Over the last century, the U.S. Navy has encountered critical moments when the emergence of new technologies and competitors cause paradigmatic shifts, undermining established operations and force structure. Today, the rise of an assertive China and its new anti-access and area-denial capabilities threaten the aircraft carrier-based maritime dominance of the U.S. Navy. Citizens and elected officials alike need to be conversant in the process to create the strategy, forces, and metrics needed to guarantee that the United States wins the emerging maritime competition in the Western Pacific. It is time to explain to the American public the enduring considerations and limitations that shape the operations of their global Navy.

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The looming threat of a full-scale Russian attack on Ukraine kept the world on edge for much of 2021, and for good reason — an attack of this magnitude would arguably be the most significant invasion of a European country by a more powerful neighbor since Adolf Hitler’s assault on Poland in 1939. But what purpose would this move serve? As Russia’s preparations and threatening rhetoric have mounted, analysts have pointed out that another invasion of Ukraine would make little sense from a foreign and security policy standpoint.

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Professor Darnton’s most recent article, “The Provenance Problem: Research Methods and Ethics in the Age of WikiLeaks,”  was published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Political Science Association  in Dec 2021. The article addresses how should political scientists navigate the ethical and methodological quandaries associated with analyzing leaked classified documents and other nonconsensually acquired sources? Massive unauthorized disclosures may excite qualitative scholars with policy revelations and quantitative researchers with big-data suitability, but they are fraught with dilemmas that the discipline has yet to resolve. This paper critiques underspecified research designs and opaque references in the proliferation of scholarship with leaked materials, as well as incomplete and inconsistent guidance from leading journals. 

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Many African countries are praetorian states in which the armed forces routinely meddle with politics, and hence defy civilian supremacy over the military. Mali—a noncoastal country in West Africa, with a population of 14.5 million inhabitants—is no exception. Since gaining independence from France in 1960, Mali has been a praetorian state, as the armed forces have frequently intervened in politics. As such, Mali has experienced four successful military coups (in 1968, 1991, 2012, and 2020). These coups have been caused by an array of interconnected and often overlapping factors, including the following: state formation and the relationship between the military and state institutions; legacies of the colonial times; the dynamic political and security context in north Mali; precarious state governance; history of military intervention in politics; and ineffective international aid and assistance.

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