A wide range of actors have publicly identified cyber stability as a key policy goal but the meaning of stability in the context of cyber policy remains vague and contested. Vague because most ...policymakers and experts do not define cyber stability when they use the concept. Contested because they propose measures that rely – often implicitly – on divergent understandings of cyber stability. This volume is a thorough investigation of instability within cyberspace and of cyberspace itself. Its purpose is to reconceptualise stability and instability for cyberspace, highlight their various dimensions and thereby identify relevant policy measures. This book critically examines both ‘classic’ notions associated with stability – for example, whether cyber operations can lead to unwanted escalation – as well as topics that have so far not been addressed in the existing cyber literature, such as the application of a decolonial lens to investigate Euro-American conceptualisations of stability in cyberspace.
The domino theory has been the central organizing concept behind American containment strategy in the postwar period. This strategy was behind the involvement of America in the wars in Korea and ...Vietnam: neither country was of great economic, military, or cultural value to the US, yet policy-makers assumed that defeats against these nations might create precedents for areas of greater intrinsic interest. In this collection, Stephen Walt, Ted Hopf, Douglas Blum, Milan Hauner, the editors, and others, address crucial issues about the strategic beliefs that shape the competition between the superpowers in the Eurasian rimland.
Donald Trump's election has called into question many fundamental assumptions about politics and society. Should the forty-fifth president of the United States make us reconsider the nature and ...future of the global order? Collecting a wide range of perspectives from leading political scientists, historians, and international-relations scholars, Chaos in the Liberal Order explores the global trends that led to Trump's stunning victory and the impact his presidency will have on the international political landscape.Contributors situate Trump among past foreign policy upheavals and enduring models for global governance, seeking to understand how and why he departs from precedents and norms. The book considers key issues, such as what Trump means for America's role in the world; the relationship between domestic and international politics; and Trump's place in the rise of the far right worldwide. It poses challenging questions, including: Does Trump's election signal the downfall of the liberal order or unveil its resilience? What is the importance of individual leaders for the international system, and to what extent is Trump an outlier? Is there a Trump doctrine, or is America's president fundamentally impulsive and scattershot? The book considers the effects of Trump's presidency on trends in human rights, international alliances, and regional conflicts. With provocative contributions from prominent figures such as Stephen M. Walt, Andrew J. Bacevich, and Samuel Moyn, this timely collection brings much-needed expert perspectives on our tumultuous era.
The Evils of Polygyny McDermott, Rose; Monroe, Kristen Renwick; Hudson, Valerie ...
05/2018
eBook
Why do men act violently toward women?
What are the consequences of "normal violence," not only for women and children but also for the men who instigate it, and for the societies that sanction it?
...The Evils of Polygynyexamines one powerful structural factor that instigates, enforces, and replicates patterns of male dominance: the practice of polygyny. From more than a decade's worth of study, Rose McDermott has produced a book that uncovers the violent impact of polygyny on women, children, and the nation-state and adds fundamentally to the burgeoning focus on gender concerns in political psychology and international relations. Integrating these fields, as well as domestic policy and human rights, the author urges us to address the question of violence toward women and children. If we do not, a system that tells young women they must marry whom their elders dictate and devote their entire lives to serving others will continue to plague the contemporary world, and restrict development.
The timely nature of McDermott's book reflects the mission of the Easton Lectures at the Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality at the University of California, Irvine, which charges its lecturers to produce work that is creative, controversial, and cutting-edge, and offers substantial real-world impact.The Evils of Polygyny, edited by Kristen Renwick Monroe, includes commentary from Valerie Hudson, Robert Jervis, and B. J. Wray. The book does just that, providing a coherent analysis of sexual violence and a provocative and chilling analysis of one of the major problems of the contemporary world.
Chaos in the Liberal Order Robert Jervis, Francis J. Gavin, Joshua Rovner, Diane N. Labrosse
07/2018
eBook
Donald Trump's election has called into question many fundamental assumptions about politics and society. Collecting a wide range of perspectives from leading scholars, Chaos in the Liberal Order ...explores the global trends that led to Trump's stunning victory and the impact his presidency will have on the international political landscape.
To say that the world changed drastically on 9/11 has become a truism and even a cliché. But the incontestable fact is that a new era for both the world and US foreign policy began on that infamous ...day and the ramifications for international politics have been monumental.In this book, one of the leading thinkers in international relations, Robert Jervis, provides us with several snapshots of world politics over the past few years. Jervis brings his acute analysis of international politics to bear on several recent developments that have transformed international politics and American foreign policy including the War on Terrorism; the Bush Doctrine and its policies of preventive war and unilateral action; and the promotion of democracy in the Middle East (including the Iraq War) and around the world. Taken together, Jervis argues, these policies constitute a blueprint for American hegemony, if not American empire. All of these events and policies have taken place against a backdrop equally important, but less frequently discussed: the fact that most developed nations, states that have been bitter rivals, now constitute a "security community" within which war is unthinkable.American Foreign Policy in a New Era is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the policies and events that have shaped and are shaping US foreign policy in a rapidly changing and still very dangerous world.
The U.S. government spends enormous resources each year on the gathering and analysis of intelligence, yet the history of American foreign policy is littered with missteps and misunderstandings that ...have resulted from intelligence failures. InWhy Intelligence Fails, Robert Jervis examines the politics and psychology of two of the more spectacular intelligence failures in recent memory: the mistaken belief that the regime of the Shah in Iran was secure and stable in 1978, and the claim that Iraq had active WMD programs in 2002.
The Iran case is based on a recently declassified report Jervis was commissioned to undertake by CIA thirty years ago and includes memoranda written by CIA officials in response to Jervis's findings. The Iraq case, also grounded in a review of the intelligence community's performance, is based on close readings of both classified and declassified documents, though Jervis's conclusions are entirely supported by evidence that has been declassified.
In both cases, Jervis finds not only that intelligence was badly flawed but also that later explanations-analysts were bowing to political pressure and telling the White House what it wanted to hear or were willfully blind-were also incorrect. Proponents of these explanations claimed that initial errors were compounded by groupthink, lack of coordination within the government, and failure to share information. Policy prescriptions, including the recent establishment of a Director of National Intelligence, were supposed to remedy the situation.
In Jervis's estimation, neither the explanations nor the prescriptions are adequate. The inferences that intelligence drew were actually quite plausible given the information available. Errors arose, he concludes, from insufficient attention to the ways in which information should be gathered and interpreted, a lack of self-awareness about the factors that led to the judgments, and an organizational culture that failed to probe for weaknesses and explore alternatives. Evaluating the inherent tensions between the methods and aims of intelligence personnel and policymakers from a unique insider's perspective, Jervis forcefully criticizes recent proposals for improving the performance of the intelligence community and discusses ways in which future analysis can be improved.
The intelligence failure concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has been the center of political controversy and official investigations in three countries. This article reviews the ...Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 7 July 2004, Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction, a Report of a Committee of Privy Councillors to the House of Commons, 14 July 2004 (the Butler Report), Report to the President of the United States, The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, 31 March 2005. It explores the reasons for their deficiencies and the failure itself. This case and the investigations of it are similar to many previous ones. The investigations are marred by political bias and excessive hindsight. Neither the investigations nor contemporary intelligence on Iraqi WMD followed good social science practices. The comparative method was not utilized, confirmation bias was rampant, alternative hypotheses were not tested, and negative evidence was ignored. Although the opportunities to do better are many, the prospects for adequate reform are dim.
The U.S. government spends enormous resources each year on the gathering and analysis of intelligence, yet the history of American foreign policy is littered with missteps and misunderstandings that ...have resulted from intelligence failures. In Why Intelligence Fails, Robert Jervis examines the politics and psychology of two of the more spectacular intelligence failures in recent memory: the mistaken belief that the regime of the Shah in Iran was secure and stable in 1978, and the claim that Iraq had active WMD programs in 2002. The Iran case is based on a recently declassified report Jervis was commissioned to undertake by CIA thirty years ago and includes memoranda written by CIA officials in response to Jervis's findings. The Iraq case, also grounded in a review of the intelligence community's performance, is based on close readings of both classified and declassified documents, though Jervis's conclusions are entirely supported by evidence that has been declassified. In both cases, Jervis finds not only that intelligence was badly flawed but also that later explanations—analysts were bowing to political pressure and telling the White House what it wanted to hear or were willfully blind—were also incorrect. Proponents of these explanations claimed that initial errors were compounded by groupthink, lack of coordination within the government, and failure to share information. Policy prescriptions, including the recent establishment of a Director of National Intelligence, were supposed to remedy the situation. In Jervis's estimation, neither the explanations nor the prescriptions are adequate. The inferences that intelligence drew were actually quite plausible given the information available. Errors arose, he concludes, from insufficient attention to the ways in which information should be gathered and interpreted, a lack of self-awareness about the factors that led to the judgments, and an organizational culture that failed to probe for weaknesses and explore alternatives. Evaluating the inherent tensions between the methods and aims of intelligence personnel and policymakers from a unique insider's perspective, Jervis forcefully criticizes recent proposals for improving the performance of the intelligence community and discusses ways in which future analysis can be improved.
Why postmortems fail Jervis, Robert
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
01/2022, Volume:
119, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Most high-profile disasters are followed by demands for an investigation into what went wrong. Even before they start, calls for finding the missed warning signs and an explanation for why people did ...not "connect the dots" will be common. Unfortunately, however, the same combination of political pressures and the failure to adopt good social science methods that contributed to the initial failure usually lead to postmortems that are badly flawed. The high stakes mean that powerful actors will have strong incentives to see that certain conclusions are-and are not-drawn. Most postmortems also are marred by strong psychological biases, especially the assumption that incorrect inferences must have been the product of wrong ways of thinking, premature cognitive closure, the naive use of hindsight, and the neglect of the comparative method. Given this experience, I predict that the forthcoming inquiries into the January 6, 2021, storming of the US Capitol and the abrupt end to the Afghan government will stumble in many ways.
PDF