Doug Stokes

Vice President & Professor in International Relations at Modul University. Vienna. Hon Prof At Exeter University, UK. Media/Analysis:

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

The 4th edition of my co-edited US Foreign Policy with @OxUniPress is out in March 2026. Available from all good bookshops. Now the world's leading textbook on American Foreign Policy. https://t.co/pbS4lgQgsS

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

@brivael I made a similar point here: https://t.co/e3IXz8Nqsx What are the philosophical roots of Wokery?
Science over feelings. Reality over ideas. Ontology over epistemology.

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

There's a huge gap in the post-colonial literature on the Ottoman Empire's subjugation of large parts of Europe. Slavery, genocide, and conquest committed against Europeans are all largely ignored.

Edward Said, whose work has done the most to focus myopically on the evils of Western civilisation, noted this omission himself. “There are several empires that I do not discuss: the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian, the Ottoman, and the Spanish and Portuguese”.

Quite an omission, no?

[📢Rebelión en la Granja🚨 @elorwelliano]

🎵🇭🇷 Croacia irrumpe en la final de Eurovisión con un himno histórico que denuncia la ocupación otomana y revive la tradición de tatuajes cristianos para proteger a las jóvenes.

La canción para la final interpretada en su idioma materno que no tiene nada de woke denuncia la ocupación turca islámica de sus tierras durante siglos y recuerda la antigua tradición croata de tatuar motivos cristianos en las niñas católicas para evitar que fueran raptadas, convertidas al islam y sometidas a esclavitud sexual.

El tema, que incluye versos como “por eso muchos eligieron la tumba, nuestras madres no parieron esclavos”, ha sido aplaudido como un acto de valentía cultural en plena era de corrección política, mientras Turquía ya elevó quejas oficiales.

Los vecinos croatas, lejos de autocensurarse, han convertido el escenario europeo en una lección de memoria histórica porque la historia se respeta.

[The Royal Family @RoyalFamily]

At Golders Green today, The King reaffirmed his support for the Jewish community, following a series of antisemitic attacks.

During his time at the Jewish Care centre in North-West London, The King spoke to victims of the recent knife attack that took place in the area on 29th April 2026.

His Majesty also met community police force, Shomrim, who were involved in responding to the attacks.

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

@Lily4Liberty Bless her memory.

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

Israel rushed a laser system to the UAE to fend off Iran’s missiles https://t.co/hQPOt6Ye7X Very interesting divergence in the Gulf. Saudi Arabia leans into Pakistan, whilst the UAE further ties its future to the US and Israel. I think the UAE has most probably made the right call.

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

Thanks to Mexico's H.E. Ambassador José Antonio Zabalgoitia. @JA_Zabalgoitia, for our discussions today. He was a former IR student at LSE in the 80s, and we discovered that we both knew many of the (old-guard) IR scholars who were there!

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

In conversation with @DavidGHFrost, May 26th, 2026, in Vienna, discussing sovereignty, a changing world order and European Geopolitics. https://t.co/X8t2YmFvT2

[Hananya Naftali @HananyaNaftali]

Iranian Christian pastor Farshid Fahti endured 5 brutal years in Iran’s prisons, 361 days in solitary confinement in a tiny 2-meter cell. Regime thugs broke his leg and threatened him with execution.

Now free, he begs world leaders: Don’t abandon the thousands of new protesters still rotting in the same jails.

Over 150 young Iranians have already been executed since March.
“Iranians feel abandoned,” he warns. “Don’t leave them to die.”

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

https://t.co/kbGNS8b8xg

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

Any disruption to the world’s principal energy chokepoint becomes, whether Washington planned for it or not, a test of the Sino-American balance of power. https://t.co/YGsla4ohnu Latest piece.

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

In March, Modul University Vienna hosted the inaugural Kahlenberg Lecture, welcoming @NickGibbUK, one of the longest-serving UK Education Ministers, for an in-depth conversation on the role of education in a shifting global landscape. https://t.co/c7TIPJ23hw

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

https://t.co/dncMCz99hJ

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

A cost-benefit analysis of Nato was long overdue, and the European powers have dilly-dallied for far too long on defence, but Senator Tim Kaine is right to note that withdrawing from Nato would be ‘national self-sabotage’. https://t.co/UWexmtZk28 Latest piece.

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

The coercion thesis on $ hegemony confuses US geopolitical interventions with the mechanism of dollar dominance. These are not the same thing. Nobody is holding a gun to the head of Norges Bank or Japanese pension funds.

Every major central bank prints money. Why does the $ retain primacy despite this? Mainly because of the structural factors I identified: deep capital markets, enforceable contract law, and open capital account. No rival offers all three.

The strongest test is China: a great power the US cannot coerce, which has actively tried to displace the dollar for fifteen years and largely failed. Why? Because Beijing won't open its capital account or accept independent legal adjudication. The coercion model can't explain voluntary demand from actors beyond American reach.

Like it or not, the dollar will remain the global reserve currency. We are in a period of shallow multipolarity, as I have argued elsewhere.

[Prophet of Doom @Mahboiii]

Completely idiotic argument. The $ dominance rests on the constant threats of the GAE upon its vassals. The "depth and liquidity" only exists because the GAE can print Dollars to infinity and make its vassals bear the price of inflation. The "absence of any credible alternative" required decades of propaganda from lying Americans who love to act as if their money printing skills are some sort of magic power only they can succeed at.
Any financial place that would accepted as the replacement to the USA if it could show that it can protect the general security of the world well enough. London can't do that, Hong Kong can't either. Every time someone stepped up to try and show a better system than "feed Fatistan even more", America attacked them to show that they were the only ones that could establish security.

Iran in 76 wants oil independence? Shah gets coup'd with CIA backing for the islamists.
In 78 the Islamists show they want the same thing? 10 years of war between Saddam and Iran with the US backing Saddam.
Later Saddam attacks Kuwait? Gets destroyed by the GAE.
Later yet Saddam gets tired of being used like a tool and sells his oil in Euro? Invented WMD stories lead to the war in Iraq and his murder.

Russia is an independent oil seller? Pressures and threats are yielded on Germany to only buy in Dollar and never in Euro. Eventually the pressures and threats only got bigger with the expansion of NATO and then they did the Maidan CIA coup to plunge Ukraine into an american-controlled government in 2014 and pushed against Russian minorities all the way to 2022 when the Russian state openly attacked.

All the GAE relies on is constant violence to threaten and destroy its "partners". Fuck this tall tale of "$ depth", the only "depth" is the depth of the thefts. Forcing everyone to keep buying Dollar debt and Dollar assets even as the Dollar gets debased to infinity with the endless money printing they've been doing since 1971.

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

@FistedFoucault Yes. Overdetermination of cooperation based on national interests. Always the 'old' problem of Europe: collective action problem and varied interests based on history, geopolitics and balance of threats. Poland is a classic case, although it will soon be the primary land power.

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

The US 'empire' is better understood as a provision of public goods (security guarantees, open sea lanes, deep capital markets, a relatively stable reserve currency) that other states find rational to participate in, because the alternatives are worse.

[Niccolo Soldo (Fisted By Foucault) @FistedFoucault]

@ProfessorStokes Every single country wants access to two things:

1. access to US capital markets
2. access to the US consumer market

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

@FistedFoucault I don't think, or at least it's wildly irrational, for European states to think post-Trump will be a new age of benign American Liberal Hegemony. Still FDI, defence ties, mutual areas, etc., but IMO European strategic autonomy is now likely deeply baked in.

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

@JackBMontgomery @s8mb If only...

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

@s8mb Most developers don't use architects.

[Doug Stokes @ProfessorStokes]

@FistedFoucault Yes-- if you get to design the order, you also get to structure the rules. A form of structural power that mostly doesn't need coercion. This is the main argument against Trump: why coercion now, and the legitimacy and likely balancing costs of that against America.