A shameless self-promotion post

I had a busy summer

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

I appeared on Morning Joe this AM to talk about this column from last week and also how Vladimir Putin’s prosecution of his invasion of Ukraine seems to have devolved into issuing nuclear threats and killing Ukrainian civilians. And while not everyone was pleased with my appearance, it went okay.

It occurred to me, however, that in the time since I last wrote for the Washington Post and now, I’ve published a bunch of stuff in multiple venues. One of the advantages of doing that when I was writing Spoiler Alerts was that I was usually able to link a WaPo column to a longer publication, thus sparing me the necessity of ginning up another column idea.

I’ll be doing that on Substack now — I kinda already have with some stuff — but consider this column a quick recap of everything I’ve written over the last four months. Sort of a “Previously, on Drezner’s World….” thing.

THE NEW EDITION OF THE ZOMBIE BOOK

Every time I think I’m done with the living dead, they pull me back in and try to bite me. The first edition of Theories of International Politics and Zombies was published in 2011; the Revived Edition (my favorite title ever) came out in 2014. I thought that was enough, but the coronavirus pandemic and my new End of the World class necessitated an Apocalypse Edition. Consider it a dark, gritty reboot of the textbook: the cover is black and everything!

So what’s changed. The neoconservative chapter has been excised in favor of a chapter entitled “Subalternality and the Living Dead” on postcolonial perspectives. There are a few updates on the zombie genre. The other major change is considering in each chapter how responses to COVID-19 fit with what we could expect from the rise of the living dead.

THE SCHOLARLY PUBLICATIONS

“International Relations:  The ‘How Not To’ Guide.” International Affairs 98 (September 2022).  (co-authored with Amrita Narlikar).

“How Not to Sanction.” International Affairs 98 (September 2022).  

I explained the thinking behind the special issue of International Affairs (accessible to anyone for at least the next month) that Amrita Narlikar and I co-edited here. I summarized my own essay on sanctions here.

“The Death of the Democratic Advantage?” International Studies Review 24 (June 2022). Part of the a special issue of that journal regarding the effects of globalization and populism on democracy. Here’s my pessimistic abstract:

International relations scholarship has posited multiple pathways through which democracies accrue advantages in world politics. These range from enhanced warfighting capabilities to sovereign borrowing capacity to more constructive cooperation with like-minded regimes. A series of crises over the past generation, however, have called these advantages into question. This paper re-examines the key conceptual pillars underlying the democratic advantage in world politics. Scholars have posited that democracies possess inherent advantages in credible commitment mechanisms and public goods provision. The rise of populism has eroded these underlying advantages. Furthermore, the rise of China threatens to hamper the network effects that enhance democratic flourishing at the global level. Whether the democratic advantage is real and sustainable should be one of the defining political science research programs of this century.

THE LONGER ESSAYS

“The Perils of Pessimism: Why Anxious Nations are Dangerous Nations,” Foreign Affairs 101 (July/August 2022):  34-43. This is part of a longer, book-length project I am working on about the relationship between power and time in world politics. In brief: countries with pessimistic expectations about the future are likely to have more circumscribed worldviews and narrower definitions of power than states with more positive expectations about the future. In this article, I warn that a world in which all the great powers are pessimistic is the most unstable one, and we appear to be headed for that world.

“Goodbye, Globalization?” Reason, October 2022. I am not a fan of the new bipartisan embrace of economic nationalism. Consider this essay my cri de coeur on this point:

The souring of the 21st century has triggered accusations and recriminations about who bears responsibility for the end of "the end of history." Free trade advocates note the enormous benefits that economic liberalization has brought to the global economy and decry the rise of neo-mercantilism in the United States and elsewhere. But free trade's critics offer a challenging rebuttal: They argue the last two decades have exposed the internal contradictions of neoliberalism. As they see it, we're witnessing the natural response of societies buffeted by the vicissitudes of the free market; economic openness sowed the seeds of its own destruction.

There is a kernel of truth to this. But a kernel of truth is not the whole truth, and globalization's proponents do not need to completely rethink their priors. The benefits of trade and international engagement persist even in the current era.

Advocates of free markets still have a strong case to make, and they need to make it. This particular argument against an open global economy has been made before. When it triumphed, the result was world war.

Also, not gonna lie, I had fun writing about Karl Polanyi for the more Hayekian audience of Reason.

THE SHORTER ESSAYS

“Netflix’s Resident Evil Is Surprisingly Good. There’s One Scene That Proves It,” Slate, July 22, 2022. What can I say, I need to keep up with the zombie zeitgeist. This show is not good, exactly, but the casting of Lance Reddick makes it a damn sight better than a lot of the genre. So this piece defended the show from the haters and losers.

Naturally, Netflix then cancelled it, demonstrating my enormous cultural cachet.

“Why is Armenia So Close to Russia and Iran?” Foreign Policy, August 11, 2022. An essay about the one region in the world where Russia is still viewed as a guarantor of stability, and why Armenia views Russia that way.

“Russians believe they can win the war. Here are 3 reasons why,” Vox, September 20, 2022. As co-director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Fletcher School, I have had multiple conversations with Russian academics since the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Getting a sense of the worldview of the Russian elite is valuable. In this essay I discussed some of their assumptions about the future and whether those assumptions have any connection with reality.

“Turns Out COVID-19 Didn’t Reshape Geopolitics,” Foreign Policy, September 29, 2022. The good editors at Foreign Policy asked me to revisit my 2020 claims that the pandemic would not transform world politics. Read the essay to see whether Present Dan agrees with Past Dan.

I think that’s enough self-aggrandizement for one day. Enjoy!