For 14 weeks (from November 2011 to February 2012), the ISN Staff worked through the first phase of a three-phase Editorial Plan. Phase 1 sought to answer, in a kaleidoscopic way, a basic overarching question – is the international system undergoing systemic and irreversible change? Indeed, an overarching change that is transforming how we conduct international relations and maintain our security architectures. (For those of our readers who are educators and might be interested is using our bundled, user-friendly Phase 1 topics for classroom purposes, please see the Dossiers portion of our website.)
Scratching our heads over the structural changes we detected in the international system inevitably raised follow-on questions for us, including an especially important one – if transnational political and security dynamics are irreversibly changing, what impact do such changes have on existing power dynamics? That will be the overall focus of Phase 2 of our Editorial Plan, which will begin on April 2. In the meantime, while we collect our breath and gather our thoughts, we’d like to “play jazz” for 5 weeks. That means we’d like to follow our muse and look at a grab-bag collection of subjects that we hope will tickle both of our fancies. So, if you are interested in regional cooperation in Asia, upcoming elections, graphic novels and cartoons, digital games, and some free-floating content – all from an international relations and security standpoint – then please play jazz with us before we begin our discussion about power dynamics in the international system starting on the second of April.