The ultimate taboo

He means 'propping up', right? theguardian.com/education/2024…

ISA fever begins, but in the UK a lot of scholars won’t be going because of budgets. So I offer this: if you are not able to go to ISA, and want to present papers, I will facilitate a gathering of UK IR types. Just comment with your paper title, spread widely.

To be fair to the AI, it’s nailed the structure of many a first year undergrad essay

If you missed it, you can now watch Simon Curtis and his co-author Ian Klaus discuss their new book, The Belt and Road City wilsoncenter.org/event/belt-and…

'Be public-facing' they said 🙄

Except post-cold war admins said exactly the same thing. Clinton tied peace dividend talk to NATO enlargement as a way of getting europe to do more , Bob Gates said the same thing as def sec under Bush *and* Obama. The ‘problem’ is not historical/political, it is structural.

1. Soft power is a relational concept not a capability concept.
2. The determinant of the relationship what others think, not what we do.
3. You can’t cherry pick cultural showcases and ignore embarrassing displays of small-mindedness that have characterised UK policy in 2023.

Rest assured, no-one in the UK is reading references for masters programmes.

It was a real pleasure to read Alexandros’ thesis; and he produced a fantastic defence. If you’re coming up on a viva, Alexandros’ approach should be a model: be confident in your contribution, but also know the hills you don’t need to die on. Top work.

Preparing proposal for EISA workshop in Istanbul, July next year: 'Polarities and Regions: Reconceptualising Power, Reimagining Territoriality.' Keen to include papers on polarity, networks, connectivity, infrastructure, order etc. DM if you want in w. title/abstract!