Is this the end of the grand Eurozone experiment? I have to admit that I've had a general feeling for the past couple of months that the Germans would, in the end, cough up a bail-out package for Greece because of a sense that there is no real alternative. But,...
In every episode of the classic 1960s television series "The Prisoner," Number 6 and Number 2 had this exchange: Number 6: Where am I?Number 2: In the Village.Number 6: What do you want?Number 2: We...
Kevin Jon Heller at Opinio Juris says NGO Monitor should practice what it preaches when it comes to transparency about donations from government funders. The dialogue in comments on this and older...
I’m planning on writing a larger post on the topic after the Second Election Debate tonight – particularly since it is going to be about UK Foreign policy (and, in theory, more or less related to...
Gerard Toal and Gerry Kearns (both of Virginia Tech) threw a great little academic bash today: GEOPOL 2010, keynoted by a lunchtime presentation by Derek Gregory on "War Cultures" that was, among, other things, a marvelous demolition of the idea that "our" techno-strategic wars are clean and precise while "their" new wars are messy and imhumane. I had to leave before the day was over, but this morning I was on a panel entitled "Geopolitics and Empire" for which I had the standard "academic 10 minutes" (which means: about 15 minutes) to say something hopefully interesting. So, naturally, I...
Vladminir Putin has personally taken charge of the investigation of the plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and most of his upper government and top brass this weekend.I'm sure this is meant to signal solidarity with and support for the Polish people and government. But how likely is it to be perceived as such? Conspiracy theories about Russia's possible involvement in the crash began swirling about shortly after news broke and seem to have been exacerbated by this announcement.* Of course, suggestions of foul play are likely unfounded: though one can argue Russia may...
So, in Duck ex-pat news it was announced that a general election (a big national election) will be held on 6 May 2010 this week in the UK. At stake are 13 years of Labour rule, debate as to how the economic “recovery” should be protected.Yet, despite the relative importance of the election, coming as it is during a time of insecurity, I have to say that it feels like basically no one is inspired by it. Politicians here have been hit by a year of expenses scandals (when it turned out that MPs were claiming everything from the installation of duck houses, to bath plugs and the occasional...
Yesterday, in Prague, President Obama signed a new START deal with Russian President Medvedev. In strategic and military terms, the treaty does not make much difference. I think it is generally good to reduce nuclear overkill, but the treaty allows both states to retain 1550 strategic nuclear weapons. That's plenty for deterrence purposes and still a long way from zero. Potentially, the 30% cut in nuclear weapons is symbolically important as the U.S. tries to convince other states (like India) that it is serious about its NPT Article VI commitments. Russia shares this interest as well. It...
Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Defense presented its latest Nuclear Posture Review Report. I haven't had a chance to read the entire document yet, but media reports have focused on a new policy declaration that is of great interest to states and scholars alike. The statement garnering the greatest attention is included in the "Executive Summary" of the NPR (p. viii): The United States will continue to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks. To that end, the United States is now prepared to strengthen its long-standing "negative security assurance" by declaring...
[Cross-posted at Signal/Noise]The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the US Department of Energy is set to restate the data it collects on U.S. natural-gas production. The reason? The Department has learned that its methodology is seriously flawed:The monthly gas-production data, known as the 914 report, is used by the industry and analysts as guide for everything from making capital investments to predicting future natural-gas prices and stock recommendations. But the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the statistical unit of the Energy Department, has uncovered a fundamental...
"Once the Afghan conflict could no longer be understood in terms of global imperatives, it became part of what the language of international relations refers to as an example of disorder. Thus the war in Afghanistan was described as a Hobbesian situation..." -Gilles Dorronsoro, Revolution UnendingDorronsoro's quote about Afghanistan after 1992 reminds us of the way in which the gaze of International Relations as a discipline turns away from conflicts which do not fit into the grid of geopolitical determinism. Conflicts which do not play into a larger narrative about the rise and fall of...
All of five minutes after I posted thoughts from a conference I am currently at , a "response" (in scare quotes because that's a charitable characterization) was posted on American Power called "13 year-old smashes post-colonial feminism". My response here comes little slower (because I value intellectual conversation, and am trying to participate in it both at the conference and in this discussion), but I thought it was important to talk about some of these issues. As I have to wade through the gender-exploitative pictures on the blog to read the text, I think I'll start at the end and work...