“The international world of states and their modern system is a literary realm,” writes Charles Hill in Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order (Yale University Press, 2010). “It is where the greatest issues of the human condition are played out.” A distinguished
Two general schools of thought regarding Crowe and his famous Memorandum have emerged. Some scholars paint Crowe as a latter-day Cassandra who foresaw the structural trends that were hurling the two powers toward confrontation and articulated the necessary course of action, which his government failed to undertake until it was too late. Harvard’s Graham Allison compares the Crowe Memorandum to the writings of Thucydides, whose History of the Peloponnesian War identified the dilemma that a dominant power faces when it must either accede to the rise of a challenger or risk eventual war with it. The other school of thought argues that Crowe delivered only self-fulfilling prophecies by helping to institutionalize an attitude of anti-German animus. One prominent German historian even dubbed Crowe the “evil spirit of the Foreign Office.” With these two schools of thought forming in play, the bulk of the literature on Crowe has accordingly sought to determine the precise extent and manner of his influence on British-German relations both before and after the First World War.
The history of COIN doctrine can be traced across Francophone Africa and Southeast Asia to better understand how it is used or misused today. Perhaps because many counterinsurgency tactics have evolved and been adapted away from those used in the nineteenth century, analysis of contemporary COIN often ignores the doctrine’s colonial origins. Doing so, however, fails to consider how the foundational assumptions of the doctrine may well still limit its successful application in the twenty-first century. This essay, accordingly, sets out to unearth the possible repercussions of adopting the heart of a doctrine without a firm understanding of its initial purpose, seeking to understand whether that is compatible with today’s geostrategic objectives.
The process of receiving diplomatic recognition in Europe, even in the best of circumstances, was often complex and convoluted. Each country had its own traditions and procedures. It was easy for an envoy, especially a novice, to commit some indiscretion that would offend or at least delay the proceedings. John Quincy was determined to tread carefully.
In December 1816, John Quincy Adams, the U.S. Minister to Great Britain, responded to a request from Christopher Hughes, a young American, about how to prepare (specifically, to study) for a career in diplomacy. (Hughes had been one of the secretaries to the American Peace Commission in Ghent in 1814, where he had developed a good relationship
When faced with an insurgency, how do we learn about it? Soldiers and officers need practical advice, and often show close interest in past practices which clearly succeeded or clearly failed. On the other hand, historians and cultural specialists have a bent for insisting on the uniqueness of a thing. Questions and challenges come with any recommendation
Professor Harold W. (Bill) Rood (1922-2011) taught courses in International Relations, Diplomacy and Military Power, American Foreign Policy, Constitutional development in the West, and Politics and Technology, at Claremont McKenna (Men’s) College and Claremont Graduate School (now University), and in the Defense and Strategic Studies programs at
It might be said that Ulysses S. Grant’s memoir killed him. The Civil War General and former President of the United States had no intention of writing a memoir. In a life so full of personal and professional crises, one final personal crisis compelled Grant to break his silence. A twenty nine-year-old charlatan, Ferdinand Ward, had defrauded Grant
John Quincy Adams was America’s most accomplished diplomat and effective Secretary of State. We know much of him and his times from his voluminous writings, which collectively constitute an American Classic. We offer here a day-to-day chronicle of the opening of his public career from 1794-1801, which will be posted sequentially in segments. This represents the first segment, or "dispatch."
John Quincy Adams was born into politics and war. As a small child in Boston, John Quincy lived in a town under British occupation. From the heights near the family farm in Braintree, he and his mother Abigail witnessed the distant fire and smoke of the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775. John Adams, while serving in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, sent home to the family detailed reports of the move towards independence; and of the military resistance and diplomatic steps needed to sustain the revolution. He encouraged John Quincy and his other children to contemplate these profound events and to prepare themselves, as future statesmen, to meet the challenges to the new country.