History of the International System – Free Stanford course on iTunes

The quality of academic content available online continues to rise.  Add this to your playlist for a great introduction to international politics from a broad historical perspective by James Sheehan of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.  Over at The Do It Yourself Scholar, the class is considered one of the “all-time-best free history courses on the web.”

Lectures include “The Formation of a Global Society,” “Transformation of the European System,” The First World War,” “Peacemaking,” and so forth, ending with “The Future of Sovereignty” and “The International System in 2008.”

History of the International System – Download free content from Stanford on iTunes.

E-Notes: Sovereignty Or Submission: Liberal Democracy or Global Governance? – FPRI

Ever wonder what a smart “domestic” critic of the UN sounds like?  Here’s one from a small but notable New York-based think tank on the perils of global governance and why diminishing sovereignty can be problematic:

If the forces of global governance are able to establish some form of global authority as they envision it, liberal democracy would be replaced by post-democracy. But, it is highly unlikely that such a utopian vision would succeed on its own terms, particularly since there is little support for “sharing sovereignty” among rising Asian states (China, India) and among other nations such as Russia, Brazil and Turkey. On the other hand, it is entirely possible that globalist ideology and material interests could obtain a critical mass of influence among opinion makers and statesmen in the West (particularly the United States).

If this happens (the globalists achieve ideological hegemony), the result would likely be not the triumph of global governance, but the suicide of liberal democracy, both in the realm of domestic self-government and in the arena of self-defense from undemocratic foes. Thus the global governance project unable to achieve success on its own terms would essentially disable and disarm the democratic state, internally and externally. The suicide process would proceed slowly, almost imperceptibly, much as the democratic states of Europe gradually, over decades, lost more and more sovereignty to the unaccountable institutions of the European Union.

In the final analysis the conflict between global governance and the liberal democratic nation-state is a moral conflict, and the side that seizes and holds the moral high ground will prevail. The conflict raises the oldest issue of politics: Who should govern? The fundamental question beneath this global struggle is: Do Americans (and other free peoples) have the moral right to rule themselves? The globalists say no, sovereignty must be “pooled.” Like the Founding Fathers yesterday, the Philadelphia sovereigntists today, say yes. It is time to prepare for the long struggle ahead.

via E-Notes: Sovereignty Or Submission: Liberal Democracy or Global Governance? – FPRI.

Booklist | Taking the Long View on Nation building

Why do diplomats read history? I mentioned Neustadt and May previously, but the issue bears repeating.   (You may disagree with the analysis below but its so  important for diplomats to be engaged in the longer conversations–even if they are partial elements in the story.)

Case in point–the idea that nation building isn’t new.

This is the point of Jeremi Suri’s useful new book, “Liberty’s Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building From the Founders to Obama.” Suri, a professor of history at the University of Texas, Austin, argues not only that Americans have engaged in nation-building throughout their history, but that their impulse to do so springs naturally and inevitably from their character and experience as a people. Having built a single nation out of disparate parts themselves, having solved the problem of competing interests by channeling them through national representative institutions, Americans have continually sought to replicate this experience in foreign lands. They have “deployed their exceptional history in universalistic ways.” And while Suri acknowledges that these efforts have at times been quixotic, he insists that the American proclivity to engage in nation-building is smart. It is, he argues, the necessary compromise between isolationism and empire: a “society of states” that are independent, stable, capable of trading with one another and, above all, modeled after the United States. In response to realist critics, he writes that “the American pursuit of a society of states serves the deepest interests of a people forged in revolution.” Because “alternative forms of foreign government limit American influence, access and long-term trust,” the “spread of American-style nation-states, and the destruction of their challengers, matches the realistic interests of citizens in the United States.”

via Liberty’s Surest Guardian — By Jeremi Suri — Book Review – NYTimes.com.

The Importance of Trust in the US/Cuba Case

The idea of “trust” has been extolled by political theorist Francis Fukuyama as “a community’s shared expectation of honest, cooperative behavior outside the family) and social capital (the values created by tradition, religion, or other means).”    Trust plays a critical role in diplomacy–as best evidenced in the negative sense by the powerful undermining effect of Wikileaks.

If you have ever wondered “how hard could it be for two countries to develop trust” consider the latest setback in Richardson’s unofficial visit to retrieve a USAID contractor held by the Cuban government.  (We can assume–as David Brooks eloquently writes–that setting government policy and measuring the benefit is difficult.)  The bottom line is that country-to-country relationships are complicated, too.

“Neither side has shown the slightest interest in learning from experience and have demonstrated repeatedly the tragic way in which both sides are condemned to repeat their mistakes,” said Robert A. Pastor, a professor at American University who advises former President Jimmy Carter on Latin America. “It’s not just the Obama people. It’s the new people under Raúl Castro.”

via Bill Richardson Criticizes Cuba After Failed Talks on Alan Gross – NYTimes.com.

Why WikiLeaks Is Bad for Scholars – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Even though this sounds like a nice solution for IR scholars, Drezner later comes down on the side that WikiLeaks are bad for scholarship overall.

International-relations experts writing about recent events suffer a handicap that other scholars avoid: Information that can make or break our arguments is often classified. Most governments keep foreign-policy memoranda classified for decades. We can and do rely on other sources to “process-trace” decisions on foreign policy, including news reporting, interviews with policy makers, memoirs, and the occasional Bob Woodward book. After 25 years or so, most of the key documents are declassified and published in Foreign Relations of the United States, a many-volume compendium of primary-source documents. Until then, however, scholars wonder if there are top-secret memos somewhere that vindicate or vitiate our hypotheses.Seen in this light, WikiLeaks clearly has the potential to be a game changer.

via Why WikiLeaks Is Bad for Scholars – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Fareed Zakaria roundtable on “What Makes a Good Diplomat?”

A notable discussion with some useful insights on Richard Holbrooke’s career and how an “un-diplomatic” master of policy and process operated in Vietnam, Af-Pak, Washington, and the world.

via Video – Fareed Zakaria GPS –  CNN.com. (start at 22″ mark in the video feed.)

The Age of Possibility – NYTimes.com

Do you wonder what era we’re in now?  From Post-Cold War to Globalization to 9/11 and the “War on Terror”?  The IHT has an interesting series, with Roger Cohen leading off:

The essential global divide today is between a worried, depressed and disoriented West (where free trade is framed as loss of jobs) and the buoyant, questing and increasingly confident emergent world of nations like Brazil and Turkey and South Africa. The West suffers from a nagging feeling its time has passed; outside it many countries believe their time is now — or near.

Although there’s talk in the West of a new Age of Anxiety, the neurosis is in fact fairly narrowly confined. True, the unease lies in what is still by far the world’s largest economy — the United States — and is shared by the European Union.

via The Age of Possibility – NYTimes.com.

Know Your History “Great Diplo-Scams,” David Kenner | Foreign Policy

The United States was just bamboozled by a con artist purporting to be a high-ranking Taliban official. Here are five other unbelievable and embarrassing historical diplomatic frauds.

via The Fake Taliban and Other Great Diplo-Scams – By David Kenner | Foreign Policy.

What the new Woodrow Wilson haters don’t understand. – By David Greenberg – Slate Magazine

Woodrow Wilson is not the enemy.

Not surprisingly, much of the brief against Wilson is not just bad as an interpretation of the facts but also demonstrably inaccurate. With the recent spike in Wilson-hating, correctors of the record are emerging from their carrels; Wilson biographer John Milton Cooper, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, and others have picked apart Beck’s more outré Wilson-centered fantasies, while Dana Milbank has had fun shooting fish in Beck’s cracker-barrel history. In moments of candor, Beck himself all but owns up to his longstanding ignorance. On one program he seemed unsure whether Birth of a Nation was “the first big silent movie” or “the first silent movie,” and said he’d read that it was “based on Wilson’s writings”—something one of his guests, uneasily, said he hadn’t “verified.” (For the record, Griffith borrowed some language from Wilson’s History of the American People for the title cards, but the movie was based on a contemporary novel, The Clansman, and Wilson’s take on Reconstruction and the Ku Klux Klan was much more moderate than the film’s.) “Two years ago,” Beck confessed on another occasion—before he read conservative writers like Ronald J. Pestritto who are deeply hostile to Wilson’s progressivism—”I knew nothing about Woodrow Wilson.” If he now fashions himself wiser, it remains a hastily acquired expertise.

via What the new Woodrow Wilson haters don’t understand. – By David Greenberg – Slate Magazine.

Joe Stiglitz on the new world economy – War Room – Salon.com

The much-discussed, oft-prophesied “end of American influence”:

“The U.S. was the superpower not only militarily, but economically. That position is not likely to be restored”

via Joe Stiglitz on the new world economy – War Room – Salon.com.