is one of the reasons that finding an agency to “own” it from top to bottom has proved rather elusive over the years. One of the essays describes NC3 as the systems that “provide the links between nuclear forces and presidential authority,” which is a bit clearer. A definition that I quite like (in that it dares to not simply replicate official jargon) describes NC3 as “the nervous system of nuclear deterrence.” The short foreword emphasizes that NC3 comprises “more than two hundred subsystems, touching all three legs of the triad of nuclear delivery systems, and requiring a fully integrated infrastructure of space-, ground-, air-, and sea-base capabilities,” and as such is, “the most complex and yet least-known component of the nuclear weapons complex.”To elucidate what NC3 is meant to accomplish, several of the essays repeat the common framing of NC3 as the “always/never” problem: to serve their deterrence role, nuclear weapons must always be usable and functioning whenever properly authorized to do so (also called “positive control”), while never being usable (or exploding accidentally) if they haven’t been so authorized (“negative control”)....

Just published this new H-Diplo Roundtable on Luke Nichter's _The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968_. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023. https://lnkd.in/eJKREMfm   Introduction by John David Briley, East Tennessee State University Reviews by Kari Frederickson, University of Alabama Irwin Gellman, Independent Scholar Aram Goudsouzian, University of Memphis Angie Maxwell, University of Arkansas Melvin Small, Wayne State University, Emeritus Response by Luke A. Nichter, Chapman University   From the introduction: I am pleased to introduce this roundtable review of Luke Nichter’s _The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968_. Nichter is the James Cavanaugh Endowed Chair of Presidential Studies at Chapman University and the author of eight books on American presidents, five of which have President Richard Nixon as their primary subject.[1] The reviewers, Kari Frederickson, Irv Gellman, Aram Goudsouzian, Melvin Small, and Angie Maxwell find that _The Year that Broke Politics_ is a significant contribution to the scholarly literature on the election of 1968, which arguably marked the most volatile year in American politics since the beginning of the Civil War....." @HDiplo @h-diplo.bsky.social

Just published this new H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable Review of David G. Haglund _Sister Republics: Security Relations between America and France_ https://lnkd.in/ewPHG5FF   Introduction by Lori Maguire, University of Reims Reviews by Jordan Becker, United States Military Academy Manuel Dorion-Soulié, Ecole Polytechnique, Review by Julien Zarifian, University of Poitiers, Response by David G. Haglund, Queen’s University. 21

New H-Diplo Review by Yuma Totani of Gary J. Bass's _Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia_. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023. https://lnkd.in/eti_66Ke The trial of major Japanese war criminals at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE, 1946–1948), which is commonly known in Japan as Tōkyō saiban (“Tokyo Trial”), was a watershed moment in the history of modern Japan and a landmark in the field of international law. By modeling on the trial of major German war criminals at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (IMT, 1945–1946), the Allied Powers sought to establish at Tokyo accountability for aggression and atrocities that the Japanese had committed since around the time of the invasion of Manchuria in northeastern China in 1931 through the end of World War II in the Asia-Pacific region in 1945. Just like the Nazi German leaders who were accused at Nuremberg, some two-dozen wartime Japanese leaders faced charges based upon the crime of aggression (then known as “crimes against peace”), war crimes, and crimes against humanity. All but one were convicted of crimes against peace, and ten were found guilty of war crimes. Seven of those who were found guilty of war crimes were sentenced to death by hanging. The rest received life or limited terms of imprisonment. The death sentences were carried out in the early morning of 23 December 1948, shortly after the United States Supreme Court’s dismissal of an argument made by the defense counsel that the IMTFE should be subject to the American Supreme Court’s judicial scrutiny. Five of those who served their sentences at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo, Japan, died of illnesses, while all the others were set free in the 1950s. A few returned to public life after their release, including Shigemitsu Mamoru, who rose to once again hold the position of the Foreign Minister (1954-1956)....

New H-Diplo|RJISSF essay by Anna-Sophie Maass on the UK's Response to Russia’s War against Ukraine. https://lnkd.in/ehWu2R8v "The Capabilities Expectations Gap—The UK’s Response to Russia’s War against Ukraine." Essay by Anna-Sophie Maass, Lancaster University February 24th 2022 marks the beginning of a new dark era in European and international security. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine is the latest manifestation of Russia as a threat to both international security and the liberal word order that began with the Russian-Georgian war in August 2008 and continued with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014. The ongoing war in Ukraine poses a series of security risks that exceed geopolitical security and encompass energy security, food security, and the use of new forms of warfare. The latter have been exemplified, among other things, by Russian cyber-attacks against several institutions in Czechia and the Social Democratic Party in Germany that were carried out at the beginning of May 2024. This is unfortunately not an isolated incidence. Russian hackers carried out a cyber-attack against the European Parliament in November 2022. The hacking followed the European Parliament’s publication of a resolution of 23 November which characterized Russia as a “state sponsor or terrorism” and as a “state that uses means of terrorism.” These increasing and wide-ranging security risks need to be met by adequate responses, including deterrence by the UK and its European and transatlantic partners. Hence, the UK and its international partners face the major challenge of narrowing the capabilities-expectations gap in security and defense policy. The term “capabilities-expectations gap” was coined by the British scholar Christopher Hill, who argued in 1993 that for the EU to meet its expectations of becoming an actor with political and economic clout in international affairs, it needed to enhance its capabilities, especially with regards to addressing shortcomings in its security and defense policy. About three decades since its inception, Hill’s capabilities-expectations gap remains a relevant framework for conceptualizing the response of the UK and its allies to Russia’s war against Ukraine. In this essay, capabilities imply the urgency in enhancing military, financial and humanitarian support for Ukraine whilst meeting expectations of re-establishing security in Ukraine and in Europe. This article demonstrates that the UK’s response to the war in Ukraine between February 2022 until June 2024 faces a capabilities-expectations gap. Russia’s increased aggression and brutality during the course of this war necessitates enhanced capabilities by Ukraine’s allies, including the UK, to deliver ammunition, tanks, and fighter jets. Narrowing the capabilities-expectations gap is compounded by challenges in UK domestic politics and potential supply issues for its military support of Ukraine....

New H-Diplo Review: Brian McNeil on John M. Curatola's _Autumn of Our Discontent: Fall 1949 and the Crises in American National Security_. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2022. https://lnkd.in/ePgs6AnF Years have a peculiar way of triggering collective memories. In the Western world, for example, the mention of 1989 provokes thoughts of freedom and liberation as the wall that divided Berlin came crumbling down (in Russia today, 1989 is of course remembered differently).[1] 1789 recalls similar images, even if the years succeeding the French Revolution did not bring about liberté, égalité, or fraternité. Some years register more than others and can become a memetic to signify the zeitgeist of an age—think 1968; other, less fortunate years, convey nothing at all—no one, after all, talks of 1967ers. But what if a series of significant events extends beyond the confines of a calendar year? That is when historians get creative and stretch out a year by declaring it to be “long,” making nice and tidy a periodization that is, like most history, difficult and complex. Years, whether long, short, or standard, provide shorthand for interpreting the past. What are we to make of 1949? Culturally, in the West at least, it signifies close to nothing. Yet in terms of international politics, 1949 is a heavyweight, mostly for things going wrong. 1949 did not start off so badly for the West. In early spring, twelve nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty, signaling a long-term American military commitment to Europe; on 5 May, forty-six European nations signed the Treaty of London, which formalized the Council of Europe; and a week after that Russian President Josef Stalin ended his feckless blockade of Berlin, cementing an early victory in the Cold War. But the seasons changed, and 1949 is best remembered for several “shocks” that took place in the fall.[2] Their rapidity in succession amplified the effects of autumn 1949—Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong’s declaration of the Communist victory in China came on 1 October 1949, a little more than a week after US President Harry S Truman announced the Soviet Union’s successful detonation of its own atomic bomb. It was a dreadful season, one in which events seemed to drive United States into a new, unprecedented direction.

Just published this roundtable on Aviel Roshwald's _Occupied: European and Asian Responses to Axis Conquest, 1937–1945_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. https://lnkd.in/eVmW2db3 Contents Introduction by Sophie De Schaepdrijver, Pennsylvania State University Reviews by: Jennifer L. Foray, Purdue University Emil Kerenji, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, University of Tennessee Birgit Schneider, Independent Scholar Response by Aviel Roshwald, Georgetown University   From the introduction: Aviel Roshwald’s confident comparative study of European and Asian societies’ reactions to Axis occupation during World War II, _Occupied: European and Asian Responses to Axis Conquest, 1937–1945_, has garnered thoughtful praise from this roundtable’s reviewers. “With its comparative approach and extensive source base,” writes Jennifer Foray, “this book will serve as an invaluable reference for those who are interested in the global consequences of war and occupation in the 1940s and beyond.” Emil Kerenji calls _Occupied_ “an essential work of comparative history on World War II [and] a sprawling landscape of insightful analysis.” Birgit Schneider praises the book as “a profound analysis of how Asian and European countries grappled with their occupation.” Vejas Liulevicius highlights how this “impressive synthesis of a large scholarship in a wide array of languages” also “draws heavily on primary sources, illustrating key conceptual points.” Wielding what Liulevicius calls “a tremendously effective organizational strategy,” Roshwald concentrates on the political elites in eleven Asian and European occupied countries and their (shifting) reactions to occupation. This emphasis on the occupied, Schneider notes, “posits the country-case studies not as mere victims of occupation but emphasizes their agency through exploring the various responses to the occupation.” The book is organized in three parts. Part 1, “Patriotisms under Occupation,” analyzes the impact of occupation on the political elites of more-or-less-established nation-states: the Netherlands, France, Denmark, and Thailand. Part 2, “Fractured Societies and Fractal Identities,” examines tensions inside societies that experienced civil wars against the backdrop of the world war: Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy, and China. Part 3, “Conquest in the Guise of Liberation,” studies the Philippines, Indonesia, and Ukraine: societies ruled by colonial powers (the US, the Netherlands, and the USSR, respectively) before their military occupation by Axis hegemons...