Photo by Elimende Inagella on Unsplash Last fall I was naively sanguine about Congress eventually authorizing more U.S. aid for Ukraine. I wrote, “most American voters do not seem terribly motivated to oppose Ukraine aid. This matters because most of official Washington — i.e., the Biden White House, Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans, House Democrats, and even a sizeable chunk of House Republicans — support aiding Ukraine for perfectly cromulent national security reasons.” Of course, what followed was weeks of chaos in the House of Representatives after Kevin McCarthy was ousted. That was ..read more

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash I have been mulling over the sources of power in world politics for *checks notes* pretty much my entire academic career. One of the obvious ways that the nature of power can shift is through technological change. As cyberspace has become a new arena of governance, power, and conflict in this century, there have been debates about “technopolarity” and “weaponized interdependence” and even the question of whether it represents the end of power. All of this is a windup to saying that I have a new review essay out in Foreign Policy of two recent, must-read boo ..read more

Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash [WARNING: THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD.] Last year the trailer for Alex Garland’s Civil War was so disturbing that it inspired the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World to write about it: Drezner’s World is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I saw Civil War last weekend, and you can hear some of my thoughts about it on this episode of Space the Nation with Ana Marie Cox (who loved the film so much she has started her own Substack about it). Civil War Every Day All about Al ..read more

Photo by Taylor Brandon on Unsplash Earlier this week the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World expressed a wee bit of pessimism about the ratcheting up of Israeli-Iranian tensions following Tehran’s missile attack on Israel: What concerns me is that the key decision-maker in all of this remains Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, a politician who was unpopular before the October 7th Hamas attack and has become even more unpopular since the attack. Netanyahu is a political survivor über alles and Iran has just thrown him a lifeline…. Benjamin Netanyahu will always try to gamble for his politi ..read more

Photo by Diego González on Unsplash On Monday I went on CNBC’s The Exchange to talk about the current state of Iran-Israel tensions and what, if anything, the Biden administration can do about it. Here’s the clip in its entirety: Have you ever wondered what a commentator is thinking as they are on television? With this media hit fresh in my mind, the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World thought it might be instructive to provide a running commentary of these five minutes and 46 seconds of video: PRE-AIR: I an contacted about appearing soon after Iran launched its missiles. I say yes b ..read more

Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash In retrospect it was fitting that I was watching Alex Garland’s Civil War as Iran launched more than 150 ballistic and cruise missiles at Israel, an attack that resulted in “very little damage” but was nonetheless a big f**king deal. The missile strikes were a significant escalation of the Iranian-Israeli conflict from warfare-by-proxy and warfare-in-third-party countries to an out-and-out direct attack from Iranian soil onto Israeli soil. Garland’s film is about a lot of things — more on this later in the week — but a key theme is that while some wars m ..read more

Photo by UX Gun on Unsplash Noah Smith has a very, very long essay about how the run-up to the Second World War seems eerily similar to the current geopolitical moment, and not enough Americans are concerned about that. He makes some cogent points about the possibility of the Sino-Russian entente creating problems for the rest of the world, though he’s underestimating some countervailing trends that are also worth noting. Still, Smith’s opening paragraph caught me short: Being the guy who’s always shouting about impending disaster is frustrating, thankless work. If nobody listens to you, an ..read more

Photo by Jorge Alcala on Unsplash One of the hidden trends in American foreign policy — one that I stressed in The Toddler in Chief — has been the ebbing of congressional influence over U.S. foreign policy. “Ebbing” does not mean “nonexistent,” as the debate over aid to Ukraine or the congressional role in economic sanctions would tell you. When money matters, Congress gets interested, as Helen Milner and Dustin Tingley explained in Sailing The Water’s Edge. As I noted in “Immature Leadership,” however, Congress has grown increasingly reluctant to take any responsibility when it comes to for ..read more

Photo by Jongsun Lee on Unsplash As multiple wags on social media noted over the weekend, a thousand years ago the combination of an earthquake and a total eclipse would have been enough to cause people to believe the end times were at hand. Those were the measures of geopolitical risk back in the day. In 2024, however, there are still some clear signs that the world is becoming a riskier, more dangerous place. One tell is that some countries are no longer treating foreign embassies and consulates as sovereign territory, which seems like a pretty big deal. Another is that Donald Trump might ..read more

Photo by Tina Hartung on Unsplash As the 2024 general election campaign heats up, there is a lot of loose talk about how Donald Trump is less coherent now than he was back in 2016. The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World is not super-keen on that premise, since: Trump was not exactly coherent or knowledgeable back in 2016. I recall an entire discourse about whether Trump was literate back when he was president; Despite Trump’s infantile understanding of policy, there are a few throughlines that enable up to think about what his second term would look like. He will want to fulfill ..read more