Culture January 1, 1

If there’s any discipline that could benefit from some linguistic punching up courtesy of Hollywood, it’s the study of foreign policy. The field’s vocabulary is weighted down with exhausted shibboleths like “hawks and doves,” Vietnam and World War II analogies, Harry S. Truman nostalgia, and a clutch of tersely modified variations on “power” (hard, soft, smart, etc.). It might seem a bit frivolous to seek analogies to the prudent exercise of US diplomacy in Francis Ford Coppola’s classic Mob film The Godfather, but one has to start somewhere.