Paul MacDonald

Nato chief Mark Rutte jokes about 'limping' Russian submarine Moscow denies one of its vessels had to surface in the English Channel because of technical issues.

“What a change from the 1984 Tom Clancy novel The Hunt for Red October. Today, it seems more like the hunt for the nearest mechanic.” www.bbc.com/news/article...

Kudos to the photo intern who put a photo of UC Berkeley’s famous Sather Gate for a story ostensibly praising Stanfurd

As scary as this moment is, remember that support for political violence went DOWN after the July 2024 assassination attempt against Trump, not up www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

We need to make the same thing happen this time.

Don’t you go and make me feel sympathy for John Bolton

The last thing 2025 needed was an empirical test of the stability-instability paradox

Based on what I've seen credibly reported over the last 2-3 hours, it is fair to now call this a full-scale war.

Escalatory dynamics kicking in hard - air bases being tit-for-tat hit with missiles. Reports of IAF ops in Pakistani airspace, Pak attacks on Indian missile storage. Like when the war games start spinning into very bad outcomes. Hopefully US, PRC, Saudis burning up the phones. Deeply alarming.

I'll just take this moment to point out that the US Institute of Peace, just a few weeks ago, contained one of the finest concentrations of US expertise on India and Pakistan, and crisis management in South Asia.

The Pentagon’s Culture Wars Strike West Point

“A few days later, a cadet sent her an email thanking her for her courage. He wrote that it was first time he had ever seen someone stand up for something that directly cost them.” We’re so degraded as a nation, we’ve forgotten what a profile in courage looks like… www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/u...

Trump administration plans major downsizing at U.S. spy agencies The CIA plans to cut 1,200 positions, along with thousands more from other parts of the U.S. intelligence community.

No worries, I’m sure they’ll only cut the woke parts of the CIA www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

When ending the Women, Peace, & Security program at DOD, Sec Hegseth said that “troops HATE it”—apparently “troops” didn’t include the Joint Staff and leaders of combatant commands, who recommended maintaining the program and touted its value in a memo obtained by @lawfaremedia.org

The Rise and Fall of Great-Power Competition Trump’s new spheres of influence.

Awesome article by Stacie Goddard in @foreignaffairs.com. Key points:
• Great-power competition? Lol.
• Is Trump aiming at a great-power concert? Sort of.
•Trump's constitutionally incapable of making a concert work.
• We probably don't want to live in a world with a great-power concert anyway.

Pete Hegseth: ‘There Are No State Secrets In A Healthy Relationship’ WASHINGTON—Staunchly defending his decision to share sensitive military data in messages to his wife, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters Monday, “There are no state secrets in a healthy rel...

“Communication is key in every strong marriage, and that includes communication about airstrikes on foreign adversaries.” theonion.com/pete-hegseth...

Dear USG,
Sorry to hear that you accidentally turned in a preliminary draft of your letter. Unfortunately, now that a grade has been submitted, we cannot accept a revised version, and the original grade must stand. I hope this will serve as a reminder to double check your work before submitting it.

If you have time, go read my colleague @ismarvolic.bsky.social’s piece on why TPS status matters and what we all gain when our immigration systems are grounded in empathy and not exclusion

Today, class, we will once again discuss “revealed preferences”

What’s the comparative politics term for backsliding into an Idiocracy?

I know, I just wanted a shout out since he’s been fantastic since the Butler trade

@zachlowenba.bsky.social a bit bummed that Quinten Post did not get at least an honorable mention for an all rookie team spot. Highest 3-pt % for a rookie at 43% and playing meaningful minutes for a (playoff? gulp) team that really needs spacing off the bench

To recap, Trump officials have suspended funds to:
1. Columbia ($400 million)
2. Brown ($510 million)
3. UPenn ($175 million)
4. Harvard ($9 billion)
5. Cornell ($1 billion)

Perhaps we need to form a coalition or an alliance to band together. Maybe a League of some kind?

Look forward to moment, decades from now, when Trump’s decision to devastate the global economy because he’s a racist dude who became convinced trade deficits were bad because of Japan in the 1980s gets explained by future IPE scholars as “sectoral interests”

It’s like Watergate, only in this version Nixon directly mails the tapes to Woodward and Bernstein

There’s an established literature in security studies, by Caitlin Talmadge and others, on how “coup proofing” can undermine battlefield effectiveness. I wonder if “woke proofing” will have similar unintended consequences.

“Unpublishing” articles and scrubbing websites is one thing. I’m also hearing from my friends in the PME space about how these initiatives are putting their colleagues and institutions at risk. It’s as if this administration wants a military that is less intellectual, self reflective, and adaptive.

A small drop in an ocean of suck, but for the past few weeks friends have let me know that my book (Divided Armies), along w/ related articles + briefings, was removed from DoD reading lists & curricula for being "too woke"

Now JFQ has literally "unpublished" its review & any mention of the book ⬇️

Includes articles written by notorious wokeness warrior John Nagl

That ominous moment when you receive an email that a journal has created an account for you in ScholarOne

But this is a early step in what Joe and I hope will be a broader project that looks at when great powers make status claims and what impacts this has on world politics. DM me if you'd like a copy!

Of course, many caveats abound: we may be measuring status speech incorrectly, UNGA speeches may be the wrong venue to search for status, actions may be more important than words, etc.