Dan Drezner's at Princeton discussing liberal internationalism, so he posts this rather interesting placeholder on his blog:One question that came up at today's sessions was pretty basic but rather important: how, exactly, would one define liberal internationalism? It's one of those terms that foreign policy wonks like to throw around, but often means very different things to different people.[So what's your definition, smart guy?--ed. A marriage between the pursuit of liberal purposes (security, free trade, human rights, rule of law, democracy promotion, etc.) and the use of...

I arrived back in Columbus yesterday after spending about five days in Bielefeld, Germany. I chose not to purchase the insanely expensive WLAN access offered by the conference hotel and instead relied on a nearby internet cafe--which was fine for checking my mail, but not so much for blogging. I have a couple of posts stored up, so expect to hear from me a great deal over the next week.A few impressions from my first trip to Germany.• Delta Airlines has very friendly service and pretty decent food. The "extras" on the plane--video service and so forth--left a great deal to be desired....

In the war on terror, the United States now officially considers Venezuela part of the problem. The BBC today: The US is to impose a ban on arms sales to Venezuela, US state department officials have said.A spokeswoman, Darla Jordan, said the decision was taken because of lack of support by Venezuela for counter-terrorism efforts. Condi Rice expressed disappointment in October 2003 at Venezuela's failure to live up to its "responsibilities in the hemisphere to fight terrorism, to fight narco-trafficking." Thus, this is not altogether new policy.Libya and Muammar Qaddafi, by contrast, are now...

From https://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/west/awfact.htm.From a Columbus Dispatch article (6/7/2006) on the role of religion in Ohio's upcoming gubernatorial race:"I want to know how they feel about it -- if they have a strong belief in God," said Republican poll participant..... "This country was set up to lead the rest of the world. God picked this country."I hope he isn't disappointed if God throws his support behind China. After all, he's already unpicked Rome, the Franks, the Caliphate, the Mongols, France, Britain, Spain, the Mughal Empire, the Ottomans....Filed as: manifest...

So here it is, the beginning of May, the end of the Spring semester, when grading piles up and other closing-out-the-academic-year chores loom and threaten. So I, like a fair number of other academics, have been spending a fair amount of time thinking about baseball. Seriously. It's not that I'm avoiding doing my other work (okay, not really . . . maybe just a bit . . .) , or that I find baseball infinitely more enjoyable than grading (grading being, in my opinion, right up there with administrative paperwork as my least favorite parts of the academic life) -- it's also that, with a month of...

Dan Kervick, whose fine blog seems to be dormant, often leaves comments on many of the same blogs I read. This comment about US carrots to offer Iran, posted at Democracy Arsenal, is worth preserving: We've heard a lot about the sticks recently, but the carrots available to the US are impressive indeed. One of Iran's top concerns is the $10 B - $12 B in assets that were frozen in 1979 following the hostage crisis. The US also maintains stringent economic sanctions against Iran. Surely the prospect of having those assets unfrozen and sanctions lifted, opening up a market of hundreds of...

Peter Howard writes an interesting composite post on the nexus of energy politics, China's rise, and US policy objectives.The core of the issue: when we move out, China moves in. Scratch the negative diplomatic externalities for regimes intent on brutalizing their populations.Solutions? Liberal hegemony types would argue China needs to be better socialized into the international system. Realists say "Good luck" and "I told you so." Such developments, from my perspective, demonstrate how "exit options" for small states enhance their leverage against particular great--and even militarily...

All but one of my published journal articles have question marks in their titles. How'd that happen? And what do I do with my current "revise and resubmit"?Should I change the title to something without a question mark to stop the trend? Or would that be just begging for some sort of cosmic retribution in the form of a rejection? Or would elimating the question mark in the title increase its chances of eventual publication by balancing out my interrogative-declarative karma?Filed as: ?