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Partnering with the advocacy associations Women in Defense, Women in International Security and Girl Security, WISE hosted its inaugural event, “Share Your Map,” on March 25 featuring a virtual fireside chat with Michèle Flournoy and Ellen Lord, both of whom served in high-level U.S. government defense positions.

James Webb, former U.S. Senator from Virginia, has been a combat Marine, a counsel in the Congress, an assistant secretary of defense and Secretary of the Navy, an Emmy-award winning journalist, a filmmaker, a professor of literature, a resident fellow at two of America’s most prestigious universities, and is the author of 10 books. Webb graduated from the Naval Academy in 1968, one of 18 midshipmen to receive...

It is normally assumed that international security regimes such as the UN can reduce the risk of war by increasing transparency among adversarial nations.  The more adversaries understand each other’s intentions and capabilities, the thinking goes, the less likely they are to be led to war by miscalculations and unwarranted fears. But how is transparency provided, how does it actually work, and how effective is it in preserving or restoring peace?  In Promoting Peace with Information, Dan Lindley provides...

The claim: Kamala Harris refused to salute members of the military while boarding Air Force Two -   Shortly after a video emerged of Vice President Kamala Harris not saluting troops while boarding Air Force Two on March 19 in Georgia, some users took to social media to claim that she had disrespected the military and violated protocol.  Experts weigh in - Michael Desch, a professor of political science and the director of the Notre Dame International Security Center, told USA TODAY that until President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, "it was not common for the president, or other Cabinet officials, but especially the president, to return hand salutes."  Desch noted that Reagan's successors ...

What is status? How does it work? What effects does it tend to have? A new wave of scholarship on status in international relations has converged on a central definition of status, several causal pathways, and the claim that the pursuit of status tends to produce conflict. The authors take stock of the status literature and argue that this convergence is not only a sign of progress, but also...

At the National People’s Congress last week, China announced its grand strategy to win in a post-pandemic world. While much of the media’s attention focuses on anti-democratic measures against Hong Kong, the more momentous steps may be China’s attempts to increase connectivity abroad and cultural homogeneity at home. Both are likely to backfire...

How do intellectual leaders of professional schools of international affairs, whose institutions primarily educate and train master's students for careers in government, the non-governmental sector, and the private sector, differ from academic administrators in disciplinary departments, whose primary raison d’être is producing the next generation of scholars whose primary task is to conduct basic research, in terms of how they see the academic enterprise and their expectations of faculty research and writing? The results...  

The United States of America was founded on a conspiracy theory. In the lead-up to the War of Independence, revolutionaries argued that a tax on tea or stamps is not just a tax, but the opening gambit in a sinister plot of oppression. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were convinced — based on "a long train of abuses and usurpations" — that the king of Great Britain was conspiring to establish "an absolute Tyranny" over the colonies.

President Biden last week announced a Pentagon task force to review military policy toward China, commenting that America will “meet the China challenge” and “win the competition of the future.” From its makeup it’s clear the review will look for ways to move U.S. policy toward a greater emphasis on diplomatic solutions. But in defining America's future national strategy, the new administration should take this process a step further. China’s long-term strategy stretches beyond the issues of trade policy, great power rivalry, nuclear proliferation and military expansion. Largely unexamined...

Multiple promising vaccines for the coronavirus are nearing FDA approval, and the United States is gearing up for widespread vaccination. While the beginning of the end of the coronavirus crisis is in sight, the effect of the virus on international politics remains...

This year is the 20th anniversary of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda. Not nearly at its midpoint, 2020 has already been a year of significant disruption. Amid a global pandemic, recession, and anti-racism protests, the security ideals upon which nations have been built are in flux. Nations are faced with systems that no longer serve...

Scholars have often dismissed the effect of war on state formation in regions like Latin America, where mobilization for war is deemed insufficiently intense and international conflict fails to out‐select weaker states. Against this conventional wisdom, I contend that wars can affect state‐building trajectories in a postwar period through the different state institutions that result from...

Who believes and why, and whether conspiracism is really getting way worse

In an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that aired over two days, President Donald Trump made several false, misleading and unsubstantiated claims...

In mid August, Marjorie Taylor Greene won the primary election in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, which is likely to vote red in November. Two weeks later, she was invited to attend President Donald Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention. Jo Rae Perkins of Oregon and Lauren Boebert of Colorado also won Republican primary elections this summer. What do these candidates have in common? They are among several aspiring lawmakers who have promoted QAnon.

Sus postulados pueden parecer totalmente disparatados, pero este culto surgido en los márgenes de la web suma cada vez más adherentes, y no solo en internet. En las elecciones de noviembre en Estados Unidos, habrá decenas de candidatos a congresistas con simpatías por este curioso credo

The Trump administration is encouraging development of a domestic industry to produce critical metals now dominated by Chinese companies, but few players show clear long-term promise.

On September 4, 2002, five months before the invasion of Iraq, this writer warned in an editorial for the Washington Post that “China can only view the prospect of an American military consumed for the next…

Conventional wisdom suggests that when women attain high political office they are more likely to act as peacemakers than their male counterparts. In contrast, this article argues that... 

As COVID-19 has spread across the globe, so have conspiracy theories about the origin and severity of the virus that causes it. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, political scientist and conspiracy theory researcher Joseph Uscinski joins Galen Druke and senior science writer Maggie Koerth to discuss why these theories develop and whether they can be stopped.