For more than 25 years, the State Department has been required to list all state sponsors of terrorism because such a designation precludes the US from providing foreign aid and exporting arms. Here's the latest list:Country and Designation DateCuba, March 1, 1982Iran, January 19, 1984Libya, December 29, 1979North Korea, January 20, 1988Sudan, August 12, 1993Syria, December 29, 1979On October 20, 2004, Iraq was formally removed from this list. Since May 2003, the President had made terror-related sanctions inapplicable to Iraq, under authority granted by Congress. Iraq, of course, was...

I've been dusting off a long dormant paper on nomadic empires and international-relations theory. While doing so, I came across this discussion of one pathway of pre-modern Central Asian state formation.The centrifugal tendencies of the tribes and the nomad’s natural anarchical inclinations, could be contained only by successful campaigns for booty waged against “outsiders”. This is the paradox inherent in nomadic state-formations, which gives them an ephemeral appearance. A successful nomadic, empire-builder (cf. Attila) forges a nomadic empire with seemingly lightning speed and rules it...

Walter Pincus, staff writer for the Washington Post, reports proposed changes in US nuclear doctrine.The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.The document, written by the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs staff but not yet finally approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld,...

The new issue of International Security has a long-awaited forum on the state of the "balance of power" after fifteen-some years of US hegemony and four+ years of the "Bush doctrine." The main focus seems to be soft balancing: what is it, is it happening, does it matter?I haven't read it yet, but it should spark some debate.As if there wasn't enough fodder for blogorama smackdowns about Jared Diamond, my colleague John R. McNeill has a review of Collapse in the new issue as well. The summary:In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond claims that several societies in...

Dan Drezner provides a link to - and discussion of- a new paper on the commercial peace. The paper, written by Columbia's Erik Gartzke, argues that:The transformation of commerce made possible by economic freedom also leads to a transformation in international affairs. Conquest becomes expensive and unprofitable. Wealth in modern economies is much harder to “steal” through force than was the case among agricultural and early industrial societies. This “capitalist peace” has been slow to reach fruition but the tools and evidence are now in place to establish a firmer connection between...

I agree with Dan that it's a little silly to refer to a FEMA spokesman's comments about the commitment and loyalty of some firefighters as "fascist." Appalling, yes; fascist, no.However, the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in the case of Jose Padilla strikes me as a much better candidate for the "fascist" label, since it basically gives the government carte blanche to detain U.S. citizens on the suspicion of having cavorted with having spoken to suspected members of being in the same room as a member of conspiring with Al Qaeda to harm the United States in some way....

Things I like about OSU:1) Checking books out of the library is like ordering from Amazon. I search a title, author, or somesuch. I select a book. I select "MY OFFICE" as my delivery option. The book shows up in my mailbox in a few days.2) Parking is cheap. The "A" parking pass is less than half what it costs to park at Georgetown.3) I have a bigger office, with a window.Things I don't like about OSU:1) The football team is supposed to win games.2) I'm supposed to care.