Paul Staniland
@pstanpolitics
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@UChicago @UChicagoCIR @CarnegieSAsia political scientist, @ChiPubSchools parent, mediocre photographer, self-loathing Bulls fan.
Chicago, IL
Joined February 2015
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I have an article out in
@ForeignAffairs
on US strategy for competing over Asia's "swing states." It argues that they are autonomous/diverse, and that the US needs to adapt to the region's complex political landscape (caveat: I didn't choose the headline):
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Biden: "I have decided on regime change in Pakistan!"
Aides: "CIA? Mercenaries? Poison?"
Biden: "No, send the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs to say mean things about Imran Khan in an official meeting with the Pakistani ambassador."
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This is - by far - the least important news in the world these days, but I'm grateful (and extremely lucky) to have been selected as the recipient of the 2022 Karl Deutsch Award from
@isanet
(). My sincere thanks to the selection committee.
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getting out the ol' meme machine for US-Pakistan relations
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@mattyglesias
She lit every political relationship she had on fire for no reason. Led to dysfunction, under-performance, and a self-induced collapse of her coalition.
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I’m very grateful to the committee for their work and this recognition. I always love teaching Sartori’s 1970 APSR article, so this is a particular honor. Please also check out the excellent other awardees’ books:
Congratulations to QMMR
@APSAtweets
Giovanni Sartori best book award winners!
@pstanpolitics
's
@CornellPress
book Ordering Violence won the award, with a new conceptual framework to broaden our understanding of state relations with armed actors: armed orders.
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Some professional news: thrilled to announce that I am available to be the next British Prime Minister.
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New article!
@JournalofCW
asked me to think about how research on civil wars - including my own - has evolved as part of their 25th Anniversary Special Issue. I identify three "waves" of research and discuss the current state of the field. Free access PDF:
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According to this analysis, NATO expansion was driven, at least in large part, by the deep, existential, legitimate security interests of Russia’s neighbors:
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The hot-off-the-presses Fall 2023 syllabus for "Qualitative Methods & Research Design" grad seminar co-taught with
@carsonaust
@uchicago
:
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I usually restrict the meme machine to prepping lecture slides, but making an exception:
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Brain before long work flight: "I will diligently prep for class, catch up on the literature, and work on my book."
Brain once on flight: "Huh, Kong: Skull Island looks pretty good let's watch that and then its sequel Godzilla: King of the Monsters."
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Whether in Nepal, Sri Lanka, or Pakistan, high or growing Chinese influence has not been turned into either political “stability” or a straightforward PRC ability to manage and control outcomes. Internal dynamics remain crucial.
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In a
@lawfareblog
Foreign Policy Essay, I draw on a new research agenda about when/how geopolitical rivalries interact with domestic politics - coups, factionalism, mass politics, revolts - to identify lessons from the Cold War for Asia today:
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"don't mind me lying on the floor of this fancy academic building to take this photo"
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A book that *might* (and might not) tell us some important things about international politics these days:
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Roger Petersen’s new book clocking in at a mere 578 pages:
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my extremely boring, non-hot take here is that healthy disciplines need a broad and fluid portfolio of types of scholars and research agendas, rather than privileging either extreme.
Some wise advice by Theda Skocpol about scholarship.👇
From Skocpol’s 2017 interview with Eric Schickler:
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tough but fair, course evaluation: "It is just that one–on–one personal interactions do not seem to be his strongest skill set."
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if you're curious what a quarter looks like lodged in a 4 year-old's esophagus (from Christmas Eve, all was well after extraction), I give you:
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Small(er) states have nationalism too, and those emerging from colonialism or external domination are often sovereignty hawks deeply concerned for their survival and autonomy.
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the once-impregnable Rajapaksas a reminder of how quickly things can change in politics when crises - self-induced and exogenous - start to accumulate
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My 2021
@cps_journal
article "Leftist Insurgency in Democracies" is currently ungated; abstract and link below:
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I am not a bien-pensant liberal internationalist () but you really should be extremely careful underestimating how small(er) states’ agency can shape macro-politics (see: Cold War Asia). Also I am writing a book partially about this so may have feelings.
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"USIP experts . . . examine what has changed on the border in the past four years, new domains where India-China competition has intensified, what role India’s general elections this spring could play in shaping these dynamics"
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@EmmaMAshford
@kylelascurettes
Serious question: what is realist about this? Russia has a secure 2nd strike nuclear capability and a massive conventional military. Totally materially secure. The “threats” they appear to perceive are about things like color revolutions that have nothing to do with realism.
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Realism is an intellectual genre, like rational choice or historical institutionalism, not a single theory making clear predictions nor consensus “realist” point predictions about specific cases (realist theories of alliance formation are not theories of war or of coercion):
One of our most insightful scholars,
@stephenWalt
, asks why people hate realism. His question points to a critical distinction: Between a simple appreciation for power in world politics and social science theories known as “realism." Long🧵
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(I think what is going on in Pakistan is enormously important, but I am one of like 4 American twitter people who seems in any even remote way interested - everyone else is looking at maps of Kyiv and talking ruble strength and trying to keep track of who is visiting Delhi when)
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It's been an absolute pleasure to work with a pair of brilliant coauthors -
@asfandyarmir
&
@TamarMitts
- on this project over the past few years. A thread outlining our new
@PoPpublicsphere
article on political coalitions, social media, and Pakistan:
.
@TamarMitts
,
@pstanpolitics
and my paper, “Political Coalitions and Social Media: Evidence from Pakistan,” is out at
@PoPpublicsphere
.
🧵on the paper:
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Donald Lu is off somewhere like "huh well this all got weird pretty fast"
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The
@UChicago
Committee on International Relations is hiring 1 or more Instructional Professors advising & teaching the program’s excellent MA students. More info here: . EOE/Vet/Disability. Email me w/questions!
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rough draft of updated Civil War seminar for next quarter:
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Are you interested in an MA in IR? Do you have students thinking about options for next year?
@UChicago
's Committee on International Relations 1-year Masters program is accepting applications for our spring round of admissions; learn more here:
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With respect, this round of US-China completion thus far is vastly less fierce than the Cold War in Asia (wars in Korea and Vietnam and Afghanistan, insurgencies and coups, staggering refugee flows and death tolls, etc). Important challenge, but let’s keep perspective.
Across nearly every dimension—tech, trade, industry, military, and global influence—the US and China are destined to be the fiercest competitors history has ever seen.
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I really enjoyed this thoughtful, probing, and constructive Critical Dialogue w/
@EmyMatesan
on our respective new books in
@PoPpublicsphere
:
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not only this, but internal and internationalized intrastate war have been on the rise in recent years, so we see a security environment in which both conventional and sub-conventional conflict occur and interact simultaneously:
You can’t overstate this. We’ve been telling ourselves conventional warfare will be hybrid or gray for 15 years. Clausewitzian warfare no longer was politically palatable. This shocks my mental map of what the scope of possibilities are.
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New issue of
@PoPpublicsphere
out, including my (open access) article w/
@asfandyarmir
and
@TamarMitts
on using social media to identify murky patterns of elite competition and alignment, with evidence from the 2018 Pakistani general election:
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Book question for twitter - what novels do you recommend on the theme (very loosely defined) of “the Cold War in Asia”?
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Who among us has never had a light falling-out with frenemy leader of a mercenary army?
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Very important piece for US foreign policy analysts/commentators in particular to read, by
@ShivshankaMenon
:
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I'm a sucker for a good typology or arrow diagram, and here we have both combined by
@Ras_Karya
&
@Megan_A_Stewart
. I am in heaven:
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new article by
@MilliLake
"analyzing how and why reform efforts intended to bolster the state’s monopoly on violence frequently fail to curb the unrest they seek to disrupt":
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For some reason, my second book is 20% off on Amazon; a perfect gift for any occasion:
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Week 7 in grad seminar - a set of readings on civilians caught in civil wars:
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Re-upping my piece in
@lawfareblog
on lessons from the Cold War for major power competition over third-party states in contemporary Asia:
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I decided to try asking ChatGPT some questions related to my research or teaching. This is the first post of several in which I see what ChatGPT has to say, and what that might tell us about teaching in the AI era:
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totally fine for Jaishankar to say what he said, and for Blinken to say what he said. here's to fewer bland platitudes in international diplomacy
India too has concerns about human rights in US, says Jaishankar in strong push back
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Thrilled to announce new book contract and huge cash advance for "Nothing But Net: Why Pro Basketball Explains World Politics"
Per the IR/NBA overlap topic du jour (what can MJ tell us about US Asia policy?), my take is the US needs to draft Scottie Pippen, trade away its old teammates in a ruthless series of transactions, and install the triangle offense. Voila. In conclusion, Tex Winter for SecState.
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Are you - or a students of yours - interested in a one-year Masters in International Relations? Check out the
@uchicago
Committee on International Relations (CIR) MA program
@UChicagoCIR
:
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Not dunking on this (surely some truth to it). But there’s no other profession that would have let me do the research I’ve done - long time-frame, lots of intellectual flexibility, etc. Huge advantages to academia in studying politics, IR, conflict, non-US countries, etc.
Real, non-trollish life advice:
If you're a smart young person and you really want to go to graduate school, then by all means go. But if you're on the fence, probably don't. That's not where the action is. And it's not where the action is going to be for the foreseeable future.
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“You have no power over me” - said by A) tenured faculty or B) 7 year old, when asked to do something?
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New
@andresdu
article on "Coercion, governance, and political behavior in civil war" in
@JPR_journal
, exploring how armed actors affect the outcome of elections:
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"India needs more US experts for at least three reasons"
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Two radically different but very interesting books that together tell us a lot about the politics of contemporary Asia:
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quite the timing:
US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar called on Chairman PTI in Bani Gala. They discussed Islamophobia & related issues.
@Ilhan
expressed her admiration for
@ImranKhanPTI
& his position on & work against Islamophobia globally. IK appreciated her courageous & principled position on issues.
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Political science takes a lot of heat for being (allegedly) irrelevant and obscure, but here is a timely new issue of
@PoPpublicsphere
all about the post-Soviet space (plus work on liberal internationalism, elections in India and much more). Check it out:
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Kevin Durant is Reviewer 2:
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“The Cold War was stable” very much depends on where, when, and who:
I tend to agree with the takes right now that the "post-Cold War era" is ending and whatnot but can we bury forever the "We will miss the old Cold War" line?
I'd invite anyone who toys with that idea to read Paul Chamberlin's "The Cold War's Killing Fields," abt how superpower/
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I find the “America should ignore Europe and only care about Asia” argument kind of hard to follow. Obviously Asia is hugely important, but also happens to be full of vast, difficult-to-conquer countries and no imminent threat of large-scale conventional warfare.
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Beyond parody
Guns will be banned during an address by former President Donald Trump at the NRA's annual convention on Friday in Houston.
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You: here are my takes on the events of the day.
Me: here are my recent experiments in squirrel portraiture.
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