Professor at Georgetown University with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service.
I am mostly about cats and power politics.
But I repeat myself.
“Fair Trade” and the revenge against the “Foreigner”: From Chamberlain to Trump
A century before Trump’s tariff threats, Joseph Chamberlain pitched the same idea: use duties as a “big revolver” to force rivals into “fair trade.” That history helps explain why “unfairness” rhetoric and coercive foreign policy keep returning when hegemonic powers decline.
Bullies, Follies, and Decadent Orders: Constructing Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern
On November 1, 2025, President Donald Trump threatened to end all U.S. assistance to Nigeria and — if he deemed it necessary — launch a military attack against insurgents in the country. As National Public Radio reported: “If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very…
Exploring the Meaning of Responsibility
I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning of “responsibility,” specifically in the context of politics and governance. We live in an age of populism, rising authoritarianism, disinformation, climate change, and the slaughter of civilians in places like Gaza and Sudan. The notions of responsibility associated with the so-called “liberal international order” are all under strain. Most of us, I think, rely on a kind of “
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2025/11/exploring-the-meaning-of-responsibility.html
Antisemitism, Israel and the Problem with no Easy Solution
Debates about Israel and Palestine have, as one scholar remarked to me, become the “third rail” in British academia. That needs to change. The terror attack in Manchester makes clear that UK academics must engage in a public, thoughtful, and careful discussion about Jews, Israel and Palestine. On October 2nd, 2025 — on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur — a Synagogue in Manchester was attacked…
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2025/10/antisemitism-israel-and-the-problem-with-no-easy-solution.html
The Mirage of Great-Power Competition
Photo by Dave Photoz on Unsplash Back in March, I wrote a post at Lawyers, Guns and Money called “Remember ‘Great Power Competition?’ Lol.” As the “Grand Strategy” of Trump 2.0 comes into focus, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit and update it. In brief, the normie national-security advisors who dominated the first Trump administration needed a way to make Trump’s semi-coherent ramblings legible to the global…
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2025/10/the-mirage-of-great-power-competition.html
The State of the Union is Grim
The Republic as we knew it is over. The fight now is whether the new one will be a fascistic, competitive authoritarian regime or a pluralist democracy that, one hopes, is better than what came before.
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2025/10/the-state-of-the-union-is-grim.html
Trump’s Foreign Policy and the Purpose of the MAGA State
How can we understand Tump 2.0 foreign policy? It's the product of the fusion of two different forces: Christian Nationalism and Personalist Rent-Extraction.
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2025/09/trumps-foreign-policy-and-the-purpose-of-the-maga-state.html
6+1 Questions about “The U.S.: A (Mostly) Hands-Off Superpower”
Drew Hogan answers 6+1 questions about how the United States does, and does not, support its overseas citizens.
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2025/08/61-questions-about-the-u-s-a-mostly-hands-off-superpower.html
What’s the Matter with Soft Power?
I dislike the term “soft power.” We owe the term to the late, great Joseph Nye. He popularized it in his 1990 book, Bound to Lead. Nye’s book was, first and foremost, an intervention in the “declinism” debates of the later 1980s. Japan was at the peak of its influence; some projected that its economy would overtake that of the United States by the early 2000s.
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2025/06/whats-the-matter-with-soft-power.html
So much for “Great Power Competition”
The buzzword of the first Trump administration was "Great Power Competition." That was also a lie.
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2025/03/so-much-for-great-power-competition.html
The Munich Agreement, but Negotiated by Oswald Mosley
When I was but a lad, it was still quite common for foreign-policy hawks to invoke “Munich” as an all-purpose rebuttal to compromise with (they would say the “appeasement of”) rival states, most notably the Soviet Union. The failure of the 1938 agreement — which handed Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in an effort to avoid a general European war.
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2024/07/the-munich-agreement-but-negotiated-by-oswald-mosley.html
Does whataboutism work? Wilfred Chow and Dov Levin have answers in their new article
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2024/04/61-questions-about-the-diplomacy-of-whataboutism.html
On reckoning and repair in the international: revisiting imperialism and race in IR
THe short-term contributions of the Special Issue have been worthwhile, but there remains a continued concern and challenge that with greater attention paid to race and imperialism in IR, these issues will become co-opted into the game of academic production, sanitised as intellectual curiosities, instead of being treated as matters of life and death that need to be opposed practically…
On the politics of decolonization theory and practice
International institutional policy, shaped by a globally entrenched explanatory framework of development and underdevelopment, perpetuates the suppression of knowledge production aimed at challenging social, economic, and political injustices by elites across the global South
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2024/04/on-the-politics-of-decolonization-theory-and-practice.html
A reckoning with the traditional diplomatic community
Intra-elite, state-centric society is a strategic front, and ought to be defended and put to use in the continued development of a global and decolonial turn in IR.
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2024/04/a-reckoning-with-the-traditional-diplomatic-community.html
Landmarks and warning signs
The special issue’s concerns could easily be a passing ‘fad’ as the forces of the status quo bide their time. A focal point on race, necessary as it is, could elide class and material factors’ influence on world politics.
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2024/04/landmarks-and-warning-signs.html
International Relations and the Problem of Literacy
There is no shortage of knowledge produced in various traditions and diverse scholarly communities. There is no lack of theoretical traditions and political thought that come from non-Euro-American and mainstream canons. There is also no shortage in theoretical concepts and approaches to global politics that are not produced in Anglophone spaces. Rather, there is still in mainstream IR a major problem of literacy to…
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2024/04/international-relations-and-the-problem-of-literacy.html
Is Latin America “International” enough for IR?
Even when Latin Americans are allowed to speak, IR scholars and practitioners do not listen to them due to the language in which they produce knowledge, epistemic violence and access barriers.
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2024/04/is-latin-america-international-enough-for-ir.html
On the Global Entanglements of Race, Empire, and Knowledge
Decolonial methods, and the bringing of attention to race in knowledge production is necessarily historical. It demands a close re-reading of archives, forgotten texts, and sometimes “canonical” works. As a result, through this special issue and the wider work the authors build upon, we now have a very different understanding of the historical entanglements of race and international affairs knowledge.
https://www.duckofminerva.com/2024/04/on-the-global-entanglements-of-race-empire-and-knowledge.html
Now what?
Now that the myth of "theory-practice gap" has been largely refuted what role might IR and journals like International Affairs play in crafting a "reparative praxis"?