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In the halls of both academic and government buildings, the stories of the gap between theory and praxis are legion. Practitioners speak of misguided academics and armchair generals criticizing the creation of strategy and the conduct of operations from the safety of their universities. Moreover, and at a more fundamental level, practitioners are frustrated that academics just don't seem to "get" the policy world. Conversely, academics bemoan the fact that practitioners often fail to fully think through the problems they claim need to be solved. If they had, many scholars argue, they would understand that the "solution" to a "problem" either becomes a part of the problem itself, or creates a whole new set of problems. Whether one calls the gap between theory and praxis in international relations a difference, a disconnect, or a divide hardly matters. What matters is discovering whether or not it actually exists, and if so, what is being done to rectify it. I first describe and then challenge the conventional wisdom that irreconcilable differences separate the academy and military practitioners. Reflections

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is perhaps the world's least-known major security organization. However, the same characteristic which puts the OSCE seemingly continually on the verge of irrelevance with respect to the other actors in European and global security is in fact what has allowed it to endure and is in fact its greatest asset. That is, the OSCE's distinct combination of modern and postmodern characteristics in both its composition and its activities allows it to create what can be called "embedded security". Tracing the evolution of one particular set of decision-making rules embedded within a normative framework which questioned the fundamental meanings of "security", and exploring present-day activities, this article reinterprets the OSCE in the light of this new model. In so doing, it re-contextualizes both the OSCE's origins and its contemporary relevance. Instead of a modernist, functional, rule-driven interpretation which situates the OSCE on the periphery in a crowded field, this explanation puts the OSCE at the centre of the postmodern and normative European security architecture.

Writing an essay in which one advocates a viewpoint or policy position—especially if the essay is part of a symposium where competing perspectives are put forth and debated in print—should come with an advisory sticker: “Warning: Entering Intense Discursive Zone. Check Egos at Door.” The symposium surrounding the essay on “puzzles versus problems” is no exception. It was exciting to put into words many of the ideas on the perceived split between the academy and the policy community that I had developed via personal experience or conversations with colleagues. I knew, however, that to do so would be a salutary check on any inflated sense of self-worth those ideas may have generated. The notions that I had held close for so long would be exposed to the depth and breadth of intellectual critique. They would have to stand on their own.

Why and how do states innovate militarily? More importantly, why and how do those innovations spread, and how might we predict when and where those innovations will be picked up and carried forward? These are some of the driving questions of the burgeoning field within security studies known as military innovation (Avant 1994(Avant , 2007Rosen 1994;Kier 1997;Dombrowski and Gholz 2006; Brooks and Stanley 2007). Michael Horowitz's first book-length study of the topic sets a high bar and for the most part achieves the aims its author intended. A wide-ranging work that attempts to ''[address] the broad puzzle of why some military innovations spread and influence international politics while others do not'' (p. 3), The Diffusion of Military Power is centered around a new theoretical take on the transmission of military technology from one state to another. To support the theory, Horowitz employs historical case studies of carrier and battlefleet operations, as well as statistical treatments of nuclear policies and suicide terrorism. As such, it is difficult to easily recap the breadth of the book in the space available here. But its central premise is clear and logical, and it is worth summarizing.Horowitz crafts a new theoretical approach, which he calls ''adoption-capacity theory,'' to understand both the spread of military technology and its adoption by actors in the international arena. As defined by Horowitz (p. 209), adoption-capacity theory is ''the combination of financial intensity and organizational capital possessed by a state, influences the way states respond to major military innovations and how those responses affect the international security environment.'' Essentially, adoption-capacity theory holds that mere innovation in the development of military technology and doctrine does not guarantee success in international affairs. Innovations often benefit precisely those states who were not involved in the innovations themselves, but who were able to better implement them into their own cultures and bureaucracies.Moreover, not every state has the ability to seize on the advantages offered to them by major military innovations. Rather, a state must have the capacity to recognize, utilize, and inculcate within the ranks of its military and policy community innovations that arise in the international arena. Further, innovation is costly, in terms of both monetary expenditures and the costs of organizational restructuring. Viewed in this light, innovation would naturally seem to favor large and powerful actors in the international system.At this point, a reader may be forgiven for assuming that Horowitz has written yet another book restating the Melian dialogue. But he wisely does not fall into that trap. Instead, he adds a new twist to the classic tale of power begetting power. He argues that there is a paradox in military innovation: neither big and