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Trump's accidental presidency is an ideal test of the strength and robustness of the international-relations canon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "second nuclear age" created a renaissance in theorizing about nuclear weapons with conclusions and speculation that were uniformly pessimistic. However, the second nuclear age is likely to be substantially less dangerous than the first. Why, then, does pessimism dominate? This article evaluates the literature of the second nuclear age and tries to understand why pessimism, and even nostalgia for the Cold War, is so common among its theorists. Drawing heavily on insights from psychology, it explains the origins of such nostalgia and explains why for so many people the past always seems better than the present, even when--as in the case of nuclear weapons--it is, by all empirical measures, far better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Trump and China will test the international order, books by Paul K. MacDonald & Joseph M. Parent and Aaron M. Zack suggest systemic stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

His eponymous wall notwithstanding, Hadrian was a prudent realist who put reason ahead of fear and interest ahead of glory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a few persistent, high-profile conflicts in the Middle East, the world is experiencing an era of unprecedented peace and stability. Many scholars have offered explanations for this “New Peace,” to borrow Steven Pinker's phrase, but few have devoted much time to the possibility that US hegemony has brought stability to the system. This paper examines the theoretical, empirical, and psychological foundations of the hegemonic-stability explanation for the decline in armed conflict. Those foundations are rather thin, as it turns out, and a review of relevant insights from political psychology suggests that unipolarity and stability are probably epiphenomenal. The New Peace can in all likelihood continue without US dominance and should persist long after unipolarity comes to an end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pathological exaggeration of the enemy is more common than complacency, and has inspired overreaction, blunder and national ruin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anarchy was coming to Africa, Robert Kaplan warned in 1994, and a surge in conflict initially seemed to confirm that prediction. With less fanfare, however, after the year 2000, conflict in Africa declined, probably to the lowest levels ever. Recent fighting in Libya, Mali, South Sudan and elsewhere has prompted a new wave of ‘Africa falling apart’ concerns. This article reviews the history and data of conflict in Africa, from pre-colonial times to the present. Historical comparison and quantitative analysis based on the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) and Major Episodes of Political Violence (MEPV) datasets on the 1961–2013 period show that Africa has experienced a remarkable decline in warfare, whether measured in number of conflicts or fatalities. Warfare is a relatively low risk to the lives of most Africans. The years 2010–2013 saw an increase of 35 per cent in African battle deaths over 2005–2010, but they still are 87 per cent lower than the 1990–1999 average. Changes in external support and intervention, and the spread of global norms regarding armed conflict, have been most decisive in reducing the levels of warfare in the continent. Consequently, there is no Africa exception to the systemic shift towards lower levels of armed conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American ability to think clearly about strategy did not survive the Cold War. As a result, the US worries more, and spends more, than is necessary to achieve its goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major U.S. allies seem to be content to let the United States shoulder the burden associated with assuring the security of the West and promoting freedom and democracy around the world, passively free riding on the security provided by the U.S. taxpayer. A different explanation is available, if rarely discussed: Perhaps the Europeans great powers are not merely passive consumers of free U.S. security guarantees; perhaps instead the decisions they have made with regard to their own defense are part of active, coherent, logical, rational grand strategies. Perhaps the choice to pursue strategic restraint is not due to the stability provided by U.S. hegemony but a conscious response to declining threat. This article seeks to explain the grand strategies of some of the great and potentially great powers of the post–Cold War world. Far from being irresponsible international actors, our allies are acting quite rationally in a world virtually absent of serious threat, at least compared to all those that have come before. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses a forum concerning a revolution in international relation theory. The current state of the argument that the great powers have put warfare behind them in their interactions with one another is explored. The theoretical implication of the obsolescence-of-major-war argument was also discussed.

The fall of the Berlin Wall inspired speculation about why the Cold War came to such an abrupt and shocking end, why no school of thought anticipated its demise, and what the event meant for international relations theory ( ). A set of articles simultaneously emerged purporting to identify the most salient aspects of the new system—structural and otherwise—and to anticipate the direction in which it was heading. This essay begins a reexamination of some of those predictions, using the evidence that has accumulated over the decade and a half since the collapse of bipolarity to evaluate how early visions of the post-Cold War international system have matched the events that followed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the need to understand World War II and the Holocaust together. Ways in which the war triggered the Holocaust; War's position in the center of genocide; Examination of how the Germans could have come to the conclusion that the Jews were their enemy; Ways in which the Final Solution to the Jewish problem was the most incomprehensible portion of a greater tragedy.

Examines the influence of the Heartland theory on geopolitics of Sir Halford Mackinder on the United States foreign policy. Definitions and three main uses of geopolitics; History of geopolitics in theory and practice; Advantages of central positioning on the Eurasian landmass; Reasons for geography's favoring of the Heartland theory.