Jervis Forum Article Review 194: Baylis on Salmon and Smith, eds., “Official History” This Special Issue of Diplomacy and Statecraft provides an interesting and important contemporary contribution to the debates and controversies in the historiography of UK official history. It is the first of two…

FOIS Ep. 10: Hegemony with Joshua Byun H-Diplo and the Jervis Forum are pleased to release Episode 10 of our podcast series, Frontiers of International Security (FOIS). In this episode, host Joe Parent talks about hegemony with Joshua Byun, Boston University. The FOIS YouTube channel can be found…

Jervis Forum Policy Series: Populism, Alliance Resilience, and the Future of Global Order The contemporary electoral successes of populist leaders, most notably Donald Trump in the United States, have strained long-standing international alliances and institutions in ways not seen since the early…

Jervis Forum Review 183: Houser on Ndahangwapo, Defending the Investment In June of 2025, the drive from Northern Namibia to Swakopmund looked a little different than it has in past years. What are normally bare, fairly uncrowded roads were undergoing a massive overhaul. Construction vehicles with…

Jervis Forum Article Review 193: Jerslid on Fujisawa, “Soviet Aid and the Mongolian Economy” Jun Fujisawa uses the example of Mongolia within the Council of Mutual Economic Aid (CMEA) to pose excellent questions about small states in the socialist world and their efforts to counter Soviet…

Jervis Forum Roundtable 17-37 on Ingleson, Made in China The term “Made in China” has taken on many forms in the last few decades. The seemingly simple statement identifying the manufacturing origin of an item has been a source of pride, consternation, confusion, or humor, depending on the…

Learning the Scholar’s Craft: Scholarship by Accident I arrived on the fringes of academia by accident after a career in journalism. Before embarking on that I spent a year teaching English at the Italian Naval Academy in Livorno (Leghorn). My history course at Oxford had included a voluntary…

H-Diplo|Jervis Forum Review 182: Johnson on Turner, Lessons in Diplomacy Diplomats and politicians have long been keen to make sure that their explanation of the international events they were involved with during their careers were a matter of public record. In some cases, they try to set the…

Jervis Forum Article Review 192: Brennan on Savranskaya and Blanton, eds., “The Long Telegram of the 1990s” After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the fall of 1991, Russia, under the leadership of President Boris Yeltsin, entered its second experiment in liberal democracy, the first being the…

Jervis Forum Roundtable 17-36 on Heuser, Flawed Strategy It is a great pleasure to add this short introduction to a collection of six sparky essays by leading scholars who have responded forcefully to the battle ensign that Beatrice Heuser hoisted in her book, Flawed Strategy: Why Smart Leaders…

Jervis Forum Tribute to the Life and Legacy of Marshall D. Shulman I first met Marshall Shulman when I was a sophomore in college. Well, sort of. In the fall of 1960 I read a review of his in the New York Times.[1] Amidst the day’s dominant hardline, single-minded view of the Soviet threat, his…

Jervis Forum Review 181: Mall on Nasser, “‘To Defend the Peace of Asia’” Historians of Asia are increasingly investigating modern inter-Asian ties that drew on pan-national solidarities, both during the era of Western colonialism, and following the establishment of independent nation-states on the…

Jervis Forum Review 180: Turner on Standfield, The Politics of Women, Peace, and Security in UN Mediation “Women can’t win” (152). That is the simple but effective message conveyed by Catriona Stanfield’s in-depth examination of the way the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has been…

FOIS Ep. 9: Energy with Erik Voeten H-Diplo and the Jervis Forum are pleased to release Episode 9 of our podcast series, Frontiers of International Security (FOIS). In this episode, host Joe Parent talks about Energy with Erik Voeten, Georgetown University. The FOIS YouTube channel can be found at…

Jervis Forum Chaos Unleashed Policy Series: “America First” in the Second Trump Administration How wrong can one be? In my contribution to the second volume in this series, I questioned the extent to which US foreign policy was determined by individual presidents, and also how much the coming into…

Jervis Forum Roundtabl 17-35 on Weiner, The Mission What is the proper role of an intelligence agency in a democracy? What responsibilities do policymakers have to give intelligence agencies the direction they need to fill that role? These questions drive Tim Weiner’s The Mission: The CIA in the…

New FOIS Episodes with Tanisha Fazal and Ron Krebs H-Diplo and the Jervis Forum are pleased to release two new episodes of our podcast series, Frontiers of International Security (FOIS). In Episode 7, host Joe Parent talks about Change with Tanisha M. Fazal. In Episode 8, host Joe Parent talks…

Jervis Forum Article Review 191: Pierre on Badel, “‘Auxiliary’ Jobs?” The scholarship of Laurence Badel focuses on modern diplomatic practices, women’s roles in diplomacy and international relations, and the relationships between diplomacy, economic actors, and European integration, while also…

Jervis Forum Review 179: Genini on Nychyk, Ukraine Vis-à-Vis Russia and the EU At a time of mounting geopolitical instability and renewed power politics, Ukraine Vis-à-Vis Russia and the EU: Misperceptions of Foreign Challenges in Times of War, 2014–2015 stands out as a timely and incisive…

Jervis Forum Roundtable 17-34 on Haun, Tactical Air Power and the Vietnam War Theoretical discussions of strategic bombardment—or strategic attack in current US Air Force doctrine—have from its inception consistently dominated airpower scholarship and theory. Prior to World War II, only two airmen…

Jervis Forum Review 178: Bartoux on Pelopidas, ed., Nuclear France Historians of the nuclear age face a significant challenge in drawing lessons from the past. The absence of nuclear war to date has, thankfully, limited the field of empirical evidence about the effects of deterrence. However, this…

Jervis Forum Article Review 190: Yoder on Casler and Jost, “Lost in Transmission” In “Lost in Transmission: Bureaucracy, Noise, and Communication in International Politics,” Don Casler and Tyler Jost introduce a novel variable that affects the credibility of interstate signaling: the clarity and…

Jervis Forum Roundtable 17-33 on Owens, Erased “Erased.” It is not an adjective. It is a verb in the passive tense. Working to become a feminist in one’s own scholarship means becoming wary of verbs that are presented in the passive tense. One learns that one must complete the passive-tensed…

Chaos Unleashed Policy Series Introductory Essay: Emerging Master Narratives of IR Theory in the Age of Trump Building on the first two books in the Jervis Forum’s series about Donald Trump’s impact on international politics, our forthcoming set of essays and planned third volume take stock of the…

Announcing “Chaos Unleashed” Series The Jervis Forum H-Diplo|Jervis Forum Policy Series Chaos Unleashed: The Second Trump Administration and the Future of the Liberal International Order General Editors: Richard H. Immerman, Jack L. Snyder, and Diane N. Labrosse Production Editor: Christopher Ball…

Jervis Forum Roundtable 17-32 on Maurer and Goldstein eds., “Brian McKercher” As someone who has done a fair amount of research on the Anglo-American relationship, it is a distinct pleasure for me to introduce H-Diplo’s forum on Diplomacy & Statecraft’s special issue on the work of Brian…

Jervis Forum Roundtable 17-31 on Anderson, ed., Natopolitanism This collection is a contribution to the heated debate on whether NATO expansion is responsible for the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The editor, Grey Anderson, argues that NATO bears primary responsibility for the war.[1]…

Untitled The Jervis Forum H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum Review 178 Benoît Pelopidas, ed., Nuclear France: New Questions, New Sources, New Findings (Routledge, 2025). ISBN 9781032582023. Anna Bartoux, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard…

Jervis Forum Review 177: Nychyk on Kim, Putin’s Revenge Putin’s Revenge: Why Russia Invaded Ukraine by Lucian Kim is an exciting complement to the emerging literature on Russia's war against Ukraine, which started in 2014 and escalated into a full-scale invasion in 2022.[1] The book’s main goal is…

Jervis Forum Review 176: Wood on Beck, Homeland In his own words, Richard Beck describes his ambitious book, Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life, as an effort to explain “how the war on terror changed life in the United States” (317). Beck is a senior writer at n +1, a print and digital…

Jervis Forum Roundtable 17-30 on Golub, Warriors in Washington Dame Freya Stark, an iconoclastic British world traveler, writer, and keen observer of international affairs, met a great many important leaders in her time. Not all of them inspired her. She was nevertheless awe-struck by Henry…

Jervis Forum Review 175: Nord on Duroselle, Cahiers de l’été 1944 The Jervis Forum H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum Review 175 Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, Cahiers de l’été 1944. Édition établie, présentée et annotée par Laurence Badel (Paris: Gallimard, 2025). ISBN:…

Jervis Forum Review 174: Carroll on Channell-Justice, Without the State Emily Channell-Justice’s Without the State is a rich, ethnographic exploration of leftist activism in Ukraine before, during, and after the 2013–2014 EuroMaidan Revolution. It offers an intimate view of leftist social and…

Jervis Forum Review 173: Fettweis on Popescu, No Peer Rivals There’s nothing like a foolish, unnecessary war to inspire a fundamental reexamination of US grand strategy. The 2003 invasion of Iraq renewed scholarly interest in the concept of strategic restraint, which seemed to offer an alternative…

Jervis Forum Roundtable 17-29 on Friedman, The Commander-in-Chief Test Jeffrey A. Friedman’s The Commander in Chief Test: Public Opinion and the Politics of Image-Making in US Foreign Policy is a masterful and timely new book by one of our discipline’s most insightful and creative scholars, who…

Jervis Forum Review 172: Evangelista on Kramer, Apocalyptic Crimes Nuclear weapons have been around for over 80 years. Is there anything new to be written about them? In particular, would H-Diplo readers knowledgeable about the topic find it worth their while to read a new book on the legality of…

Jervis Forum Article Review 189: McLaughlin on Maguire, et al., “Round table for the 50th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, Part I” Not long ago comedian Hasan Minhaj dropped a pithy line in one of his specials that would sum up why so many scholars first got into Vietnam War history: “every…

Jervis Forum Roundtable 17-28 on Fuhrmann, Influence Without Arms Matthew Fuhrmann’s Influence Without Arms is an ambitious, wide-ranging analysis of the role of nuclear latency in international politics. Scholarly investigation of the topic has been growing over the past decade, but there are few…

Jervis Forum Review 171: Ermolaeva on Faure, The Rise of the Russian Hawks Was there, in fact, a “previously deliberated plan,” and does it remain in effect today? This question lies at the heart of contemporary Russian studies, as scholars seek to unravel the phenomenon most often described as…

Jervis Forum Review 170: Oakley on Coll, The Achilles Trap Steve Coll, who is the author of Ghost Wars and Directorate S, has once again provided readers with an engaging and well-researched book on US policy in the Middle East; this time on the factors that led to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.[1]…

The Jervis Forum Roundtable 17-27 Paul Kirby and Laura J. Shepherd’s Governing the Feminist Peace: The Vitality and Failure of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda “a closer look on how and if WPS can continue to carry this weight is in order.” –Jamie J. Hagen wp.me/p2Insd-7HW

Jervis Forum Roundtable 17-27 on Kirby and Shepherd, Governing the Feminist Peace Paul Kirby and Laura J. Shepherd’s Governing the Feminist Peace is an engagement with, and evaluation of, the complexities of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda 25 years into its tenure by two scholars who…

Jervis Forum Review 169 Meredith Roman The Black Panthers and the Soviets: A Comparative History of Human Rights Movements “highlight(s) the ways white Americans may have overlooked the negative experiences that many of their fellow citizens have had with the police”–Sarah B. Snyder wp.me/p2Insd-7Hw

Jervis Forum Review 169: Snyder on Roman, The Black Panthers and the Soviets New York Times journalist Harrison Salisbury interviewed Soviet dissident Valery Chalidze in 1973, and the two discussed the emotions that citizens in each country experienced toward the police. For his part, Salisbury…

Roundtable Review 17-26 Martin Senn and Carmen Wunderlich, eds., “The Complexity of Nuclear (Dis)Ordering.” The national security risk of the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the 1960s, which was heralded inter alia by the Chinese nuclear test in 1964 and the relative ease of the new technique…

Jervis Forum Review 168 Sam Lebovic’s State of Silence: The Espionage Act and the Rise of America’s Secrecy Regime “many Americans increasingly doubt the honesty, transparency, and processes of government institutions and officials.” –Cameron Givens and Christopher McKnight Nichols wp.me/p2Insd-7Hy

Jervis Forum Review 168: Givens on Lebovic, State of Silence The messy history of the US secrecy regime—its legal peregrinations, frequent oversteps, and steady expansion over the last century into an unwieldy labyrinth of various statutes, executive orders, and bureaucratic practices—shines a…

The Jervis Forum Roundtable Review 17-26 Martin Senn and Carmen Wunderlich, eds. “The Complexity of Nuclear (Dis)Ordering” “What is the nuclear order; what role does complexity play in strengthening or weakening this order” –Colleen Larkin wp.me/p2Insd-7HG

Episode 6 of the Frontiers of International Security (FOIS) podcast on “Causes of War,” with Erik Gartzke, University of California, San Diego, is available here: youtube.com/watch?v=MOcf...

FOIS Ep. 6: “Causes of War” with Erik Gartzke H-Diplo and the Jervis Forum are pleased to release Episode 6 of our podcast series, Frontiers of International Security (FOIS). In this episode, host Joe Parent talks about Causes of War with Erik Gartzke, University of California, San Diego: FOIS Ep.…