Just to follow up on Charli's post: if for some reason, you're not one of the millions who have already seen "An Engineer's Guide to Cats," please rectify that now.And the sequel:
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Just to follow up on Charli's post: if for some reason, you're not one of the millions who have already seen "An Engineer's Guide to Cats," please rectify that now.And the sequel:
One of the panels I attended at ISA was a roundtable on Stephen Brooks' and William Wohlforth's excellent new book, World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of American...
John Dickerson asks "Is it Obama's Fault the Dow Is Tanking?" and provides "yes" and "no" talking points. Josh Marshall thinks the answer is no:I was just watching Chris Matthews explaining how the...
From the department of shameless self-promotion and linking to one's colleagues: here's a little scholarly op-ed I wrote for the good folks over at e-ir. Nice site they have there, and they read...
From an opinion-editorial in the International Herald Tribune:The recent decision by President Kurmanbek Bakiyev of Kyrgyzstan to close the U.S. military base in the small Central Asian country should come as no surprise to Washington's new foreign policy team. Since its establishment in the fall of 2001, the U.S. air base at Manas has been founded upon the granting of narrow economic incentives to the host country - and not on the Kyrgyz Republic's commitment to the broader international campaign in Afghanistan.What began as a relationship based on economics is about to end for financial...
The rally effect, where public opinion surges in favor of an incumbent government in the face of a foreign policy crisis or military action, is well documented in studies of US foreign policy. Similarly, diversionary theories of war posit that leaders will engage in military adventurism to distract a public from economic troubles or electoral difficulties.Israel goes to the polls tomorrow. The recent Gaza war is front and center in the campaign. Barak and labor were poised to lose seats, and the conventional wisdom was that a good showing in Gaza could help Barak, Defense Minister, and...
Steven Mufson and Lori Montgomery report in The Washington Post:Despite a growing sense of urgency, economists across the political spectrum continue to criticize the congressional stimulus plans. Most economists agree that the Senate alterations in the plan would undermine stimulus aims. Taxpayers who fall under the AMT are generally well-off enough to be able to save some of the tax cuts they receive, delaying any positive effect on the economy. By comparison, school aid to states would probably be spent immediately to prevent layoffs of teachers.Let's hope the reconciliation process...
Earlier this week, Iran put a satellite into space for the first time. The AP covered it on Wednesday, February 4: The telecommunications satellite - called Omid, or hope, in Farsi - was launched late Monday after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave the order to proceed, according to a report on state radio. State television showed footage of what it said was the nighttime liftoff of the rocket carrying the satellite at an unidentified location in Iran.At least unofficially, some experts within the U.S. government seem to be trying to play down the importance of this event -- comparing it...
For some time now, NATO and Russia have engaged in on-again, off-again discussions about supplying Afghanistan via the Russian Federation. So consider this sequence of events:1. An increasingly hard-currency strapped Kremlin offers Kyrgyzstan $2 billion in aid.2. Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiev announces that he's expelling the US and NATO from Manas.3. The Russians agree to give the US transit rights for non-military supplies headed for Afghanistan.As the BBC reports:Russia has long opposed the presence of American military forces in Central Asia, says the BBC's Richard Galpin in...
We're now only the THIRD most unpopular great power! We beat Russia and China!!!!Now that I'm done quaffing celebratory beer and eating nachos, I should quote the article:"Our poll results suggest that China has much to learn about winning hearts and minds in the world," said GlobeScan chairman Doug Miller."It seems that a successful Olympic Games has not been enough to offset other concerns that people have," he added, referring to the summer games hosted by Beijing in August 2008.The poll also suggests that substantially more people now have a negative view of Russia's influence - 44%...
Finally, a resolution to the four-month-old stand-off with the hijackers of the Faina off the coast of Somalia. NY Times reported today that the pirate crew will disembark from the Faina after some sum of money, paid by the ship owners, was air-dropped onboard: "According to one of the pirates, the owners of the ship had paid the ransom; the pirates had counted the money; and now they were just waiting for nightfall to slip away from the ship.The hijacking of the Ukrainian ship, called the Faina, stirred up fears of a new epoch of piracy and helped precipitate a rash of similar attacks off...
It remains unclear whether the Kyrgyz government really wants the US out of Manas or whether it wants to extract higher rents. Rob Farley comments that the "United States has been paying considerable rent to use the airbase in question."Yes and no. It can be too easy to focus merely on the size of sidepayments. In fact, that might be part of the problem.Remember that the US doesn't officially pay rent for basing and access agreements. It just so happens that host countries get "unrelated" aid packages and foreign-policy perquisites. This isn't simply a normative issue; the US has strong...