Michael O. Slobodchikoff

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• PhD
• Professor at Troy University

While scholars have long noted that violent conflicts appear to cluster in certain geographic spaces, we propose that the underlying contextual cause behind this empirical finding is the presence of dominance vacuums, where hierarchical relationships between states are unclear. The absence of a dominant state within these vacuums provides greater o...

Power inequalities and mistrust have characterized many interstate relationships. Yet most international relations theories do not take into account power and mistrust when explaining cooperation. While some scholars argue that power relations inhibit cooperation between states, other scholars expect interstate cooperation regardless of the power r...

Networks of treaties with treaty nesting, wherein treaties build upon, expand upon, or are grounded in preexisting treaties, are an increasingly important dimension of interstate cooperation. Focusing on relations within the area of the former Soviet Union (FSU), with special attention to both multilateral and bilateral arrangements between Russia...

China is in a position of strength for the short term and has learned valuable lessons while watching the reaction of the West in Ukraine. However, the time period of having this strength is rapidly fading. Thus, policy makers should expect China to be much more aggressive than it has been in the past. Chinese foreign policy will be one in which im...

This is a case study examining American intelligence community’s failure to predict and anticipate the Lebanese Civil War. This paper uses archival research to examine all the reports produced by the Central Intelligence Agency prior to the war’s outbreak. This work builds on our previous research which shows that the U.S. had a poor record of pred...

Diaspora in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region and Beyond is very relevant for emerging multidisciplinary Diaspora studies. The region itself has settled or long-term international migrants; Diasporas from neighbouring regions to Diasporas from distant places; Diasporas with the same ethnic/religious/cultural identity as that of natives...

In American Global Leadership: Ailing US Diplomacy and Solutions for the Twenty-First Century, G. Doug Davis and Michael O. Slobodchikoff present a selection of fifteen essays that trace the history of American diplomacy from Eisenhower to Trump. Penned by American statesmen—among them, James A. Baker III, General Wesley Clark, Thomas Pickering, an...

The invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces in February 2022 created a new era of great power competition and geopolitical struggle. The conflict is drawing assets and attention from Washington and Moscow, opening the world to opportunities for China and other states to gain influence. Beijing is the conflict’s primary beneficiary as it has increased...

A treia lege a lui Sir Isaac Newton spune că pentru fiecare acțiune din natură există o reacție egală și opusă. Acest lucru este valabil și pentru conflict. Când o parte escaladează conflictul, există adesea o idee greșită că cealaltă parte va accepta pasiv schimbările fără a reacționa¹. Aceasta este o greșeală periculoasă care ignoră bunul simț-ce...

About the Book The post–Cold War order established by the United States is at a crossroads: no longer is the liberal order and U.S. hegemonic power a given. The Challenge to NATO is a concise review of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), its relationship with the United States, and its implications for global security. Despite seeing it...

The post–Cold War order established by the United States is at a crossroads: no longer is the liberal order and U.S. hegemonic power a given. The Challenge to NATO is a concise review of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), its relationship with the United States, and its implications for global security. Despite seeing its seventieth an...

This article examines how variations in the degree of integration with the Russian Federation influence relations among post-Soviet states. Eurasian integration has been a significant priority of Russian foreign policy in the Putin era; the Russian Federation serves as the regional hegemon for Eurasian integration. Hegemonic stability theory sugges...

This article uses the case study of India-Pakistan to explore how rivals build cooperation over time. India and Pakistan have shared an intense rivalry since their independence and subsequent partition in 1947, having fought three major wars and several militarised disputes over the last 70 years. The authors use network analysis to study the patte...

The end of the Cold War heralded in a new era for liberalism. Eastern European states adopted democracy and capitalism to gain acceptance by the West. Yet, a mere two decades later, liberalism was in crisis. The rise of illiberal democracies and nationalist movements in the second decade of the twenty-first century have left scholars baffled. How c...

Although officially non-aligned during the Cold War, India remained closely aligned with the Soviet Union. After the Cold War, Indo- Russian ties have remained strong; currently the two countries share a Strategic Partnership in addition to numerous other bilateral treaties. When the United States first replaced Russia as India’s largest defence su...

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was reduced from the role of a global hegemon to that of a regional hegemon. As the regional hegemon, Russia was responsible for creating a regional order that was nested within the global order. However, since the Soviet Union had collapsed, it could not be assumed that Russia would create a regio...

In 2014, Russia and the United States found their relations to be at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War. A new government had taken over in Ukraine, Russia had taken over the Crimea, and civil war raged in Eastern Ukraine with help from Russia. Known as the Ukraine Crisis, these events had profound implications on Russian-American rel...

The end of the Cold War heralded a new era as Western soft power was at its zenith in Eastern Europe and regional states accepted and institutionalized a new Euro- American ethos. In contrast, Russian soft power was at its lowest point as the Soviet Union imploded, leaving fi fteen newly independent states. While Russia was still the most powerful...

In democracies, elites should be responsive to public opinion. This is especially true in Eastern Europe, where politicians fear electoral sanctions in the process of reform (Roberts and Kim 2011). Public opinion in general in Eastern Europe has been overwhelmingly in favor of European integration (Caplanova et al. 2004). In Ukraine, public opinion...

This article investigates how states can begin to cooperate and form bilateral relationships given severe barriers to cooperation. Certain issues can prevent cooperation from occurring despite strategic interests in doing so by both states. However, if states agree to use the institutional design feature of territorial or issue neutralization, then...

Power inequalities and mistrust have characterized many relationships between states over the centuries. One approach that states can take to deal with these two, often interrelated, problems is to create intergovernmental institutions and arrangements designed to accommodate the interests of states with varied power capabilities. The Commonwealth...

Building on the Kantian tripod of peace in liberal peace theory, we test theories of state intergovernmental organization (IGO) membership and levels of state cooperation. We examine the measurement for IGO joint membership and find that it is inadequate to measure the level of cooperation among states. Using network analysis, we propose a new dyad...

International organizations have been shown to be effective at mediating conflicts, yet little work has been done to examine how effective international organizations are at resolving conflicts among their own member states or future member states. This study examines territorial disputes in the European Union and determines that the EU is very eff...

Although European shared norms can be identified through the Copenhagen Criteria, few scholars have examined what methods the European Union employs to ensure norm diffusion. This study examines the impact of EU norm diffusion on both member and candidate states. The European Union faces two different situations when it seeks to diffuse norms: targ...