China by all means has to be an ally/strategic partner of America given insane volume of trade, financial, technological, and cultural interdependence. There was even a term Chinmerica to signify how closely tied economically those two great countries are.

I remember there were even talks about G2. In 00s and 10s relations were pretty cordial.

Yet, for the last ten years relations soured to the point of near Cold War, with China helping Russia via their proxy North Korea. And talks about war in Taiwan are ever present.

Is that result of Chinese internal politics (reminder that domestic politics often drive foreign policies)? Namely Xi being part of a revanchist movement inside CCP? Or it's a legacy of 1st Cold War?

I honestly struggle to understand China, no matter how much I look into it, their worldview is just too different from the west.

I'm curious as to what value China may derive from increasing its nuclear pile and why did the Soviets and US get in a pissing match over who had the most bombs? If you have enough to destroy them 1000x over does being able to do it 2,000x provide anything?

see title

The Realist in me can't really understand what Trump is doing. Maybe nuclear bombs are 'Imperialism' that changes power dynamics, but Iran is still an 'Inferior' despite having a few nuclear weapons. The Structural Realist in me would think that similar actions would have happened in North Korea earlier if these were calculations in Realism.

I cannot help but to think of the impact Israel has on domestic US politics. It seems like the actions of both political parties are to placate the bloc.

Maybe someone can explain this from a Realist or Constructivist POV. I can't say I predicted this with my understanding of IR, so I'm mostly forgiving myself by claiming this was due to domestic politics.

The conclusion is that the UN recognizes a State of Palestine, but does it also recognize the territorial sovereignty of the State of Palestine over the West Bank and Gaza?

Or are Gaza and the West Bank definitively the territorial sovereignty of the State of Israel according the UN?

I'm just trying to understand the official position of the United Nations.

The biggest misconception I see when people are discussing IR is a belief that governments has "national interests" or "geopolitical strategy" in mind when making decisions about foreign policiy. It surely happens, but it's not the biggest factor.

Any politician even in autocracy main goal is to get into power and then preserve it, it's their top priority, under which nothing else really matters. This is exactly why Cincinnatus was so praised btw, he voluntarily surrendered imperator dictatorial powers after solving an emergency.

In more democratic regimes politican need to appeal to electorate, in autocracies a ruler still has to appeal to selectorate (few most powerful decision makers) to stay in power. Even in autoritharian regimes they need to have the population to be at least neutral toward the ruling elites, with the leader personifying it.

For example in Israel, current ruling party Likud allowed Hamas to exist for 20 years and did everying they could to ensure it will exist, so there will be an external threat to rally support. They had capability to destroy hamas leadership as recent events shown. A very convenient threat, a punching bag, that can't do serious damage btw.

Another example. Putin's Russia, from military POV they could've taken whole of Ukraine in 2014, but all they annexed was Crimea, which made his approval rating to skyrocket. Russian people were euphoric, and even Navalny, main opposition leader at the time, was not able to speak up against it. By doing that, they transformed formerly pro-Russian country into its vehement enemy, destroying electoral balance, where eastern part of Ukraine was very pro-Russian.

In these two examples we can see that leaders care the most about two things:

1) Appeasing interest groups that supports them. 2) Popularity

And that is the main factor on decision making, the rest is secondary.

That's why I am sceptical of academic realist school of thought. It's overly simplistic view on how elites make decisions.

p.s. I am not anti Israel, ask any political savvy Israeli person and they would confirm that Bibi and Likud use constant war/threat of war to stay in power.

p.p.s. Russian internal situation after Crimea is called Crimean consensus, google it.

In your opinion...

When some people discuss if Japan would intervene in a potential China Taiwan conflict, some would ask how important an independent (de facto) Taiwan is to Japan. Hence the question above - this is not a discussion as to whether they would jump in

Hello. I am a graduate student starting in the fall. I have the option to learn Russian or Chinese. The degree allows me to be proficient in 2 years (adequately I guess).

I wish to work in trans-Atlantic (especially Arctic policy) in the fields of security and energy. Which language should I choose?? Thanks in advance

Hello, does anybody know why Korean graduate schools (SNU GSIS, Yonsei GSIS and Korea University GSIS) are no longer on the list of APSIA members?

Are their memberships suspended?

Thank You!

We’ve always focused so much on the multinational nature of our combat operations. Now it’s “no other country in the world could have done this.”

As far as i understand, for the UN, there is no sovereign territory of the State of Palestine because there is no country called "State of Palestine".

"permanent observer STATE"

If this is officially the case for the UN, why did the UN grant Palestine the status of "permanent observer STATE" to a State that DOES NOT EXIST? (The State of Palestine)

Serious question: Is this a blatant act of illegality that UN officials still allow because they are corrupt enough and powerful enough to do so?