Conference Overview
This is the third iteration of the New-Wave Realism conference. The primary aim of this conference is to help foster a community of young realist scholars, who are exploring these new global and national developments by adopting, modifying, restating, and renewing realist theories and concepts. Realism as a theoretical perspective has dominated the study of international relations for centuries. From the sophists and Thucydides, to Machiavelli and Hobbes, E. H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau, to Kenneth Waltz, Robert Jervis, and John Mearsheimer, realist thinkers have offered lucid and timely analysis of what makes the clock tick in international politics. After the Cold War, many non-realists in the field were gleefully proclaiming the death of realism, arguing that it was finished as a useful perspective for understanding world politics. Today, realism is making a comeback. With the rise of China, the return of Russia as a geopolitical player, the ascendance of Trump, populism, autocracy, inequality, economic nationalism, and geoeconomics, and the retreat of democracy and liberalism symptomatic of the decline of the United States and its liberal rule-based international order, the world appears to be moving in directions consistent with traditional realist propositions and expectations. It is a time when the United States, like other major powers, must reevaluate its foreign commitments, rethink its military capabilities, and undertake major reforms to compete on the world stage.
This event is being recorded and may be posted to our YouTube channel. If you choose to participate in discussion, you are presumed to consent to the use of your comments and potentially your image in these recordings. If you do not wish to be recorded, please contact Kelly Whitaker (whitaker.285@osu.edu).
If you require an accommodation such as live captioning or interpretation to participate in this event, please contact Kyle McCray (mccray.44@osu.edu). Requests made two weeks before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
Program Schedule
9:30 AM - 9:45 AM
Opening Remarks. Randall Schweller, The Ohio State University and Director for the Program for the Study of Realist Foreign Policy
9:45 AM - 11:00 AM
“Grand Strategic Ambiguity: the Taiwan Question in American Grand Strategy.” Patrick Hulme, UCSD/cPASS
11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
“Give It Some Time? Psychological Frames, Intertemporal Choice, and Hysteresis in Sunk Cost Assessments.” Maryum Alam, Ohio State
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
BREAK
1:15 PM - 2:30 PM
"Colonial Legacies and U.S. Military Interventions in Oil-Producing States." Nils Hagerdal, Tufts Fletcher School
2:30 PM - 3:45 PM
"The Promise and Surprising Peril of Military Innovation." Kendrick Kuo, U.S. Naval War College
3:45 PM - 4:00 PM
BREAK
4:00 PM - 5:15 PM
"Long Live the (Nuclear) Revolution!" William d'Ambruoso, Harvard Kennedy School.
9:00 AM - 10:15 AM
“Iran and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Regime Security, Collective Solidarity, and Regional Expressions of Multipolarity.” Nicole Bayat Grajewski, University of Oxford/Harvard Belfer Center
10:15 AM - 10:30 AM
BREAK
10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
"The Gendered Peace Premium” (with Christopher W. Blair). Joshua Schwartz, Harvard Kennedy School
11:45 AM - 1:00 PM
BREAK
1:00 PM - 2:15 PM
“The Digital Revolution and the Changing Face of International Revisionism.” Erik Wisniewski, The Ohio State University
2:15 PM - 3:30 PM
“Mixed Messages: Foreign Military Training and Conflict Between Norms.” Renanah Joyce, Harvard/Brandeis
3:30 PM - 3:45 PM
BREAK
3:45 PM - 5:00 PM
“A Plea for Subsidiarity, Not Chaos: Conservative Opposition to Global Governance." Andrew Goodhart, The Ohio State University
Event Host
This event is cosponsored by the Program for the Study of Realist Foreign Policy at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies and The Charles Koch Foundation.
