In Australia’s Defence Strategy: Evaluating Alternatives for a Contested Asia (Melbourne University Press, 2017), Adam Lockyer , a Senior Lecturer in Security Studies at Macquarie University, explores how to use theory to evaluate defense strategies. He applies his analytical framework to several options facing Australia’s defense strategists. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/na...
May 14, 2017•17 min
Phil Gurski ‘s Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) is his second recent monograph on terrorism, and another useful resource for practitioners and non-specialists alike. Written in an approachable, grounded style, Western Foreign Fighters is both topical and novel; its comparative analysis of volunteers’ participation in non-sanctioned conflicts both jihadist and secular is especially notable. Gurski’s measured, thoughtful ana...
Apr 17, 2017•54 min
In Russia’s Securitization of Chechnya: How War Became Acceptable (Routledge, 2017), a study of the transformations of the image of Chechnya in the Russian public sphere, Julie Wilhelmsen performs a post-structuralist revision of the Copenhagen schools concept of securitization a process by which state actors transform subjects into matters of security which allows for the application of extraordinary security measures. Looking at the case of the Russian-Chechen wars, Wilhelmsen suggests that se...
Feb 14, 2017•51 min
In the forty years between 1881 and 1921, the United States Navy went from a small force focused on coastal defense to one of the world’s largest fleets. In Congress Buys a Navy: Politics, Economics, and the Rise of American Naval Power, 1881-1921 (Naval Institute Press, 2016), Paul Pedisich describes the role that the legislative branch played in making this happen. At the start of the period, the Navy possessed a more decentralized organization than today, with the bureau chiefs who ran it mor...
Jan 30, 2017•1 hr 12 min
The 9/11 attacks revealed a breakdown in American intelligence and there was a demand for individuals and institutions to find out what went wrong, correct it, and prevent another catastrophe like 9/11 from ever happening again. In Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State (Crown Publishers, 2016) Karen J. Greenberg discusses how the architects of the War on Terror transformed American justice into an arm of the Security State. She tells the story of law and policy after 9/11, introducing ...
Jan 27, 2017•1 hr 3 min
In Misunderstanding Terrorism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) Marc Sageman provides an important reassessment of the global neojihadi threat to the West. He argues that inaccurate evaluations of the threat and overreactions to a limited threat have transformed U.S. society. By constructing a model to explain the turn to political violence, Sageman shows how a misunderstanding of terrorism in the West has dramatically inflated fear of the actual danger posed by neojihadis. This has led t...
Dec 14, 2016•54 min
On any mature view, war is horrific. Naturally, there is a broad range of fundamental ethical questions regarding war. According to most moral theories, war is nonetheless sometimes permitted, and perhaps even obligatory. But even an obligatory war may be fought in a morally impermissible way. So it makes sense to distinguish the moral questions concerning the decision to wage war from the questions concerning the conduct of soldiers, armies, and states in the course of fighting a war. There is ...
Dec 01, 2016•1 hr 5 min
What happens during a presidential transition should a disaster occur? Who is in charge of addressing the 3am phone call, the outgoing or incoming administration? Tevi Troy is the author of Shall We Wake the President?: Two Centuries of Disaster Management from the Oval Office (Lyons Press, 2016). Troy is the CEO of the American Health Policy Institute and former deputy secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services. In Shall We Wake the President?, Troy focuses on the evolving role...
Nov 14, 2016•20 min
In Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling Across the Rio Grande (University of Texas Press, 2015) Professor George T. Diaz examines a subject that has received scant attention by historians, but one that is at the heart of contemporary debates over U.S.-Mexico immigration and border enforcement. Focusing on trans-border communities, like Laredo/Nuevo Laredo, Diaz details the interplay between state efforts to regulate cross-border trade and the border people that subverted state and federal l...
Nov 08, 2016•50 min
Matthew Dallek is the author of Defenseless Under the Night: The Roosevelt Years and the Origins of Homeland Security (Oxford University Press, 2016). Dallek is associate professor of political management at The George Washington University. In Defenseless Under the Night, Dallek tells the fascinating history behind America’s first federal office of homeland security created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt appointed New York Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia as director and First Lady Elean...
Oct 24, 2016•28 min
In The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), Terri Diane Halperin has provided a political history of the 1790s and explained the origins of one of the most contentious free speech events in American history. The Alien and Seditions Acts, which were actually four laws enacted in 1798, dramatically tested the principles of free speech in the young republic. Halperin explains the political origins of the controversy, which began in the ea...
Sep 26, 2016•58 min•Ep. 42
A decade and a half of exhausting wars, punishing economic setbacks, and fast-rising rivals has called into question America’s fundamental position and purpose in world politics. Will the US continue to be the only superpower in the international system? Should it continue advancing the world-shaping grand strategy it has followed since the dawn of the Cold War? Or should it “come home” and focus on its internal problems? The recent resurgence of isolationist impulses has made the politics surro...
Sep 16, 2016•1 hr 7 min
It can be tempting to generalize certain attributes of schools as either being good or bad. Magnet and charter schools are often characterized as being inherently good. They usually offer special programs that ground all of their instruction. Having that choice is appealing to many families, and why not? Someone must have put a lot of thought into creating that special program, convincing stakeholders to open a school, and persuading teachers to build their curriculum around the program often ti...
Sep 07, 2016•42 min
As evidenced by many of the conversations featured on this podcast, scholarship on the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands composes a significant and influential genre within the field of U.S. Western History and Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies. Geographically rooted in the U.S. Southwest and Mexico, or Greater Mexico, publications in this subfield explore a broad range of themes including: migration and labor, citizenship and race, culture and identity formation, gender and sexuality, politics and social justic...
Aug 23, 2016•1 hr 8 min
While the world’s attention is focused on the nuclearization of North Korea and Iran and the nuclear brinkmanship between India and Pakistan, China is believed to have doubled the size of its nuclear arsenal, making it the forgotten nuclear power, as described in Foreign Affairs. Susan Turner Haynes (Professor of Political Science, Lipscomb University) analyzes China’s buildup and its diversification of increasingly mobile, precise, and sophisticated nuclear weapons in her new book Chinese Nucle...
Jul 01, 2016•57 min
Lance deHaven-Smith ‘s Conspiracy Theory in America (University of Texas Press, 2014) investigates how the Founders’ hard-nosed realism about the likelihood of elite political misconduct articulated in the Declaration of Independence has been replaced by today’s blanket condemnation of conspiracy beliefs as ludicrous by definition. Lance deHaven-Smith reveals that the term “conspiracy theory” entered the American lexicon of political speech to deflect criticism of the Warren Commission and trace...
Jul 01, 2016•1 hr 36 min
In The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews (Princeton University Press, 2016), Michael Barnett , University Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at the George Washington University, explores the tension American Jews have felt between cosmopolitanism and tribalism in their approach to global affairs. Barnett explains how American Jews’ desire for inclusiveness and group survival forms a political theology of prophetic Judaism, which has gu...
Jun 27, 2016•34 min
Ho-fung Hung ‘s new book has two main goals: to to outline the historical origins of Chinas capitalist boom and the social and political formations in the 1980s that gave rise to this boom, and to explore the global effects of Chinas capitalist boom and the limit of that boom. In doing so, The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World (Columbia UP, 2016) offers a timely and provocative account of the emergence and transformations of capitalism in modern China, and of the consequences of its ...
May 18, 2016•1 hr 9 min
In Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East (Columbia University Press, 2015), Irene L. Gendzier , Professor Emerita in the Department of Political Science at Boston University, examines new evidence of the role of oil politics in the founding of U.S. policy towards Israel. Gendzier discusses and contextualizes the response of U.S, policy makers to the Holocaust and the plight of European Jewish refugees, and also provides a nuanced account of...
May 18, 2016•39 min
Since its coinage in mid-19th century Germany, Realpolitik has proven both elusive and protean. To some, it represents the best approach to meaningful change and political stability in a world buffeted by uncertainty and rapid transformation. To others, it encapsulates an attitude of cynicism and cold calculation, a transparent and self-justifying policy exercised by dominant nations over weaker. Remolded across generations and repurposed to its political and ideological moment, Realpolitik rema...
Apr 30, 2016•1 hr 1 min
When former Mexican president Lazaro Cardenas traveled to Havana in 1959 to celebrate the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, he stood shoulder to shoulder with Fidel Castro in front of a crowd of thousands, providing the early sketches of an image of unquestioned Mexican support for revolutionary Cuba that would persist over the next few decades. Mexico was the only country in the Western Hemisphere that defied the United States and refused to break off relations with Castro’s government, and succ...
Feb 07, 2016•56 min
Interrogation, Intelligence and Security: Controversial British Techniques (Manchester University Press, 2015) by Samantha Newbery examines issues of history, efficacy, and policy in her thorough examination of British authorities’ use of the “Five Techniques” in Aden, Northern Ireland, and Iraq. Dr. Newbery carefully scrutinizes the historical record, and offers a balanced perspective on controversial interrogation activities throughout the monograph. I look forward to reading her most recent p...
Dec 17, 2015•32 min
David E. Hoffman ‘s The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal (Doubleday, 2015) was first brought to my attention in a superb interview conducted with the author at The International Spy Museum. The story immediately captivated my attention and I realized this would be a perfect book to feature on New Books in National Security. I was not disappointed; Mr. Hoffman is as captivating a speaker as he is a writer, capable of weaving together immaculately recreated histo...
Nov 15, 2015•55 min
Peter A. Shulman ‘s new book is a fascinating history of the emergence of a connection between energy (in the form of coal), national interests, and security in nineteenth century America. Coal and Empire: The Birth of Energy Security in Industrial America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) focuses on three groups who helped shape America’s relationship between energy and security: naval administrators and officers, politicians and policy makers, and scientists and engineers. In clear and pe...
Nov 09, 2015•1 hr 12 min
What’s missing from our understanding of the role of dancers in the context of American Cultural Diplomacy? Clare Croft ‘s first book, Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange (Oxford University Press, 2015) provides a range of thoughtful, well-researched responses to this question. By exploring the ways in which dancer’s bodies were operationalized and “deployed” on behalf of the US State Department during the Cold War as well as at the dawn of the 21st century, Dancers ...
Oct 27, 2015•48 min
“There was China before there was an America, and it is because of China that America came to be.” According to Gordon H. Chang ‘s new book, the idea of “China” became “an ingredient within the developing identity of America itself.” Written for a broad audience, Chang’s Fateful Ties: A History of America’s Preoccupation with China (Harvard University Press, 2015) traces the intertwined relationships of the US and China from their might as world powers in the eighteenth century to today. Moving ...
Aug 30, 2015•1 hr 11 min
How should we look back at President Bill Clinton’s foreign policy legacy? As muddled? Visionary? Or simply uninspired? To answer these questions, James D. Boys has just written Clinton’s Grand Strategy: U.S. Foreign Policy in a Post-Cold War World (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Boys is associate professor of International Political Studies at Richmond University, UK, and visiting senior research fellow at King’s College London, UK. Wedged between two Bushes, Bill Clinton bursts onto the national ...
May 25, 2015•37 min
The functioning of the global economy remains as relevant a topic as ever before. Commentators continue to debate the causes and consequences of the financial crisis that hit the United States from 2007-2008. They also continue to ask questions such as: How long will China keep purchasing the treasury bonds that the U.S. government needs to help finance its ever-increasing debt? Just how long can the dollar remain the global reserve currency before being replaced by another national currency or ...
May 18, 2015•1 hr 14 min
Alfred Thayer Mahan and William Sims – two of the most important figures in American Naval History – are the subject of our discussion with Lieutenant Commander Benjamin (“BJ”) Armstrong. A doctoral candidate in the Department of War Studies at Kings College London, Armstrong is the author of two books collecting and analyzing critical essays by both men: Twenty-First-Century Mahan: Sound Military Conclusions for the Modern Era (Naval Institute Press, 2013) and Twenty-First-Century Sims: Innovat...
Apr 25, 2015•1 hr 15 min
You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who knows anything about European history–and European diplomatic history in particular–who doesn’tknow a little something about the Congress of Vienna. That “little something” is probably that the Congress fostered a post-war (Napoleonic War, that is) settlement called the “Concert of Europe” that lasted, roughly, until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. That’s a good sound bite. But, as Brian Vick shows in his lively, fascinating book The Congress of Vien...
Mar 14, 2015•1 hr 4 min
