A brief piece by me in E-IR on the shift from hegemony to primacy heralded by the U.S. National Security Strategy. There’s a _lot_ going on in that document but I think that the explicit abandonment of hegemony for primacy is perhaps the most important. www.e-ir.info

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

🚨 Publication Alert 🚨 "Neoclassical Realist Theory of Populist Foreign Policy" just out with @risjnl.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1017/S026... I explore how populism affects state behavior over time. This aims at further integrating populism scholarship into, and combining it with, IR theory. 1/9

#Ethics people - get your 250 abstracts to Natasha and/or I asap for our January #BISA Ethics and World Politics online event in “Teaching Ethics in Dark Times.” Details below!

Does anyone know of good recent pieces on Realist ethics in IR / IPT? Am giving a lecture on this in a few weeks and would be good to have a few up to date pieces.

Pondering Rashomon to teach the benefits of the English School in IR. Idea = 3 perspectives on international society > 1 B/c 3 allows discussion => more depth re Int Soc. ES ≠ “answer” to Int Soc but more fruitful than any single theory. But would students be too freaked out by Rashomon?

Machiavelli is unexpectedly proving to be every bit as tricky as Hegel. I need to find people to write about who aren’t so goddamn tricky!

EISA in Bologna is uncommonly stacked with interesting panels. The Working with the Negative and the Realist Thought, Theory, and Analysis sections look particularly good. eisa-net.org/event/pec-20...

Off to EWIS in Kraków to discuss Hegel and international law over the next couple of days.

BISA gets off to a bizarre start with a weird, wheel bump the ground landing followed by an immediate take off again abd impromptu aerial tour of Belfast and environs. Landed the second time with no difficulty. It’s going to be one of _those_ BISAs …

Ultimately, portability will more than likely be granted because universities will want their new staff members’ outputs counted as part of their submission.

This is how you do it, kids!

More excellent work from the powerhouse that is @felixroesch.bsky.social!

Are you short of a listen or interested in the links b/t IR theory & political ideology? @risjnl.bsky.social has just the thing for you - a new pod on our recent editor's selection, featuring our @sebkaempf.bsky.social interviewing (also our) Ben Martill: www.buzzsprout.com/2395572/epis...

I don’t find John McCormick’s attempts to revise the role of Agathocles in Machiavelli’s writings convincing but I’m glad he is out there arguing against the grain.

US to declare immediate 10% tariff on imports from K2-18b www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Have Trump et al said anything at all about international law? I don’t think they have; I get the impression that it’s not on their radar _at all_. Can anyone point me to any official statements regarding the USA and international law?

Good to see the entry on Realism in the Elgar Encyclopedia of International Relations was in safe hands!

One person I must look into more one day is R.N. Berki. Every so often I come into contact with his essays and they’re always impressive.

Just witnessed the perfect encapsulation of the Boomer spirit: a very tiny, elderly lady with two powerful dogs meets another tiny, elderly lady with a powerful dog. Between the two tiny, elderly ladies there was one leash and not a hope of controlling any of the three dogs.

Does #Thucydides have lessons to teach _beyond_ the strong doing what they will and the weak suffering what they must? A brief thought piece by me in Logos Magazine on the relevance of Thucydides to contemporary events in international politics.  logosjournal.com/between-the-...

My former PhD student, Carmen Chas’s forthcoming book. A groundbreaking study that combines International Law and Realist IR theory to excellent effect.

*sings in Blondie* Saw Vesuvius And it was a gas Soon turned out I had a brain of glass www.thetimes.com/uk/science/a...

I’m enjoying this book but can’t help feeling it’s a bit long at just short of 500 pages; that said, there’s a lot going on in Machiavelli )and the sources he draws upon) and it’s difficult to see what she could have left out.

'Towards a new IR' special section includes- Is international law a discipline OF crisis, or a discipline IN crisis? The discipline's divergent responses to Gaza suggest the latter. ⬇️ @ntinatzouvala.bsky.social #openaccess #AcademicPublishing #InternationalLaw www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Why do students think they don’t have to include page numbers in their citations anymore? How did they all decide en masse _not_ to include them? Phenomenon is particularly marked in the accursed in text citation formats.

Don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved that Foucault didn’t choose this picture to introduce The Order of Things.

I’ve written an op-ed on Trump and Denmark and now face a dilemma: I have to hope the issue remains relevant in what is a hectic Trump news cycle but also hope that it doesn’t trigger some kind of global conflagration.

The pre-publication version of the first article of my @LeverhulmeTrust Major Research Fellowship on law and war theorised through Hegelian lenses is now available open access in Hegel Bulletin. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Fare thee well, David Lodge. Lodge’s books were a humorous insight into an academic world that has since disappeared but perhaps they are all the more valuable now because they show that another academic way of life is possible.

Weird discovery of the day: GHW Bush watched the bombing of Baghdad in 1991 on CNN with Barbara Bush and … Billy Graham!

The extent to which USFP elites were haunted by the Vietnam War is made very clear in GHW Bush’s wartime speeches when he reflects upon and justifies Operation Desert Storm, especially when he talks to military audiences.

Anyone going to EISA Bologna? I’ve a paper on #Hegel and International Law that needs a home.

Reading a George H.W. Bush speeche from 1990 and it’s clear that the USFP elite don’t think that the Gorbachev reforms and reorientation are going to stick. The “threat” is described as “altered” and the U.S. needs to be ready for a reversal of Soviet intention.

It never ceases to amaze me how people find new and interesting ways to misunderstand and misuse Ken Waltz’s neorealism.

Branko Milanovic seems to have been really bitten by the E.H. Carr bug.

I wonder when we’ll see the first article declaring IR’s olfactory ethical turn?

🎄🎅 From tomorrow until Christmas we'll post a sovereignty-themed advent calendar. After all Levia-clause is sovereign! He makes law determining who is naughty or nice and dispenses justice, giving gifts to some and punishing the others (taking away bad kids to the forest, in some traditions).

Ian Leslie: “What have been the three biggest political debates since then, all initiated by the government? Means-testing of the winter fuel allowance for pensioners, inheritance tax for farmers, and assisted dying. Ageing, death, death.”

www.e-ir.info/pdf/106801 We live in anti-theoretical times. All the more reason to share this short but insightful piece by @HaroKarkour on the value of much maligned IR theory to the contemporary age. #Realism #Trump #Morgenthau #Carr #Niebuhr.

I used to think this but now I have a sneaking suspicion that campuses will be taken over by the few domestic “winners” of the current cycle of destruction and their international equivalents, e.g., UCL-Bath; NYU-Brighton, etc.

@hist-isanet.bsky.social is on here! Follow & spread the word #HistIR

Now this looks interesting. Always nice to see new developments in the English School and IPE has always been an area that needed to be addressed.

Must read when I have a chance. Thanks @morton.bsky.social for the heads up!

We now have over double the followers we had on Twitter/X - thank you to everyone who has done so! We have just released a new issue & I will post a thread about this imminently

Some thoughts prompted by Doug Stokes piece in The Critic. Trump’s foreign policy will likely consist largely of attempts to intimidate allies and to assert dominance where it can be safely asserted. thecritic.co.uk/donald-trump...

"We have learned that man’s head, as a source of reality, is a strange and dangerous place, as strange and dangerous as ever were the Universe or Nature or things-in-themselves or gods or God." Philip Allott - The Health of Nations.

Curiously, the decline in the prominence of international lawyers coincides with what seems to be a collective decision to stop writing about Hegel …

This lack of prominent international lawyers/ legal theorists is kinda playing on my mind. I think it is very telling that the most well-known international law specialist is a disciplinary historian, Martti Koskenniemi.