To Re-Establish U.S. Influence, Biden Should Play Rope-a-Dope, Not Compete Globally

Rather than reclaim global dominance by outspending and overpowering new contenders, U.S. planners should instead simply not contest many of Beijing’s and Moscow’s costly efforts to expand their networks of clients

The antiallodynic action of pregabalin in neuropathic pain is independent from the opioid system.

BACKGROUND: Clinical management of neuropathic pain, which is pain arising as a consequence of a lesion or a disease affecting the somatosensory system, partly relies on the use of anticonvulsant drugs such as gabapentinoids. Therapeutic action of gabapentinoids such as gabapentin and pregabalin, which act by the inhibition of calcium currents through interaction with the α2δ-1 subunit of voltage-dependent calcium channels, is well documented. However, some aspects of the downstream mechanisms are still to be uncovered. Using behavioral, genetic, and pharmacological approaches, we tested whether opioid receptors are necessary for the antiallodynic action of acute and/or long-term pregabalin treatment in the specific context of neuropathic pain. RESULTS: Using the cuff model of neuropathic pain in mice, we show that acute pregabalin administration at high dose has a transitory antiallodynic action, while prolonged oral pregabalin treatment leads to sustained antiallodynic action, consistent with clinical observations. We show that pregabalin remains fully effective in μ-opioid receptor, in δ-opioid receptor and in κ-opioid receptor deficient mice, either female or male, and its antiallodynic action is not affected by acute naloxone. Our work also shows that long-term pregabalin treatment suppresses tumor necrosis factor-α overproduction induced by sciatic nerve constriction in the lumbar dorsal root ganglia. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrate that neither acute nor long-term antiallodynic effect of pregabalin in a context of neuropathic pain is mediated by the endogenous opioid system, which differs from opioid treatment of pain and antidepressant treatment of neuropathic pain. Our data are also supportive of an impact of gabapentinoid treatment on the neuroimmune aspect of neuropathic pain.journal articleresearch support, non-u.s. gov't20162016 03 29importe

Social Movements and International Relations: A Relational Framework

Social movements are increasingly recognized as significant features of contemporary world politics, yet to date their treatment in international relations theory has tended to obfuscate the considerable diversity of these social formations, and the variegated interactions they may establish with state actors and different structures of world order. Highlighting the difficulties conventional liberal and critical approaches have in transcending conceptions of movements as moral entities, the article draws from two under-exploited literatures in the study of social movements in international relations, the English School and Social Systems Theory, to specify a wider range of analytical interactions between different categories of social movements and of world political structures. Moreover, by casting social movement phenomena as communications, the article opens international relations to consideration of the increasingly diverse trajectories and second-order effects produced by social movements as they interact with states, intergovernmental institutions, and transnational actors

Symposium: The Politics of Great Power Retrenchment

[This is a post-publication review symposium] Concerns about America’s relative military and economic decline loom large in contemporary debates about United States grand strategy (Wallerstein 2013, Morgan 2012). The wisdom of policies of retrenchment occupies an important place in these disputes. Advocates argue that Washington should take proactive steps to avoid strategic overextension, including deprioritizing or even withdrawing from some regions of the world (Nexon 2013; McDonald and Parent 2011). Opponents contend that, at best, this will trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy that hastens American decline. At worst, it will lead to greater turmoil  and threaten the interests of the United States and its allies (Brooks et al. 2012/2013; Brooks et al. 2013; Muravchik 2013). In his International Studies Quarterly article, “Decline and Devolution: The Sources of Strategic Military Retrenchment,” Kyle Haynes (2015) contributes to this debate by asking a more basic question: what conditions lead declining powers to retrench from specific regions. He argues that “a declining state will choose to withdraw foreign military deployments and security commitments when there exists a suitable regional ‘successor’ to which it can devolve its current responsibilities. The degree of a successor's suitability and the strategic importance of the region to the declining state interact to determine when and how rapidly retrenchment will occur.” p[...