606 Items

A postcard showing a night attack on Japanese destroyer at Port Arthur, Russo-Japanese War. Postcard dated September 10, 1904.

Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Racism, Stereotypes, and War

    Author:
  • Jonathan Mercer
| Fall 2023

Racism systematically distorts policymakers’ analyses of their allies’ and adversaries’ capabilities, interests, and resolve, potentially leading to costly choices regarding war and peace. International security scholars have largely overlooked the role of racism, assuming rational choices on the part of policymakers. Research on the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) demonstrates that this assumption is wrong. 

Burning of a district of Manila, Philippine-American War, 1899.

Library of Congress

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

The Meddler’s Trap: McKinley, the Philippines, and the Difficulty of Letting Go

| Fall 2023

Why do U.S. leaders struggle to end military interventions? William McKinley’s 1898 decision to annex the Philippines reveals why, through a phenomenon called the “meddler’s trap.” This concept denotes a situation of self-entanglement, whereby a leader inadvertently creates a problem through military intervention, feels they can solve it, and values solving the new problem more because of the initial intervention. 

The first Universal Races Congress, August 24, 1911.

W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Racialization and International Security

    Author:
  • Richard W. Maass
| Fall 2023

Racialization—the processes that infuse social and political phenomena with racial identities and implications—is an assertion of power, a claim of purportedly inherent differences that has saturated modern diplomacy, order, and violence. U.S. international security studies has largely omitted racial dynamics from decades of debates. A new framework considers how overt and embedded racialization shape the study and practice of international security. 

 Protesters on demonstration bus interacting with police and pedestrians during 918 Shenyang Anti-Japan Demonstration, September 18, 2012.

Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

To Punish or Protect? Local Leaders and Economic Coercion in China

| Fall 2023

During foreign policy disputes involving China and some of its most important commercial partners, why do local leaders punish or protect foreign commercial actors? The decision comes down to the political incentives facing each local leader. Understanding this variation is important because how local leaders treat foreign businesses can influence the overall effectiveness of the Chinese government’s economic coercion against foreign states. 

"Speaking of Leaks," cartoon, Independent, January 29, 1917.

Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

"Wars without Gun Smoke": Global Supply Chains, Power Transitions, and Economic Statecraft

    Authors:
  • Ling S. Chen
  • Miles M. Evers
| Fall 2023

Power transitions affect a state’s ability to exercise economic statecraft. As a dominating and a rising power approach parity, they face structural incentives to decouple their economies. This decoupling affects business-state relations: high-value businesses within the dominant power tend to oppose their state’s economic statecraft because of its costs to them, whereas low-value businesses within the rising power tend to cooperate because they gain from it. 

Flowers bloom around graves of World War I soldiers prior to a foundation laying ceremony at Loos British Cemetery in Loos-en-Gohelle, France, Thursday, May 4, 2023.

AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

The Peril of Peaking Powers: Economic Slowdowns and Implications for China’s Next Decade

| Summer 2023

Peaking great powers facing a slowdown in growth are likely to try to violently shake up the world. These findings amend classic theories of great power conflict. They help explain some of the most consequential geopolitical events in modern history. And they have ominous implications for contemporary Chinese foreign policy. 

Air Force Senior Airman Curtis Towne salutes as he returns home from Hainan on April 12, 2001. He was a crewmember on the U.S. Navy EP-3 aircraft that was involved in an accident with a Chinese F-8 aircraft on April 1, 2001.

S.Sgt. Adrian Cadiz/U.S. Air Force

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

The Institutional Origins of Miscalculation in China’s International Crises

| Summer 2023

Analysis of China’s national security crises from 1949 to 2012 demonstrates that national security institutions help explain the majority of its crisis miscalculations. This theoretical framework differentiates between three institutional types: integrated, fragmented, and siloed. Integrated types have a positive effect, but both fragmented and siloed types can lead to serious miscalculation.

Gate of Tianjin Free-Trade Zone. A brightly lit arch over a nighttime roadway. A brightly lit pillar appears in the background.

Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Collective Resilience: Deterring China’s Weaponization of Economic Interdependence

    Author:
  • Victor Cha
| Summer 2023

China leverages its market in a form of “predatory liberalism” that weaponizes the networks of interdependence created by globalization. ne response to China’s bullying would be for its targets to form an alliance to retaliate against China’s high-dependence trade should Beijing act against any alliance members. 

British war graves, Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas, June 13, 1982. Rectangular plot lined with white stones in the foreground, with two wooden crosses on its left border. A British flag and two men stand behind it. Hills rise in the background.

Ken Griffiths/Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Words Matter: The Effect of Moral Language on International Bargaining

    Author:
  • Abigail S. Post
| Summer 2023

When states use moral language in a dispute, they reduce the possibility of compromise. The possibility of military escalation, meanwhile, rises in response to moral language when states’ domestic audiences accuse their governments of hypocrisy for their willingness to compromise. The Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas case explores the theory.

President George W. Bush thanks U.S. troops in Al Asad, Iraq, Sept. 3, 2007. He stands at a podium in front of rows of troops in uniform.

Staff Sgt. D. Myles Cullen/U.S. Air Force

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Bargaining with the Military: How Presidents Manage the Political Costs of Civilian Control

    Author:
  • Andrew Payne
| Summer 2023

Dominant normative theories of civil-military relations focus on ideal-type scenarios that do not reflect the messy, inherently political character of elite decision-making. A case study of civil-military dynamics during the Iraq War identifies four decision-making strategies that George W. Bush and Barack Obama used to avoid incurring a domestic political penalty for rejecting the military’s preferences.