Jonathan R. Hunt
@JRHunTx
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Asst Prof of Strategic Deterrence @NavalWarCollege | Co-editor, "The Reagan Moment;" Author, "The Nuclear Club" | PERSONAL VIEWS, don’t speak for NWC, USN, DoD.
Newport, RI
Joined July 2012
Thrilled to announce my 1st book! "The Nuclear Club" examines world affairs from Hiroshima to 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to demonstrate how the club consolidated authority via a counter-revolution that legitimated wars of choice a/g rogue states.
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My completely off-the-cuff intuition is that a non-trivial amount of Americans’ famous aversion to taxation is the overly complex paperwork.
Really gonna enjoy watching the IRS nuke TurboTax’s predatory business model
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Would be a travesty if Oppenheimer left audiences w/ sense Henry Stimson's saving of Kyoto was capricious. Military on Targeting Committee placed Kyoto at #1, re-selecting whenever Stimson crossed it out. He went direct to Truman w/ plea lest US-Japanese relations never recover.
There’s a scene in Oppenheimer where they’re deciding where to drop the bomb and one of the military guys doesn’t wanna drop it on Kyoto because he and his wife vacationed there. It’s one of the most incisive depictions of western imperialism.
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This, in a nutshell, is the tragedy spelled out in Fukuyama’s “The End of History.”.
the most important thing to understand about American politics is that people are bored. that's like 80 percent of it, I think. they're just bored.
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Good example of how empty the slogan “endless wars” has become. When the US occupied a country, it’s a “forever war.” When Russia occupies a country, it’s also a “forever war,” not Moscow’s, but Washington’s. Brilliant.
How wars become endless (even justified defensive wars). First, issue naive promises that victory is just around the corner - just need one more push. Then, delegitimize any effort at diplomacy. Third, once the promises fall flat, just make new ones with new timelines. Repeat.
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@erikmbaker Honestly, why? They’ve both become fairly influential in the Biden administration but had no leverage, personal or political over the guy. They’ve opted for the inside game (loyalty) and, if anything, Biden’s decision vindicates their choice. What would have been the upside?.
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You really have to admire the chutzpah of a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, grandson of a CIA Director, and son of a Carlyle Group senior director—basically the physical embodiment of an American patrician—decrying the failures of “America’s elite.”.
America's elite has manifestly not done a good job over the last generation. Observe our fiscal, foreign policy, and social comity situation today as against 2000. Why shouldn't Americans' be anti-elitist? There's always an elite, but our current elite deserves opposition.
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@Sandman208 @KatzOnEarth @MonicaBaumann @jordanbpeterson The “noble savage” is a trope in Western philosophy that originated with Hobbes and is often associated with Jean Jacque Rousseau and the romantic attack on the Enlightenment. I.e. Things a philosophy professor should know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
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Imagine thinking David Sacks is the “grown up” on Ukraine. Just the idea that the US has been the veto player on a peace deal rather than the Ukrainian electorate demonstrates a profound ignorance about the conflict & the possible bounds of compromise.
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@jwdwerner Jake, in no way did Kamala lean into Cheney-style conservatism. This is ludicrous.
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Isn’t this common knowledge?
This is gonna sound fake but at a reading the other week I had a climate scientist come up to me and unbidden say that she thinks Chinese leadership is the world's only hope but she doesn't feel like she can say that in public without risking serious consequences.
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I’m not usually an outspoken Aristotelian, but the past month have been a study in the importance of virtuous statesmanship — the tug-of-war between pride & egotism vs. the modesty & magnanimity demanded of the truly civic-minded. To give up power is a statesman’s final crucible.
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I’m sorry but it’s an absolute indictment that Elizabeth Bruenig rather than a serious left foreign policy thinker like Matt Duss or Van Jackson is writing this for the Atlantic.
“Elizabeth Bruenig: “Being anti-war isn’t naive, but a serious, considered, and humane position.”:
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@PilledOaf One reason that occurred (apart from Kyoto) was the bombings let Japanese conservatives reframe their defeat as inevitable--the consequence of a epochal invention--while allowing the political spectrum to reimagine their society as victims, not violators.
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The US government passed something like $5 trillion in various forms of state, municipal, business, and personal assistance over the past 2 years, 100x+ the cost of rearming and rebuilding Ukraine.
That means $54,000,000,000 to Ukraine in less than 4 months. “How will we pay for it” never seems to apply to wars, just the basic needs of the American people.
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12 years, 30+ archives, 10 countries, 5 languages (3 badly), piles of books & digital sources, 0 regrets (ok some regrets. ) page proofs are ready @stanfordpress . Dedicated to my & @vivienlchang parents. More soon!
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It’s really shitty to center college professors like this. This was by far the hardest year teaching for us all, research and sabbaticals cancelled, same lackluster pay & diminishing opportunities. Blame the university administrators & declining state funding. Not us.
Did you shell out $55,000 to watch your college professor on Zoom all year?.
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Re-reading ON WAR I’m struck by the frequency with which Clausewitz provides justification for Ukraine’s current offensive in Kursk, even as he would be the first to insist on qualifications & reservations.
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@ilovemyjobpj @jimsciutto So you believe the man who just murdered eight people, rather than the gratuitous fact that he drove thirty miles to "Gold Spa" from "Young’s Asian Massage" and murdered six Asian women. The idea that racists can't also be misogynists is nonsense.
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We have a cover! . Thank you @CornellPress for the outstanding design: We hope it conveys the three overarching themes of our 19 chapters: the Cold War, Reagan's romantic worldview, and the ubiquity of neoliberal globalization in this pivotal decade. p.s. I want my '80s MTV!
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Nolan convinced a mass audience to sit through a 3-hour dramatization of a Pulitzer-Prize-winning work of historical biography based on 20 years of archival research. It’s rated exactly how it should be.
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I'm thrilled to announce that this June I'll join the @NavalWarCollege Strategic & Operational Research Department as an assistant professor of strategic deterrence in beautiful Newport, RI.
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I’m among the most reluctant to concede this, but mainstream departments have fully divested from military, political, international, & to lesser extent economic history. Cultural historians lament their dominance in the “bookstore” & thus justify their scholarly marginalization.
I feel like history departments would attract more students to their classes if they taught more “old fashioned” military and political history like you hear on podcasts or see among popular press books. Maybe nobody cares but….
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People who think this is new should read about Cuban foreign policy during the Cold War. They had more troops in Africa than either superpower.
US: look, we’re telling you for the last time, stop attacking russian territory and potentially turning this into a world war. ukraine: [opens sudan front].
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No one has ever grad-studented harder than this guy. “Use early mornings, late nights, lunch hours, weekends at home.” You don’t say?.
discipline and habit-formation, there’s really no other way. Use early mornings, late nights, lunch hours, weekends at home. Organize your reading into coherent longterm projects. Distrust your impulse to put the book down. Fight through the resistance like you’re at the gym.
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This should be the line from now on: We'll start taking your argument seriously when you start taking it seriously. If you say fascism is coming, I want to see either your plane ticket to another country or the guns you're stockpiling. All the rest is commentary.
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@EricWelchWCS @justinhendrix @BenSasse Actually, it's known as Impeachment, Article 1, Section 3, Clauses 6 & 7 of the U.S. Constitution.
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@redsteeze @DavidAFrench What about signed military ballots postmarked days before the election received two days after it? Should they be counted, or are you uninterested in that question?.
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Unpopular opinion: The “yes all the basic premises of my tweet flat wrong or plain specious” but my point stands because I went viral is a terrible habit for academics and policymakers to engage in.
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That’s because the US has embassies or consulates in, wild guess, around 178 counties, each with a contingent of US Marine guards.
The United States has soldiers in 178 countries that we know about btw.
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Reading @michaelxpettis @M_C_Klein Trade Wars are Class Wars and their discussion of how the Dutch financed British industrialization and the British financed American industrialization really underscores how not novel Chinese industrialization, in particular IP theft, has been.
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My opinion on Afghanistan is that it represents the rare case in which analysis of US foreign policy would be clearer if we had understood it as a colonial relationship.
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@dbessner @brendengallager More persuasive answer is good old-fashioned material incentives. When your retirement savings are invested in the stock market, you’re less likely to want to liquidate those holdings as compared to the guaranteed, set pension their parents (our grandparents) looked forward to.
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One of the few areas I felt the cinematic need to summarize piquantly yielded inaccuracy. Stimson was uniquely consumed by Bomb's ethics, 4 better & worse. Would be wonderful if the discourse would help promote Sean Malloy's wonderful book on the topic:.
there’s a scene in oppenheimer where a US official decides to spare a japanese city because he and his wife vacation there. it is far more effective at communicating the evil at play here than “showing hiroshima” would have been.
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I am in no way shape or form a Mearsheimer acolyte or defender but his analytical framework makes more sense when you acknowledge that he is not trying to explain the course of events or the justice or lack thereof of our state of affaire but rather how to avoid great-power war.
This Mearsheimer interview on Ukraine may be the most embarrassing interview a respected academic has ever given to a mainstream publication. I couldn't believe what I was reading. Littered with errors, half-truths, and 8th grade social studies analysis.
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Ten years after submitting my dissertation prospectus, my first book manuscript is DONE! 110k words (+30k footnotes) on how 🇺🇸 & the🌍agreed to police⚛️. Planning a new Chapter 1 so story starts in 1945. But for now it's off to press editors tomorrow for peer review!
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One of the few areas I felt the cinematic need to summarize piquantly yielded inaccuracy. Stimson was uniquely consumed by Bomb's ethics, 4 better & worse. Would be wonderful if the discourse would help promote Sean Malloy's wonderful book on the topic:.
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@gilmaman2 @sakshi_saroja Your implication being we should be MORE like communist China. Lordy.
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The fact we fly strategic bombers over major sporting events is weird.
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Fascinating new book @smohandesi identifying (in part) Cambodian genocide as key trigger in shift from anti-hegemonic critiques of US power amid Vietnam to human-rights-focused thinking of the later 1970s as Cambodia confounded Leninist categories.
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Even better would be someone with foreign policy expertise on Russia, Ukraine, and Europe more generally. Honestly! Such a wasted opportunity with the same predictable bromides sold by the same over-exposed writers.
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Look what arrived from @CornellPress in time for Xmas!. 20 chapters on America & the world in the 1980s through the prism of the Reagan presidency. Available to all good girls and boys, Wednesday, 15 December.
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There’s plenty of wishful thinking among liberal internationalists, fair. Trying to endlessly shove the square peg of a Russian invasion into the round hole of US foreign policy under conditions of primacy, however, is its own “forever war.” Everyone needs to update their priors.
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@PatriciaVInfan1 @RJMMM @marcorubio @nusr_ett @NicolasMaduro He posted the phone number of a private business and encouraged harassment of a constituent. This is about arbitrary government power in Venezuela. It’s about arbitrary government power in Florida.
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Eisenhower famously erred on the side of caution when Khrushchev brutally suppressed '56 Hungarian uprising when Washington had massive nuclear superiority over Moscow. Fast forwarding 66 years, an era of US-Russia nuclear parity, & my advice is simple: "Be Like Ike.".
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@__ffree @red_baiting You must have had similar issues making it through episodes of the Colbert Report.
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Dean Acheson once reportedly told Kennedy upon the younger man’d ascension to office to reflect at length on what he would do in a serious nuclear crisis, decide what it would be, then tell absolutely no one. This is not a field amenable to epistemological mastery.
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@lottelydia why do you all have to DRINK WARM BEER, Charlotte. Some questions have no good answers.
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Intriguing new book by Dale Copeland argues the protection of commerce, not offensive or defensive power balancing, best explains US foreign policy, blending theory and historical case studies from the revolution to today's "China challenge.".
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@ASPertierra Still vividly remember reading Kenneth Stamp’s THE PECULIAR INSTITUION and his prologue (paraphrasing) asserting, “unlike previous works on Atlantic slavery, I argue that the enslaved were, in fact, human beings.” Literally gasped.
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While positions in early American history has clearly been sharply reduced, it also bears mentioning that jobs in the history of US foreign relations, foreign policy, diplomatic & military affairs, and war & society have almost entirely dried up.
The #1 story in the US History job market, over the last ten years, is the overall decline in tenure-track job openings. But the #2 story is the change in which jobs are being offered. The US History market in 2011-13 compared to 2020-23, with data from the Academic Jobs Wiki:
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While liberal orders are particularly vulnerable to charges of inequality & hypocrisy, the truth is any order should be evaluated in relation to plausible alternatives. Did what precede or could succeed the current imperfect “order” be less uneven or bloody? Inquiring minds!.
The "rules-based international order" is the name we give to a world in which the West and its allies can violate international law with impunity while others get sanctions, military interventions and moral lectures. The objective function of the concept, whether people realize.
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I can’t say I agree with this viewpoint. There’s a wide range of personalities & politics in the broader “natsec” community, but almost to a person they abhor war (many served) but believe severe materialist analysis is the best pathway to peace.
The twitter OSINT freaks, military hardware nerds, and natsec ghouls are the most depressing goddamn thing. The reduction of war and atrocity to data points and speculation over videos and photos, the ultimate barbarism.
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@red_baiting @__ffree No. Colbert was not parroting “American Republicans” let alone conservatives as a class. He was aping Fox News and Republican propaganda. Just as Zelenskyy, who explicitly modeled his comedy on Colber, was parroting Russian propaganda, not Ukrainian Nazis.
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Sincere answer. Neither mathematics nor the sciences have as their object of inquiry “humanity.” When “man is the measure of all things,” it’s reasonable for humanists to be judged, in some measure, by how many and how well their ideas are understood.
& this is always directed at the humanities - I don’t assume that I could possibly understand the writing of a physicist or neuroscientist, because I don’t have the training, so why are the humanities always treated as if they must be wholly accessible to the average outsider?.
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This is Khrushchev justifying years later his very public & embarrassing climbdown in the Caribbean after Castro & Mao accused him of cowardice & the Politburo of stupidity for touching off a nuclear-tipped crisis he couldn’t win. Or, you know, “Khrushchev energy.”.
Honestly none of the big decision-makers in any of the major powers seem to be nearly as afraid a sane person would be about the prospect of one or more all-out wars breaking out between them. I'd like a little more Khrushchev energy all around:
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I’m in @ForeignPolicy today with a plea that “Oppenheimer” not leave audiences with a sense of futility about the Bomb. Please read and share. “Nuclear Fatalism in ‘Oppenheimer’ Is a Dead End”
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If I may respectfully disagree with the general, international law had no binding authority and unilaterally deeming foreign leaders “criminals” is a surefire route to lock-in an escalatory spiral that endangers Ukrainians and indeed we all.
@Angry_Staffer @JBWolfsthal @AnnieMH1 @dassen_van The bare minimum. In a normal negotiation, offering off ramps is prudent & acceptable. But Putin is a criminal, not a political leader, and has proven himself by violating every treaty or deal he has signed. This puts him in totally-defeat-so-he-never-does-it-again territory.
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In January I'll start a new job: as an assistant professor of strategy @AirWarCollege . There are bittersweet notes. I'll miss my friends @HistoryAtSoton & the job market is so arid for talented historians and humanists across the board.
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@Lechatbon @513dividends @ltgaylor @CorieWhalen How conservatives have lost their way so badly they’ve come to attack step-parents as “not real parents” is just, so beyond me.
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Really stunning how Bridge is willing to apply a constant buzzsaw to US security relationships by constantly directing some version of the Melian Dialogue to our closest allies & partners in his ongoing audition for a senior policy role in the next Republican administration.
Sorry, what’s your alternative? Are you going to concede hegemony over the South Pacific to China? . If that’s not what you want, you have one option: America. Not the America you might wish for, but the real existing America. Make the best of it.
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@TPiner29 @iamundertall @SeeDaneRunAgain @KevinMKruse I’m American. I’m from Austin, TX, but teach U.S. political history and modern international history at the University of Southampton.
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Another entry in the 'new Cold War' debate .@RStatecraft. What happens when we take the Cold War in Asia as our template? The lessons look more tragic than tales of strategic grandmasters like George Kennan & Dean Acheson forging a long peace in Europe!.
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@austinlawhead_ Nonsense? Why would you do per capita when discussing the importance of state action? Even taking into consideration per capita, look at the trend lines!.
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I say this as a lover of Taiwan. This more than anything besides the Taiwanese people themselves voting for independence would precipitate a PLA invasion. As in Ukraine, there’s no moral high ground in watching a friendly country ground to dust.
It is my view that the U.S. government should immediately take necessary, and long-overdue, steps to do the right and obvious thing, that is to offer the Republic of China (Taiwan) America’s diplomatic recognition as a free and sovereign country.
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@WTEpaminondas @dgventers @peskyspoll @AriFleischer @GOP @48 All the more reason to move to a model akin to the NHS, whose financial woes are due entirely to Tory mismanagement.
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Copyedits done! “The Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam” will be available for your reading pleasure in August. However are you going to occupy yourself until then?.
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I’m just going to encourage everyone to read Francis Gavin’s “Nuclear Weapons & American Grand Strategy.” Actually, I’ll save you the library late fees. Everyone thinks nuclear strategy is in capabilities, doctrine, or theory, when in reality it’s whatever the president does.
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Planning to write a book titled, “How to Lose a Cold War in 10 Ways” and #3 will be mirroring your authoritarian opponent’s Machiavellian horseshit and then ending up with blood on your hands & also egg on your face when a pissed off ex-official speaks off the record.
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The Morning email from the New York Times citing Hal Brands and Noah Smith on US-China with no dissenting voices…
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Collapse by Vladislav Zubok is one of the most disturbing books I have ever read, I am convinced now more than ever that the end of the Soviet Union was the single most disastrous process of de-development of my lifetime the main fruits are reactionary nationalism and oligarchy.
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Reading through the comments I think we’re approaching over-correction territory on the likelihood of nuclear winter and WAY under-indexed on what even a limited nuclear war would do to the global economy including most of all the food supply.
"FUCK YEAH A NUCLEAR EXCHANGE IS WINNABLE". vs. "Oh fuck a nuclear exchange is winnable"
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I have a piece @ForeignPolicy on US-China as story of binational elites profiting in name of world peace & wealth. Come for Anna Chennault. Stay for shady dealings! “Elaine Chao Learned From the Best – Foreign Policy” @dbessner @DavidKlion
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@AlphEatsCats @hatedballoon @arithmoquine Liberals explicitly reject the notion of zero-sum resources. Grow the pie, etc.
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No one: . No one at all: . H-Diplo: "Here's a 41-page roundtable about a 200-page book.". Everyone: "Why do I have so many browser tabs open?".
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After Kissinger negotiated a cease-fire with the Kremlin amid the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, the Israeli Defense Forces proceeded to crush Egypt’s Third Army against the Suez Canal, leading Washington raise the nuclear alarm to DEFCON 3 to deter Soviet intervention.
I want us all to stop giving Israel sole credit for things they can’t possibly do without the full seal of approval from the United States.
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Digby thinks you should take advantage of @stanfordpress current sale to pick up your own copy of THE NUCLEAR CLUB! . 30% off with code WINTER30
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It’s telling that for many leftists citing “internal processes”—culture, tradition, institutions, domestic politics—as paramount in explaining a foreign country’s behavior is akin to measuring skulls. They simply can’t conceive of historical expertise outside a Spenglarian frame.
Double embarrassment: excitedly screencapping phrenological thinking and also needing to slip in that you used to work for David Remnick.
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@Theophite Even worse, if said Hawaiian confederacy was in fact analogous to modern-day Taiwanese electoral conditions, it painfully but nonetheless voluntarily went through its own Reconstruction and came out the other side with the indigenous Hawaiians and freed slaves in charge.
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@dgventers @peskyspoll @AriFleischer @GOP @48 The "may" is such a small % of cases. Risks w/o insurance are bankruptcy, at best, or inability to afford life-saving treatment, at worst.
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Clearly we will never know the answer to this entirely hypothetical question…
If a country attacked a US embassy, what would we expect the US to do in response? And would that be legitimate? Are Iranians permitted to do the same when their own embassy is attacked? Or do we adopt one standard for ourselves and another for "enemies"?.
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@Turkasaurus_Rex @poorerposter @vetoshield @JConeNDaZone @ImamBiden @kokoinkorea Look, it’s really simple—if you insist on being an antisocial narcissist expect to become a pariah, including with your family, because social trust is based on reciprocity. As soon as your start refusing small acts of kindness you’re on your way to be well and truly alone.
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All-out thermonuclear war in 2024 wouldn’t resemble all-out thermonuclear war circa 1983 but this still feels like “look how much Red the Republican districts fill in on a map” version of nuclear discourse. Russia’s posture embraces countervalue & those specks represent millions.
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It’s pretty sick to encourage a Twitter hate session on a master’s student, yes. So [Y].
Can we all agree that this is profoundly sick? Y/N?.
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@DanielTutt This was 6 months after Dick experienced a series of hallucinations that he attributed to a vast, ubiquitous computer, so the ideological component of his conspiratorial delusions should be considered in that light.
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Why did the USSR want a nonproliferation treaty?. New translated Soviet documents via @DrRadchenko reveal how Brezhnev justified allying w/ LBJ amid Vietnam despite vexing comrades like Romania's Ceaușescu. They also hint how Moscow's nuclear motives differed from Washington's.
Soviet documents reveal how Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin responded to Romanian criticisms of a draft Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The latest from @JRHunTx .
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The roundtable of my book, THE NUCLEAR CLUB, reviews by Sean Malloy, Nicholas Miller, @mbudjeryn & Shane Maddock, intro by Or Rabinowitz, is out today! . Nothing else of note is happening this week; so, you’ll have plenty of time to read all 26 pages (or just the intro)!.
RJISSF Roundtable 16-11: Jonathan Hunt’s The Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam.“Hunt also explores the way in which the changed international climate in the era of decolonization provided openings and opportunities for smaller.
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Would be a travesty if Oppenheimer left audiences w/ sense Henry Stimson's saving of Kyoto was capricious. Military on Targeting Committee placed Kyoto at #1, re-selecting whenever Stimson crossed it out. He went direct to Truman w/ plea lest US-Japanese relations never recover.
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Feel like this is one of those vibe-based arguments that doesn’t really withstand scrutiny — the US went to war with Iraq because it was a longstanding preoccupation & Bush like the feel of being commander-in-chief. It was elite-driven, not mass psychology.
If I had to provide a one sentence explanation for why the Iraq War happened it would be difficult to top this one by JD Vance
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Some people won’t want to hear it as “humanitarianism is a dead end” but I suspect Cindy McCain’s categorical statements as director of the World Food Program that famine imminent in Gaza has likely played a significant if not decisive role in this about-face.
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This is the danger of surface-level knowledge of nuclear doctrine (though a truth is glimpsed). Pentagon lawyers go over every target for jus in bello. So, no, it’s not “a lie.” Civilians would yet still die in droves b/c so many military assets are colocated in metro areas.
The US nuclear posture reviews insist that we would not use nukes merely to kill civilians; however 1) this is definitely a lie right on its face and 2) we have specifically not committed to any declaratory policy in order to keep escalatory tit-for-tat available.
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The boring, non-self-righteous narrative about these past few election cycles is less about racism, education, or civics than the diverging experience men and women have of a service-sector-based, offshored, contractor-filled, knowledge-work-driven post-industrial economy.
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