Articles

73 Items

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. 

People watch a TV showing a file image of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shown during a news program

AP/Ahn Young-joon

Journal Article - Ethics & International Affairs

Nuclear Ethics Revisited

| Spring 2023

Scott Sagan asked Joseph S. Nye to revisit Nuclear Ethics, a book he published in 1986, in light of current developments in world affairs. In doing so, he found that much had changed but the basic usability paradox of nuclear deterrence remains the same. 

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, seated left, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, right, join in the singing during church services aboard the Battleship HMS Prince of Wales

AP

Journal Article - The Journal of Strategic Studies

The Eagle and the Lion: Reassessing Anglo-American Strategic Planning and the Foundations of U.S. Grand Strategy for World War II

| 2022

Many accounts of the formation of American and British grand strategy during World War II between the fall of France and the Pearl Harbor attacks stress the differences between the two sides’ strategic thinking. These accounts argue that while the Americans favored a 'direct' Germany-first approach to defeating the Axis powers, the British preferred the 'indirect' or 'peripheral' method. However, a review of Anglo-American strategic planning in this period shows that before official U.S. wartime entry, both sides largely agreed the British 'peripheral' approach was the wisest grand strategy for winning the war.

A man looks at a destroyed Russian tank placed as a symbol of war in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine

AP/Natacha Pisarenko, File

Journal Article - Texas National Security Review

What's Old Is New Again: Cold War Lessons for Countering Disinformation

| Fall 2022

Hostile foreign states are using weaponized information to attack the United States. Russia and China are disseminating disinformation about domestic U.S. race relations and COVID-19 to undermine and discredit the U.S. government. These information warfare attacks, which threaten U.S. national security, may seem new, but they are not. Using an applied history methodology and a wealth of previously classified archival records, this article uses two case studies to reveal how and why a hostile foreign state, the Soviet Union, targeted America with similar disinformation in the past

Journal Article - Pacific Affairs

Book Review: The Saigon Sisters: Privileged Women in the Resistance

| September 2022

In his review of The Saigon Sisters by Patricia D. Norland, Nathaniel L. Moir writes, "In this informative collection of oral histories, nine women provided Norland with their personal stories and comprehensive thoughts; the author conducted the interviews in French, beginning in 1989.

In this image provided by the U.S. Marine Corps, evacuees wait to board a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 30. 2021.

Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla/U.S. Marine Corps via AP

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Narratives and War: Explaining the Length and End of U.S. Military Operations in Afghanistan

    Author:
  • C. William Walldorf Jr.
| Summer 2022

A new theory of war duration suggests that strategic narratives explain why the U.S. war in Afghanistan endured and ended. A robust anti-terrorism narrative generated audience costs for presidential inaction. As the narrative weakened, these costs declined, and the war ended.