It’s a pleasure to review work of colleagues seriously grappling with the contemporary world order.  Back in March I reviewed Bruce Jones’s examination of the global order at the point just prior to the publication of his new book – Still Our To Lead. Since that time a number of other close colleagues have had a chance to weigh in on his world view and I thought I’d double back to look at their perspectives and revisit my own.

Continue reading →

Who said geopolitics went away?  Well a number of international relations experts imply this in their various announcements that geopolitics has returned.   One of those most loudly trumpeting this view is Walter Russell Mead, the Editor-at- Large of the American Interest.  In his most recent piece in Foreign Affairs he declares:

But Westerners should never have expected old-fashioned geopolitics to go away. They did so only because they fundamentally misread what the collapse of the Soviet Union meant” But geopolitics never went away, notwithstanding there was a great deal of attention focused on the global economy – particularly in the light of the 2008 global financial crisis.

Continue reading →

Great power rivalry has forcefully reappeared.  It is a jolt for anyone that follows international governance to watch the Russian actions in the Crimea and to hear the assertions and rationalizations by Russia’s President Putin concerning Russian annexation of the Crimea.

Continue reading →