Multimethod analysis of earthquakes’ effects in two enduring rivalries demonstrates that natural disaster can promote rapprochement, political steps toward warmer relations that make it difficult for interstate rivalry to continue. Public expression of compassion and support for rapprochement create audience costs for leaders who otherwise would maintain hostile policies toward the rival state. However, routine violence, including communal violence, discourages public support for postdisaster cooperation and rapprochement. Content analysis and time-series analysis of rivalry change in two cases, India—Pakistan and Greece—Turkey, demonstrate these phenomena, and comparative case study analysis shows that communal violence helps account for divergent outcomes between the two cases.

This article analyzes the evolution of power transition theory from the perspective of Lakatos's methodology of scientific research programs. The authors reconstruct the development of the power transition research program by analyzing its hard core of irrefutable assumptions, its negative and positive heuristics, and exemplary works contributing to its protective belt of testable auxiliary hypotheses. It is argued that some developments (e.g., Lemke's multiple hierarchy model) constitute progressive problemshifts, but other areas of the research program exhibit signs of degeneration. These include the treatment of the timing and initiation of wars associated with power transitions and causal mechanisms driving such wars. Findings show that the evolution of the power transition research program has generally been progressive in Lakatosian terms, but its future vitality will require continued efforts to explain the above-mentioned theoretical and empirical anomalies in a way that is consistent with the hard core of the research program and that generates new testable propositions.

National Security Council is a real-time, semester-long simulation of the senior advisory group to the US President on national security and foreign policy. The simulation requires undergraduate students to role-play policymakers charged with long-range security planning and responding to actual events and crises as they happen. Students are encouraged to exercise their own judgment, but must operate within the political, bureaucratic, and organizational confines of the office (for example, Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, etc.). Students conduct briefings, develop initiatives, and debate policy positions and proposals. Weekly meetings are supplemented with occasional special sessions to deal with real-world developments (for example, Arab Spring protests, military crisis with North Korea, major humanitarian emergency). The simulation course promotes accountability, independent and team learning, and oral communications skills, and forces students to grapple with bureaucratic turf battles, time pressure, and rapidly changing real-world situations. Several iterations between 2007 and 2012 yield insights into best practices for pedagogy and assessment, but also raise questions about the appropriate roles of technology, social networking, and the Internet.

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Investigation into an often‐overlooked Cold War episode reveals a tipping point in the Reagan administration’s approach to the Soviet Union. In November 1983, NATO military exercise “Able Archer 83” reportedly touched off a crisis atmosphere among Soviet officials who feared a surprise nuclear attack. Intelligence reports about the war scare startled US President Ronald Reagan, altering his understanding of Soviet threat perceptions and prompting him to embrace his moderate advisers’ recommendations that the administration take a more conciliatory approach toward the country Reagan had earlier labeled the “evil empire.” By highlighting Soviet fears of the United States, intelligence stemming from Able Archer 83 cracked Reagan’s mirror images and catalyzed a policy shift from hostile confrontation toward cautious cooperation. The case study identifies facilitating conditions for the shift and yields counterintuitive insights relating to international crises, perception and misperception, and the domestic politics of rivalry.