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- Apr 18, 2019
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It's funny because I listen to podcasts by people working foreign policy/foreign affairs, international law, that crowd.
And every episode, bar none, is endless bemoaning of the ineffectiveness of the current global security structure, or the ability to enforce international law in non-abiding countries. The lack of political willingness to coalesce on international law. As though "well only if ever the EU could get together and do X." Yes, I know, boring stuff, yet I am a regular podcast listener.
Trump is an idiot, and a horrible leader, not least because he is horrible at running the country that he's actually elected to run. However, I think it hurts the credibility of those attacking Trump when the fail to recognize actions of his that are both task effective and generally popular.
A lot of the things that have happened, and not merely by Trump but in other corners of the globe, have brought substantially more geopolitical clarity than ambiguity. When it comes to Venezuela, this answers a lot of questions. People will say, well there are still so many questions, how to get from Point A of Jan 5 to Point B of democracy, what of governance, and dealing with the regime, and regional instability. And all those are legitimate questions, but it was even more unclear how to answer all of those questions with Maduro still being in power.
There is much more clarity today than there was a week ago. And certainly much more than has been brought about by publishing any book or paper on international relations. As a scholarly community, we tend to look down on "macho man foreign policy." But I don't know when we're going to look in the mirror and realize that the study of foreign policy has almost become a meme of itself. Where people give commentary on their own tendencies to do do nothing but wag the finger.
If the international rules-based order is failing, it's because it was ineffective. Whether or not the international rules-based order is failing is a book topic that will pay many mortgages. But if it fails, it will not be because the order was so wonderful, no matter how nostalgic we may feel about it.
And every episode, bar none, is endless bemoaning of the ineffectiveness of the current global security structure, or the ability to enforce international law in non-abiding countries. The lack of political willingness to coalesce on international law. As though "well only if ever the EU could get together and do X." Yes, I know, boring stuff, yet I am a regular podcast listener.
Trump is an idiot, and a horrible leader, not least because he is horrible at running the country that he's actually elected to run. However, I think it hurts the credibility of those attacking Trump when the fail to recognize actions of his that are both task effective and generally popular.
A lot of the things that have happened, and not merely by Trump but in other corners of the globe, have brought substantially more geopolitical clarity than ambiguity. When it comes to Venezuela, this answers a lot of questions. People will say, well there are still so many questions, how to get from Point A of Jan 5 to Point B of democracy, what of governance, and dealing with the regime, and regional instability. And all those are legitimate questions, but it was even more unclear how to answer all of those questions with Maduro still being in power.
There is much more clarity today than there was a week ago. And certainly much more than has been brought about by publishing any book or paper on international relations. As a scholarly community, we tend to look down on "macho man foreign policy." But I don't know when we're going to look in the mirror and realize that the study of foreign policy has almost become a meme of itself. Where people give commentary on their own tendencies to do do nothing but wag the finger.
If the international rules-based order is failing, it's because it was ineffective. Whether or not the international rules-based order is failing is a book topic that will pay many mortgages. But if it fails, it will not be because the order was so wonderful, no matter how nostalgic we may feel about it.