I was at a book party last night, and a colleague and I started talking about our favorite books in the field. I remarked that one of the odd things about IR (and most social science, for that matter) is that it is rarely entertaining. To be sure, a lot of the work is interesting, and when you read a really terrific book, there can be a genuine sense of intellectual excitement. But how often does one read a work of political science or international relations and find it a genuine pleasure to read? And in particular, how many scholars in the field of IR are truly amusing or entertaining writers?

I can't think of many. Make a list of the big names in the IR field: Waltz, Huntington, Mearsheimer, Nye, Jervis, Simmons, Wendt, Keohane, Krasner, Katzenstein, Waever, Sikkink, etc., etc. Most of them are lucid prose stylists, but with the partial exception of Waltz (who gets off some acerbic sallies on occasion), you'd hardly call any of them a particularly witty writer.

This may be partly due to the subject matter (it's tough to make a lot of jokes when you write about war and peace), but I think it also reflects the normal academic desire to Be Taken Seriously as a Social Scientist. Indeed, the conventions of most academic journals seem deliberately designed to encourage a dry, leaden prose style that is devoid of any personality whatsoever.

So here's my question: who are the most amusing, entertaining, or witty writers in the field of international relations and foreign policy? I don't mean books or aticles that are "funny" because they are wildly off-base; I mean scholars who are a joy to read because their prose is lively, they offer amusing asides, and maybe even manage a laugh-out-loud witticism on occasion. And to narrow the field a bit more, let's exclude journalists (who are rarely all that amusing but usually have livelier writing styles).

My nominees would be John Mueller, James Scott, and Thomas Schelling. Honorable mentions might go to Dan Drezner (for his book on zombies), and Geoffrey Blainey (for his The Causes of War, though Blainey is really a historian/journalist). My three main nominees are all serious academics with long records of scholarly achievement, but each of them is also a joy to read, in part because their prose styles are relaxed and unpretentious and because each is capable of genuine wit.

So nominations are now open. "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Who's the wittiest IR scholar of them all?"

This is a guest post by Sean Kay of Ohio Wesleyan University.

As the world goes green for St. Patrick' Day, it is good to reflect on what Ireland's experiences teach us. We might ask, why should a realist care about Ireland? What might be learned from the experiences of this small Island in the North Atlantic -- home to just 4.5 million people?

Realists care about strategy, of course, which is one good reason to ponder Irish history. Ireland was for centuries a key component of England's rear defense against the risk of foreign enemies. Realists also are keen to understand new tactics in warfare and anyone wishing to get a sense of how guerilla campaigns proceed -- and how state responses to them can backfire would be well advised to study Michael Collins and the Irish quest for independence. Add to that the personal risks to those who negotiate an exchange of land for peace -- Michael Collins to Yitzhak Rabin show this only too tragically. The Irish experience in managing its strategic relationship with Britain after independence -- by building tight transatlantic advocacy networks and by integrating into the European community -- also demonstrates how creative diplomacy can achieve major strategic goals.

Ireland is also an interesting case of a state applying realism and ideals in its foreign policy, a topic that realists and others have debated for decades. Ireland remained neutral in World War II because it wished to consolidate its independence and avoid conscription of its people into the British army. Nonetheless, Ireland cooperated in both overt and secret assistance to the allied powers -- likewise during the Cold War. Ireland also advocated the cause of self-determination for all nations at the United Nations -- out of moral sympathy, but also as a way to keep its own views towards Northern Ireland on the agenda of global politics. Ireland managed to show how small nations can lead on a range of issues from peacekeeping to nuclear proliferation. It is often forgotten, but the origins of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty can be found in speeches by the Irish foreign minister at the United Nations in the late 1950s.

Read on

This is the time of year when pundits (and party-goers) get asked to offer predictions for the New Year. I'm going to resist the temptation, because as Yogi Berra warned, "prediction is really hard, especially about the future." He was right.

In 1849, for example, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "war is on its last legs, and universal peace is as sure as is the prevalence of civilization over barbarism." In 1911, British scholar G.P. Gooch wrote that "even a successful conflict between states can bring no material gain. We can now look forward with something like confidence to the time when war between civilized nations will be considered as antiquated as the duel, and when the peacemakers shall be called the children of God." And we all know about the famous forecast that humanity had reached the "end of history," or the claim that globalization would eventually force other states to copy America's farsighted combination of markets, financial innovation, and "rule of law" if they wanted to enjoy economic prosperity. Yeah, right. 

But it's not just these optimistic forecasts that turn out to be off-base; fortunately, some pretty pessimistic predictions did not pan out either. In 1950, a smart guy named Albert Einstein warned that "unless we are able, in the near future, to abolish the mutual fear of military aggression, we are doomed." In 1961, physicist and novelist C.P. Snow predicted that "The nuclear arms race is accelerating: within at the most ten years, some of these bombs are going off. I am saying this as responsibly as I can. That is the certainty." The late Herman Kahn, another physicist and self-proclaimed futurologist, offered a similar forecast at about the same time, declaring that "unless we have more serious and sober thought we are not going to reach the year 2000 -- or even 1965 -- without a cataclysm."  

These failed forecasts might lead you to conclude that you simply shouldn't listen to predictions by physicists, but even a good realist like Hans Morgenthau got it badly wrong at times. In 1979, Morgenthau predicted that "the world is moving ineluctably toward a third world war -- a strategic nuclear war. I do not believe that anything can be done to prevent it. The international system is simply too unstable to survive for long." All I can say is that I'm glad he was wrong.

For a longer list of failed predictions about war and peace, check out the appendix to John Mueller's Quiet Cataclysm, which was my source for the quotations offered above. I'm not saying that scholars, pundits, and prognosticators don't get it right from time to time, but trying to offer specific predictions for the next year or so strikes me as a harmless but not very serious exercise. Social scientists can forecast certain broad trends, and our theories can certainly identify recurring tendencies that can help us anticipate broad features of the emerging strategic landscape. But the combination of human imagination, agency, contingency, and unanticipated consequences generally plays havoc with efforts at crystal ball-gazing. 

Case in point: at a New Year's Eve party two years ago, I predicted that at least one country would leave the eurozone within the next year. I was clearly wrong about the specifics, but not about the general problems that the euro would face. Which merely goes to show that you can be broadly right but still be precisely wrong.

In any case, I'm not going to offer any predictions this year (at least not until I've had a glass or two of champagne). Instead, I'm taking the social scientist's normal cop-out and will look in the rearview mirror instead. And instead of just gazing back at 2010, here's my Top Ten Global Events of the past decade, in no particular order of importance:

1. January 2001: The inauguration of President Gore (oops, I mean Bush). The contested U.S. presidential election in 2000 proved even more momentous than we realized at the time, because it brought George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and a gaggle of neoconservatives to power. I'm not saying Al Gore would have made a great foreign-policy president, but it's hard to imagine anyone doing a worse job than Bush and Co. All in all, a hell of a way to start a decade.

2. 9/11. No surprise here, of course. 9/11 altered the course of U.S. foreign policy as dramatically as Pearl Harbor in 1941, and mostly for the worse, and because the United States is so powerful, its response to 9/11 had far-reaching implications all over the world. As horrific as that day was, the real damage came in the form of self-inflicted wounds (such as the invasion of Iraq) that proved even more costly than al Qaeda's original attack.

3. The Beijing Olympics. I pick this as a symbol of China's emergence as a major player in global politics, which is of course precisely what the Chinese government intended. One could also argue that it marked the end of China's self-effacing strategy of a "peaceful rise," and the beginning of a more self-assertive approach to advancing Chinese national interests. In other words, they're starting to act a lot like the great powers of the past, which implies increased great-power security competition in the decades ahead.

4. The Crash Heard 'Round the World. When the history of the 21st century is written, the financial meltdown that began in 2007 is bound to receive plenty of scrutiny. Unless, the same institutions whose greedy machinations helped produce it -- and who are still largely in place -- manage to generate something even worse in the years to come.

Read on

Yesterday I learned that one of my posts-to be specific, my thoughts on the Cordoba House/Park 51 controversy -- is a finalist for 2010 Prize in Politics from the internet aggregator website 3Quarks Daily.

The winners will be chosen by journalist and writer Lewis Lapham, the former editor of Harper's, and announced on Dec. 21. I'm grateful to anyone who mentioned me during the nomination period and I feel honored to be among the finalists. I will now start preparing my "concession" post for Dec. 22.

See 3Quarks Daily nominations here.

My family took relatively few vacations when I was growing up, and I didn't get into the habit myself until I was well into adulthood (and even parenthood). But now I've come to appreciate the value of a change of scene, and the opportunity to let one's mind wander down unfamiliar paths for awhile. Among other things, I've found that some downtime often clarifies issues that have been clouded, and helps us see things in a new light. If we spend all our time pounding away at the same problems, we tend to come up with the same solutions over and over again.  Sometimes that's the right thing to do, but taking a bit of time away can be intellectually liberating. Not to mention good for one's mood.

I'm headed off for a couple of weeks vacation tomorrow, and my intention is to try to partially wean myself from my faithful laptop and let others carry most of the load here. I've lined up some interesting guest bloggers for while I'm away, and I'm sure I won't be able to resist chiming in now and again. I've loaded my Kindle with a bunch of new books, packed a few others, and my main goal is to kick back and absorb some new ideas. And when I'm not doing that, I intend  to spend a lot of time walking on the beach lost in thought. In any case, I'm counting on all of you to keep the world on an even keel till I get back to full-time blogging, sometime around the end of the month. . . 

One more thing: thanks to all of you for reading this blog. If you can, take some time off yourselves!

I didn't get a comment on the "Gang that Couldn't Spook Straight," otherwise known as the hapless Russian spy ring that never seemed to do any spying. It turns out one of the spies was a student here at the Kennedy School, but I didn't have any contact with him and can't offer you any inside information. Given that Harvard Law School has Alger Hiss among its alumni, I'd say we've still got a ways to go. But as a colleague of mine noted, it does lend a new meaning to the term "mid-career program."

In any case, my favorite line in the whole business was uttered by a neighbor of "Richard and Cynthia Murphy" of Montclair, NJ. "They couldn't have been spies," joked 15 year-old Jessie  Gugig.  "Look what she did with the hydrangeas!"

I guess this means prospective al Qaeda moles can conceal their true identities by cultivating nice gardens (while taking care not to buy too much fertilizer, of course). But that also means we ought to be suspicious if anyone's garden is too nice. Uh-oh... I've got three hydrangeas in bloom in my garden right now, and if I start getting the fish-eye from my neighbors, I guess I'll know why.  

Via Andrew Sullivan, I learn that Ramesh Ponnaru of NRO's The Corner  has never watched American Idol. I can't make the same claim, alas: my teen-age kids were big fans a couple of years ago (they moved on as they matured) and I confess that I watched a couple of episodes with them before my taste-o-meter rebelled.

But I am proud to say that I've never watched an episode of 24 or Lost, and I don't think I missed much. I read enough sky-is-falling, eve-of-destruction propaganda doing my day job, and I don't need to add to it in my off-hours. In addition to encouraging more permissive attitudes toward torture, shows like 24 also feed the mistaken beliefs that 1) the whole damn world is a vast and murky conspiracy, and 2) the United States possesses magical powers to monitor and shape events in real time. If that were really true, would we have marched into such deep quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan? The cruel reality is that political life is messy and unpredictable and most people in government aren't evil geniuses. (Well, OK, maybe Dick Cheney). Instead, they are mostly just ambitious human beings with the normal array of human frailties. We don't need the likes of Jack Bauer to save the day; what we need is a tough-minded recognition that life isn't fair, that bad things are going to happen no matter how hard we try to prevent them, and that victory often goes not to the side that is most ambitious but to the side that makes the fewest mistakes. 

One year ago, I offered a Valentine's Day post on "IR Theory for Lovers," a tongue-in-cheek summary of the lessons that international relations theory could offer to anyone in a romantic relationship. There's no need to update it (i.e., the IR field hasn't changed that much in a year), so this year I present instead my Valentine's Day Guide to International Relations(hips): a typology of inter-state pairings suitable for pondering with your partner. (Word of warning: this is international relations we're talking about here, so what follows isn't very romantic, schmaltzy, or even encouraging).

1. Odd Couples and Strange Bedfellows. International politics can be a rough business, and the necessities of statecraft often bring unlikely partners together  (See under: Realism 101). Remember the Grand Alliance in World War II: a ménage-a-trois between England (a constitutional monarchy), the United States (a liberal republic) and Soviet Russia (a communist dictatorship)? Americans may have been sold the wartime image of Stalin as the benevolent "Uncle Joe," but Roosevelt and Churchill knew it was a marriage of convenience all along. FDR told the U.S. Ambassador to the USSR that "I can't take communism nor can you, but to cross this bridge I would hold hands with the devil," and Churchill famously remarked that "if Hitler invaded hell I would at least make a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." Now that's sweet love talk for you. Other odd couples include U.S. support for Tito's Yugoslavia, the U.S. tilt to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War, and its close ties to a bevy of Third World dictators like Zaire's Joseph Mobutu. And let's not forget the "axis of evil" -- a trio of dangerous enemies whose unity existed only in the overheated mind of a White House speechmaker and included two states, Iran and Iraq, whose leaders detested each other. (BTW: the topic even seems to have inspired a conference at Oxford last year; see here.)

2. Failed Marriages: Sometimes states get so besotted that they decide to try living together, or even decide to get hitched. This sort of experiment seems to be even harder for modern states than it is for people. The United Arab Republic (a marriage between Egypt and Syria) lasted but three years (1958-1961) and ended with a bitter divorce; a subsequent attempt in 1963 (the so-called "Tripartite Unity Agreement" between Egypt, Iraq, and Syria) never got past the first date. And then there's the Sino-Soviet split, a nasty schism that put paid to the idea that the communist world was tightly unified monolith of like-minded and mutually supportive partners. One could add the long Soviet alliance with Egypt, which ended when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat got a better offer from Uncle Sam.

Read on

The other news from Massachusetts yesterday was the death of mystery writer Robert B. Parker, who suffered a fatal heart attack while at his writing desk in his Cambridge home. He was 77.

I’m a big fan of crime and espionage novels (my favorites being Rex Stout, Raymond Chandler, John Le Carre, Alan Furst, Dorothy Sayers, and (of course) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), and I got a lot of pleasure out of Parker’s work too. Partly it was the Boston setting, but also the trademark repartee of his characters, the blend of grit and sophistication, and the code of loyalty that bound (some of) them together. In addition to the trademark Spenser series, he also invented several other leading characters, along with children's books and (recently) a series of Westerns.

Parker had a Ph.D. in English from Boston University and wrote his doctoral dissertation on Chandler. He liked to lampoon the pomposity of the academic world -- a fat target to be sure -- but he also provided graduate students and academics with some really valuable words to live by. An interviewer once asked him what advice he would give to a young author, and his response was at least as useful as most of the other guidance you’re likely to get from advisors and colleagues. (Confession: I’ve used it with my own grad students from time to time.)

What was his magic formula?  Simple.  “Keep your butt in the chair.”

He produced over 60 books, so there’s a lot to be said for those wise words.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of FP's on-line re-launch, and thus the one-year anniversary of this blog. So I thought I'd offer a few reflections on what the experience has been like, and what I've learned from it.

I was of course flattered when FP invited me to contribute, but I agreed to do so with some trepidation. I'd done a lot of writing by this point, including for some popular venues, but I had usually found it difficult to write op-eds and short pieces of commentary and therefore hadn't done a lot of it. The only way to attract readers is to provide a fairly constant stream of commentary (i.e., nobody comes back if you only post once a month), and I was worried that I'd find it hard to keep the words and ideas flowing.  

Thankfully, that hasn't been a big problem. Although there have been a few slow days where I was less than fully inspired (you may have noticed), its more often the case that I don't have time to post on all the topics that I'd like to discuss. One result is that my respect for those who write a biweekly column in the mainstream media has gone down; it would be a luxury to write only twice a week. Given that most of them aren't teaching classes, chairing committees, or writing letters of recommendation, what do all those big-time columnists do with their time?

I quickly discovered that there is a big difference between blogging and academic scholarship, and one has to approach them with a completely different mental attitude. In academic writing, the overriding imperative is to make things as perfect as you can (even though perfection is impossible), and to take as much time as you have to refine and bolster an argument. When academics write a scholarly book or article, it typically goes through a dozen or so drafts, gets presented and criticized at conferences and seminars, and gets circulated to colleagues for additional feedback. And in some cases (e.g., our book on the Israel lobby), we hired two professional fact checkers to go over every line and then spent an entire week with our editor proofing and fine-tuning.

Needless to say, that's not how the blogosphere works. I sometimes spend a fair bit of time researching what I write here, and I occasionally run a piece past a colleague to get their advice, but there is a premium on being timely and analytically sharp, and you rarely have time to sit, sift, ponder, and deliberate. That means bloggers are by definition writing things that are more provisional. If we're honest, we all have to admit that we're going to get a few big things wrong, or offer opinions that we subsequently conclude are mistaken. I'm reasonably happy with most of what I've posted in the past year, but I confess to a sense of trepidation every time I hit "publish." Advice to would-be bloggers: Bring a sense of humility, but also a thick skin.

Of course, that same sense of immediacy is one of the most gratifying things about having a blog. Instead of writing an op-ed and sending it in to some newspaper, and then waiting for days until some editor rules up or down, I just hit "publish" and it appears. Writing a more-or-less daily commentary forces me to stay more closely in touch with world events, and it has made it imperative to develop new sources and new methods for tracking what others have to say about issues I'm interested in.

Indeed, given the concerns I've sometimes expressed about the "cult of irrelevance" in academe, I've come to believe that blogging ought to be actively encouraged in the academic world. I'm not saying that all political scientists, historians, or economists ought to start their own blogs, but we shouldn't penalize scholars who do engage in this activity and we might even consider rewarding it, the same way we should reward scholars who care enough about public service to use their talents and training working in the public or NGO sector. It would be good for the IR field if academic scholars were expected to write a few blog posts every now and then, if only for the purpose of self-examination. If the typical academic had to write a blog for two weeks, they might discover they had nothing to say to their fellow citizens, couldn't say it clearly, or that nobody cared. That experience might even lead a few of my fellow academics to scratch their heads and ask if they were investing their research time appropriately, which would be all to the good. 

What's been the best part so far? First and foremost, I've appreciated the opportunity to participate more actively in the public debate on key topics like U.S. foreign policy, the AfPak dilemma, the ongoing drama in the Middle East, etc.). At the same time, I've also enjoyed exploring more fanciful topics (movies, pop music, sports, novels, holidays), as well as the chance to wander into areas I simply didn't know that much about. Knowing that I had to "feed the beast" each morning has encouraged me to read more widely and keep a notebook of ideas (a useful diversion during boring faculty meetings), and I've found that intellectual spur to be very satisfying.

And as I had hoped, writing this blog has forced me to connect more with the blogosphere itself, which I see as a revolutionary development in mankind's collective conversation.  I remain in awe of many of my fellow bloggers -- there are simply far too many for me to mention them all -- and I wish I had more time to wander the net and search out nuggets of insight that aren't likely to make into more conventional formats (at least not yet). I've also appreciated the supportive emails I've received from lots of readers, and even smiled at some of the snarky comments from some who seem less-than-enthralled (if not downright hostile).  Forgive me if I don't read them all or respond; I am trying to retain some semblance of a normal life.

The downside? Obvious: it's a big time-sink, and I'm still trying to figure out how to write my next book while doing this gig. Writing a solo blog can have a certain treadmill-like quality to it, and there have been a few mornings where I approach my laptop with a sense of obligation rather than zest. And there are those cringe-worthy moments when I realize I've made an obvious mistake; thankfully, there haven't been too many of those.

But on the whole, it's been a fun ride and I'm looking forward to Year 2. If peace breaks out, expect to read more about arts and music and less about fear, greed, stupidity, corruption and other enduring features of world politics. But don't hold your breath.

Like some of you, I ran out of time to shop for a few people this year. But I wanted them to know what I would have gotten them if I had more time. Here are a few holiday presents that I offer in spirit (or if you prefer, in theory).

1. For Rebecca Frankel, my ace editor at FP, a new edition of Photoshop. She picks all the great pictures that accompany my posts: just imagine what she could do if she could take a stock image and alter it. How about Obama's head on Angela Merkel's body or a photo-shopped picture of Dick Cheney, Hugo Chavez, and Ayatollah Khameini swapping stories about civil liberties? Becky's done a terrific job of making this blog visually striking, and I appreciate her efforts greatly.

2. For Barack Obama, a signed copy of Taming American Power, with a bookmark at chapter 5: ("Foreign Policy in the National Interest"). Given the pounding the president took this past year from Benjamin Netanyahu and his American friends, there's nothing I could teach him about the Israel lobby, so no need to send him that one. Plus he has probably read it anyway, but just can't admit it.

3. For David Rothkopf, a DVD of Yoav Shamir's terrific documentary on anti-Semitism -- Defamation -- which he should find educational. I probably ought to include a valium with the card.

4. For my students, a promise to grade your exams in a benevolent frame of mind. That means that I promise not to start grading until at least one hour after reading the morning papers.  And if I happen to read the op-ed page of either the Washington Post or Wall Street Journal, I'll wait a good two hours.

5. For my readers: a pledge to keep trying to enlighten, amuse, and confound you in 2010. I've learned a lot from writing this blog, and I hope many of you have too. I wish you all a warm and joyous holiday, and may 2010 be more benign than a realist would expect.

I've posted on Valentine's, Father's Day, Independence Day, Veterans Day and Halloween, so at this point I assume a few readers are expecting me to offer up some thoughts on Thanksgiving. I'm happy to oblige, because Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Not only do I enjoy helping produce a feast and welcoming friends and family, but I like the idea of a day to reflect on whatever blessings we may have received. In my own case, I've been blessed with a wonderful family and a lot of undeserved good luck, and I probably ought to be even more grateful than I am.

So in that spirit, here are the Top Ten things I'm thankful for this year. (For the "official" FP version, check out Josh Keating's list here). I've limited myself to items that relate in some way to foreign policy or international affairs.

1. The Foreign Policy team.  First off, I'm grateful for the invitation to write this blog, and especially for the terrific backup we get from the editorial and production team at FP. Special thanks to Rebecca Frankel (who finds all those great photos), to Susan Glasser, who keeps the whole operation running, and of course, the boundlessly inventive and fearless Moises Naim.

2. Free Speech. Every writer lucky enough to live in a country that protects free speech ought to give thanks for that good fortune every single day.   Compared to the millions of people who risk persecution (or worse) if they dare to express their own ideas, intellectuals in the United States have it pretty soft. We should never take that luxury for granted.

3. Great Power Peace:  Throughout history, wars between great powers have been one of the most potent causes of human misery.  Just think about World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, which together killed over 85 million people and impoverished millions more. Yet today, great power rivalries are quite muted and the danger of a true great power war seems remote.  There are plenty of other problems still remaining, of course, but I'm grateful that one of the big ones isn't troubling us right now. Let's try to keep it that way, ok?

4. Nuclear Deterrence.  Unlike some writers whose work I nonetheless admire, I think nuclear weapons did contribute to peace during the Cold War and remain a stabilizing force today.  As Churchill put it, safety has become the "sturdy child of terror." So despite some lingering reservations, I'm glad that nuclear weapons exist. But I'm not giving thanks for the number that we have, which is far in excess of what is needed for deterrence. 

5. Critics.  Some of my recent work attracted a lot of criticism, and I'm genuinely grateful for it. First of all, my co-author and I have been fortunate that our most vehement critics chose to misrepresent our work and to smear us with various baseless charges, thereby confirming some of our central arguments and helping us win over a lot of readers. At the same time, scholars who have challenged my various writings over the years in more serious ways helped me refine my ideas and gain a fuller understanding of numerous topics. And I'm always thankful for students who don't accept ideas at face value and push back, because we need more independent thinkers and vigorous discussion helps us all learn.

6. Supporters.  The controversy over The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy also brought me a legion of new friends, some of whom I would never have met otherwise. My thanks to inspired writers and activists like Phil Weiss, Tony Judt, M.J. Rosenberg, Jerome Slater, Avi Shlaim, Uri Avnery, Sydney Levy, and many, many more. I'm also grateful to the various people who faced pressure to cancel speaking engagements and didn't succumb to it, as well as the many friends who offered their support privately, in countless small ways.  You know who you are, and I won't forget.

7. The Fruits of Globalization. I don't know about you, but I'm grateful to live in a world that is increasingly interconnected. Indeed, this aspect of the modern world still strikes me as nearly miraculous, and I feel enormously lucky to be able to enjoy it. I've eaten hummus in Tel Aviv, camel in Abu Dhabi, fish head curry in Singapore, and tapas in Barcelona. My iPod contains music from all over the world, and the last two novels I read were by Orhan Parmuk (Turkey) and Haruki Murakami (Japan). My children attend a public high school where students speak over fifty different languages at home, and there are students from over 80 different countries where I teach. Cultural differences often create awkward tensions (or worse), but I'd feel terribly impoverished if I lived in an isolated mono-culture.

8. Bullets Dodged.  I am also thankful that we have thus far avoided some even more dire events in recent years. The world economy may have tanked in 2007-08, but we seem -- knock wood -- to have avoided a complete replay of the Great Depression. Swine flu has been a serious problem but is not a true global pandemic. Terrorists still conspire and sometimes succeed, but another 9/11 (or worse) has not occurred  And we have not been so foolish as to attack Iran (at least so far). We should not forget that many are suffering in today's economy, roughly 5000 people have died from H1N1, both soldiers and civilians are still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there are still influential voices clamoring for more war. But things could be much worse and for that we should all be grateful.

9. The Internet.  Boy, am I glad that Al Gore invented this! After all, this blog wouldn't exist without it. Not only has it revolutionized how many of us do research (and in a good way), but it is becoming the main engine of accountability in a world where it is often lacking. Bloggers are exposing the flabby fatuousness of mainstream media and politicians everywhere live in fear of their own "YouTube moment."  And whether it is a brutal crackdown in Tehran, torture at Abu Ghraib, or possible war crimes in Gaza, the Internet is helping bring misconduct to light in ways that governments cannot easily suppress.  I say: let the sunshine in!

10.  Readers.  Finally, a heartfelt thanks to all of you who've been reading this blog since its inception, and especially those who've taken the time to offer words of support. I've learned a lot in the process-including some of the more constructive comments that readers provide -- and I intend to keep going until the tank is empty. Tomorrow is a holiday, however, and I'm going to take the day off. You should too, and don't forget to give thanks.

TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

Halloween is a big event in my neighborhood, and tomorrow night our street will be filled with lots of scary monsters. They aren't really monsters, of course; it will just be a bunch of kids trying to look as frightening as possible. And that got me thinking: what are the "scary monsters" that have haunted foreign policy debates in the past, and which turned out to be not so scary after all?

So, in honor of tomorrow night's revels, here's my Halloween list of "scary monsters:" those overblown threats, dubious nightmares, and (mostly) fictitious demons that people dreamed up to frighten us unnecessarily.

1. The "Domino Theory."  This hardy perennial posits that a single defeat in one area will trigger a cascade of similar defeats elsewhere, either because allies "bandwagon" with the enemy, enemies become emboldened, or status quo forces become disheartened. It was famously used to justify prolonged U.S. involvement in Indochina, but variants were also invoked in Central America and the basic idea is making something of a comeback in debates about the war in Afghanistan. If we win, Islamic radicals will be on the run everywhere; if we lose, it will be hailed as a great victory and will spawn new troubles throughout the region and beyond. As Jerome Slater and others showed, both the internal logic and the empirical evidence for the theory was always paltry, but the idea that the fate of the entire free world might hinge on a single marginal event in some far-away land was an effective way to scare people into overstating the importance of otherwise peripheral conflicts.

2. Y2K. Remember the widespread fear that the world's computers would simply stop working at midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, when their internal clocks ran out of digits? Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre called it "the computer equivalent of El Nino" and said there would be "nasty surprises" around the world. In fact, it was a virtual non-event, even in countries that hadn't taken significant precautions. It's one of those episodees that makes me suspect that the growing hype over "cyberwarfare" and "cyberterror" is being exaggerated too. It's a legitimate concern, but watch it get over-sold in the months and years to come.

3. "Rogue States."  This phrase become popular in the 1990s, in a period when the U.S. faced essentially no significant great power threats. So national security worriers started to talk about the threat from "rogue states" like Cuba, Libya, Syria, Iran, or Iraq, even though their combined capabilities were paltry compared with the United States (let alone the U.S. plus its allies).  Specifically, the combined GDP of all the potential "rogues" was less than the size of the U.S. defense budget, and most of these states weren't even in cahoots with each other. The same was true (but even more so) for the Bush administration's famous "Axis of Evil," a conceptual monstrosity intended solely to scare the American people into launching an unnecessary and tragic war.

4. "Monolithic Communism."  The Cold War was a fertile source of exaggerated dangers, and this dubious idea was one of the best. Many people in the West believed that all Marxists (and maybe even a few socialists) were reliable tools of the Kremlin, despite the abundant evidence of deep rifts within the international Communist movement and the repeated tensions between Moscow and its various clients. The belief that the Kremlin controlled a potent world-wide revolutionary movement fueled the insane fear of communist subversion during the McCarthy period, and even led some highly placed U.S. officials to view the Sino-Soviet split as a clever communist plot to lull us into a false sense of security. Not only did we exaggerate the threat, but we missed opportunities to wean leftists away from Moscow and fought foolish wars in places that didn't matter, like Indochina.

5. "Strategic Minerals and Resource Dependence."  The United States and other industrial powers have repeatedly exaggerated their dependence on so-called strategic minerals (cobalt, chromium, manganese, platinum, etc.), and used the fear of cartels or cutoffs to justify a more interventionist foreign policy and greater power-projection capabilities. Alarmists point to the fact the United States imports most of its consumption of these materials from Africa and other conflict-ridden places, but this simplistic view ignores the reasons why this is the case and the various options we have for dealing with possibility of a cutoff. One option is stockpiles (which the U.S. possesses), and another is the fact that additional supplies often exist, albeit at higher prices. We import most of our consumption because these sources are the cheapest, not because they are the only ones available. Moreover, the danger of a complete and lasting cutoff is remote. With the (partial) exception of oil, strategic minerals are an issue that deserves a modest degree of attention, but are hardly cause for alarm.

6. Immigration.  Throughout U.S. history, people who had made it here from abroad have tended to panic over the next group to arrive after them.  The Anglo-Americans opposed the large-scale German migration in the mid-19th century, and every subsequent group -- Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, Muslims,. etc. -- seems to have provoked nativist alarm declaring that this latest group will never assimilate and will gradually destroy whatever it is that past immigrants have come to value. This sort of thing can even lead formerly sensible people like newsman Lou Dobbs to rail against illegal immigration now, and it inspires militia groups seeking to patrol our southern borders.

In fact, immigration has long been a great source of strength for the United States, and it will probably remain so for many years to come.  And the dirty little secret here is that American society -- and especially certain American businesses -- aren't upset at all about having a low-wage workforce to exploit.  Keeping a lot more people out of the United States wouldn't be that difficult if we really wanted to do it-but we don't.  That's a good thing, by the way, because it means the United States won't face the same demographic problems that Japan, Europe, and Russia will (i.e., a shrinking and progressively older population).

7. Soviet Military Power. Don't get me wrong: the Soviet Union was a serious adversary and it possessed considerable military power. But lots of people tended to portray it as a monster that was ten feet tall, and capable of seemingly magical feats of military deering-do. Richard Pipes famously told readers that the Soviet leadership genuinely believed it "could fight and win a nuclear war," other hawks seriously declared that the Red Army could easily defeat NATO and overrun Western Europe (in perhaps as little as two weeks), and Caspar Weinberger's Pentagon used to use U.S. tax dollars to produce a glossy document -- Soviet Military Power -- containing various ominous descriptions of Soviet weaponry and capabilities, much of it exaggerated.  Of course, what they portrayed as the ultimate scary monster turned out to be a colossus with feet of clay.

8. "Bogeymen from Latin America"  As befits a regional hegemon, the United States has long exaggerated the threat from various not-very-powerful forces in the Western hemisphere.  The list of bogeymen is a long one: Venustiano Carranza and Pancho Villa in Mexico, Augusto Sandino in Nicaragua,  Fidel Castro in Cuba, Juan Jose Arevalo and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, Salvador Allende in Chile, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, the New Jewel Movement in Grenada, etc., etc., right on up to Hugo Chavez in contemporary Venezuela. One might concede that some of these individuals or groups were an annoyance or even a regional problem, but U.S. officials often depicted them as mortal threats to U.S. security. Remember when Ronald Reagan declared that the Sandinistas were but "a two-day march from Harlingen, Texas?"  In other words, we were supposed to fear an invasion from an impoverished country whose total population was less than that of New York City. What's really scary is that some of Reagan's listeners probably believed him.

9.  "Declinism."  Fueled by books like Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, many Americans thought that "imperial overstretch" in the 1980s was going to lead to the rapid erosion in America's global position.  A corollary to this argument was the fear of Japanese dominance, as illustrated by Ezra Vogel's Japan as Number One and other similar works.  This view even infected the international relations literature, as when Robert Keohane called his major work on institutions After Hegemony and realist Robert Gilpin offered a similarly gloomy forecast in War and Change in World Politics.

Of course, we now know that it was the Soviet Union whose decline was imminent (as others realists, notably Kenneth Waltz, had foreseen) and the Japanese Godzilla that many feared soon succumbed to a combination of speculative bubble at home and a sclerotic political system.  But might one sound a cautionary note: were these fears dead wrong, or just premature? I'd say wrong, unless we keep doing a lot of stupid things abroad and don't get our economic house in order back home.

10. "Islamofascism."   No list of scary monsters would be complete without neoconservativism's bedrock bogeyman: the claim that there is a powerful, cohesive, ideologically united movement of Islamic radicals, backed by assorted Islamic governments, seeking to re-establish the medieval caliphate, subjugate the West, and impose Islam on all of us. One thing is clear: the people who make this claim don't understand Islam very well and don't understand fascism at all; "Islamofascism" may in fact be the most misleading neologism in contemporary political discourse.  

Sure, some Islamic radicals harbor wild fantasies about transforming and uniting the entire Muslim world under their banner; the good news is that they are as likely to accomplish this goal as I am to flap my arms and fly to the moon.  Let's remember that Osama bin Laden isn't leading an vast army of followers to overthrow the existing Arab governments; he's hiding in some remote part of Pakistan and praying we don't find him. And surveys suggest that Al Qaeda's efforts aren't winning them any mass support; just recruits among a small number of disaffected.  But the more we fear this monster and overreact to it, the more sympathy they may win and the more trouble they can cause....even if its nowhere near the amount they would like.

I could go on and discuss the fear of fluoridation and flu vaccines, paranoia about foreign ownership of U.S. assets, the "window of vulnerability," China's "foreign aid offensive" in Africa, the fear of subversion that led to the shameful incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and so forth.   But I'll stop with these ten, and just make two final points. 

First, we are often told that international politics is a dangerous business, and that it makes sense to prepare for the worst case. This is nonsense, because there are real costs to exaggerating various potential threats. Not only may this policy lead us to ignore more likely and more legitimate problems and to waste resources addressing fantasies, but it can also lead a country to take active steps that either make minor problems worse or lead to enormous self-inflicted wounds (see under: Iraq). Fixating on scary monsters can leave you ill-prepared when real problems arise.

Second, even if these foolish fears led us to undertake various boneheaded policies on occasion, we should nonetheless be thankful that these various monsters turned out to be far less fearsome than we often believed. But given that Nov. 26 is the official day to give thanks this year, maybe I'll just hold that thought until that holiday arrives.

SONNY TUMBELAKA/AFP/Getty Images

I don't know how many people subscribe to both Foreign Policy and Sports Illustrated, but I do know lots of people who take athletics seriously. Human beings seem to be hard-wired into making "in-group/out-group" distinctions, so it's not surprising that the loyalty that sports fans show for their favorite teams looks a lot like the broader phenomenon of nationalism. And I'm not saying that just because I'm a proud member of Red Sox Nation.  

Success in sports can be the first step toward a successful political career (e.g., Bill Bradley, Sebastian Coe, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jack Kemp, etc.) and athletes like Pele, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods have become genuine global icons. Of course, using sports to demonstrate national prowess or as a source of national pride is a common practice. The revival of the Olympic games in the 1890s was at least partly intended to promote international cooperation and understanding, but as a good realist would expect, the Games eventually became yet another arena where states could try to demonstrate the superiority of their own system and enhance their global influence.

Anyway, as summer winds down and the fall term looms, I found myself wondering about various episodes where sporting events actually had an effect on world politics, or told us something about how the world was changing. Here's my list of ten key moments, in no particular order.

1. The Berlin Olympics, 1936.

Adolf Hitler uses the Olympic Games to highlight the superiority of the Nazi regime, but his efforts are at least partly undermined when a black American, Jesse Owens, wins four gold medals.

2. La Guerra de futbol (aka “Soccer War”): El Salvador vs. Honduras, 1969. 

Here’s a case where sports may have helped cause a war: a hard-fought match between El Salvador and Honduras in a preliminary round for the 1970 FIFA World Cup exacerbated the existing tensions between the two states and helped spark a brief four-day war in which over 1000 people died. The war ended inconclusively and El Salvador eventually won the actual match, but was ousted in a subsequent round and did not make the finals.

3. "Ping Pong Diplomacy:" U.S. Table Tennis Team Visits China, 1971. 

During the world championships in Japan, the U.S. table tennis team received an unexpected invitation to visit China, and shortly thereafter became the first group of Americans to visit China since the communist takeover in 1949. The "ping heard 'round the world" was the first tangible sign of normalization between the United States and China (even though the Chinese teams reportedly had to throw a few matches to the Americans). The visit was obviously not the cause of the subsequent rapprochement, but it shows how sporting events can be an effective diplomatic tool.

4. U.S. Women Win Soccer World Cup, 1999.

I see this as significant for two main reasons. First, it underscores the growing importance and legitimacy of women’s sports, which has been an important element in modern feminism. Second, it shows the United States finally demonstrating real prowess in the world's most popular sport. Plus, the final game was against China, which makes it a nice harbinger of 21st century geopolitics.

5. Black September at the Munich Olympics, 1972:

Palestinian terrorists seized and eventually killed eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games. The heinous act sets back Palestinian national aspirations and triggers a protracted Israeli reprisal campaign that assassinated a number of Palestinian leaders and at least one innocent victim.

6. South Africa Wins Rugby World Cup, 1995.

South African teams were barred from most international competitions during the apartheid era, a step that highlighted the regime’s pariah status and helped undermine popular support for the policy. The post-apartheid team’s victory in 1995 was a vivid symbol of South Africa’s new beginning, symbolized when President Nelson Mandela awarded the victor’s trophy to team captain Francois Pinear, a white Afrikaner.

7. Australia II Wins America’s Cup, 1983.

The Aussie victory broke what was probably the longest winning streak in the history of sports -- 132 years of dominance that began when the schooner America outpaced a British flotilla in a race around the Isle of Wight in 1851. (When she asked who had finished second, Queen Victoria was reportedly told "Your Majesty, there is no second.”). In retrospect, one could see the Australian victory as a symptom of globalization: cutting-edge yacht design wasn’t an American monopoly any longer. Since then, alas, the competition has been driven by another American export: gamesmanship and ceaseless litigation over the rules of the competition.  

8. The "Miracle on Ice": the U.S. Olympic Ice Hockey Team Defeats the Soviet National Team, 1980. 

Labeled the greatest sports moment of the 20th century by Sports Illustrated, the improbable defeat of a heavily-favored Soviet team by a group of U.S. college players arrived at a moment when many Americans mistakenly felt the Soviet Union was pulling ahead. In fact, the USSR was on its last legs, though its hockey establishment remained a powerhouse and eventually sent a lot of players to the NHL.

9. “Das Wunder von Berne:” Germany Wins World Cup, 1954.

An underdog German team defeated Hungary in the final in Berne, a win that set off a wave of euphoria in Germany and is seen by some historians as a key event that restored a sense of national pride after the shame of the Nazi era and helped signal Germany’s re-integration in the world community.

10. Pentathlete Boris Onischenko Disqualified at Montreal Olympics, 1976.

I was on the fencing team in college, so I can’t resist adding this to my list.  Onischenko was a member of the Soviet modern pentathlon team who was disqualified after referees discovered that his sword had been modified to enable him to register “hits” on the electronic scoring machine by pressing a switch concealed in his grip.  Together with the East German steroid scandal, such episodes helped undermine the image of the Soviet empire.  Plenty of other athletes have cheated, of course -- think of sprinters Ben Johnson and Marion Jones, bicyclist Floyd Landis, and subway-riding “marathoner” Rosie Ruiz -- but their transgressions had less impact absent the Cold War atmosphere.

There are other examples one might add: Budge versus von Cramm at Wimbledon, the controversial Soviet "defeat" of the U.S. men's basketball team at Munich, or the notorious Soviet-Hungary water polo match at the 1956 Olympics (played in the shadow of the Hungarian Revolution, the game was so violent the water reportedly turned pink). So please feel free to contribute your own suggestions.

IOC Olympic Museum /Allsport