Maia blogged on the curious situation in Russia. Despite Putin's and United Russia's overwhelming popularity, the government seems intent on ensuring an even more crushing victory for the party. Now Luke Harding and Tom Parfitt of The Guardian report on major "fraud,...
Daniel Howden's piece in The Independent yesterday describes the ongoing furor over the sentencing of a gang-rape victim in Saudi Arabia to 200 lashes for speaking out about the crime. The 19-year...
A quick note on the CNN/YouTube Debate.Although the point is rather obvious, I think it is worth reflecting on how whe exchange between Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney about illegal immigration...
Greetings, all. Though I think Daniel hoped my early posts would concern mass killing (or, perhaps, the conquest of the Alpha Quadrant), I couldn’t help but comment on CNN’s Republican YouTube...
Today, I received an email asking me to endorse the Iraqi International Initiative for Refugees. Basically, the sponsors want to convince the UN to mandate that Iraqi oil revenues be shared with the 4.5 million refugees and displaced persons dispersed throughout the Middle East and the world. Many are living in poverty in neighboring states.Here is their argument in a nutshell:The international community, the occupation powers, and the government in Iraq are legally required to support and protect Iraqi refugeesIraqi refugees are Iraqi citizens who have a full right to live in dignity, a...
I wanted to announce the birth of a new Duck. R. Charli Carpenter, an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, is joining our ranks for a poorly defined, and perhaps indefinite, guest stint. Professor Carpenter is a specialist in, among other things, transnational advocacy networks, particularly those involved in war crimes and human rights.She is the author of Innocent Women And Children: Gender, Norms And the Protection of Civiliansand the editor of Born of War: Protecting Children of Sexual Violence Survivors in Conflict Zones .Please extend her a warm welcome!
A US President, needing a signature policy victory, faced with a hostile Congress controlled by the opposing party, nearing the end of his term, seeks ensure his legacy and make a major foreign affairs statement by brokering a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. He brings them together for a big meeting here in the US, hoping to put together the structure of a deal to bring peace to the region.Sounds familiar. It could be George Bush, presiding over the Mid East Peace conference in Annapolis that starts today. Or, it could be Bill Clinton, making one last push for peace at...
Next Sunday, Russians are expected to go to the polls and overwhelmingly endorse the candidates of the pro-Putin party, Edinaya Rossiya.* What I find surprising is the level to which the government feels it needs to engage in electoral hanky-panky: all signs suggest that Edinaya Rossiya would receive a comfortable majority, even without the blatant manipulation of the system. Kommersant reports that a recent poll shows that it is very likely that no party besides Edinaya Rossiya will clear the 7% threshold for Duma representation--in that case, a "loyal opposition" may actually need to be...
Was the Iraq war designed to break up OPEC?Do OPEC states now have a perverse incentive to favor continued instability in Iraq?I explore these questions today on my blog: "Oil: the third rail of the Iraq debate."Sorry, I probably just should have posted it here.
Dan Drezner calls this piece in today's New York Times "the story that will occupy the blogosphere for today -- Baghdad is safer."Then, Dan excerpts a bit of the story by Damien Cave and Alissa J. Rubin that makes a point I've been stressing since General Petraeus made his optimistic report in September. Fewer Iraqis are dying because they fled the war zone: About 20,000 Iraqis have gone back to their Baghdad homes, a fraction of the more than 4 million who fled nationwide, and the 1.4 million people in Baghdad who are still internally displaced, according to a recent Iraqi Red Crescent...
There have been some interesting replies to my post a couple of weeks ago about the relationship between policymaking and scholarship. Well, when it started out it was a post about the idea that teaching IR ought to be about more than certifying the idealism of our students, but as it went on it morphed into a set of complaints about the very idea of a terminal MA degree in IR. And then a discussion ensued: Rob Farley weighed in, as did Dan Drezner, I replied (some of my replies were gathered here, others are in the comments on Rob's and Dan's posts), and now both Rob and Dan have replied...
In today's NYT, Fredrick Kagan and Michael O'Hanlon editorialize that:We need to think — now — about our feasible military options in Pakistan, should it really come to that.Insanity. Near total insanity on almost every level--except one.Now, granted, they are only talking about a worst case scenario here:The most likely possible dangers are these: a complete collapse of Pakistani government rule that allows an extreme Islamist movement to fill the vacuum; a total loss of federal control over outlying provinces, which splinter along ethnic and tribal lines; or a struggle within the Pakistani...