I use that term a lot, and I've been realizing that  it's unclear to many people what that actually means. As Roland Paris pointed out years ago,  the term means different things to different people; in fact my own empirical research suggests as much. So as I think...
Daniel Drezner has expounded on his seminal "Zombies and IR" blog postwith a full spread on the topic in the July/August Foreign Policy:The specter of an uprising of reanimated corpses... poses a...
It is increasingly becoming evident that the venerable New York Times was played by the Pentagon last week. The announcement by a Pultizer Prize winning journalist that Afghanistan may have up to a...
I’m traveling in Israel this week on an academic study tour with a mix of 15 political scientists, economists, and historians. It’s a grueling schedule – 14 to 16 hours of sessions per day – meeting...
Riz Khan from Al Jazeera is asking the question today. This is always a question that triggers enormous debate among my students. Many tend to jump on the "look at China" or "look at Chile under Pinochet" bandwagon as evidence that autocratic governments are better at imposing the level of discipline necessary to trigger and sustain economic growth. Michael McFaul's new book Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We should and How We Can has an extensive overview of the literature on the question. Notwithstanding the loaded title, McFaul does concede that there is much we still don't understand in...
From Christpher Beam at Slate:A powerful thunderstorm forced President Obama to cancel his Memorial Day speech near Chicago on Monday—an arbitrary event that had no affect on the trajectory of American politics.Obama now faces some of the most difficult challenges of his young presidency: the ongoing oil spill, the Gaza flotilla disaster, and revelations about possibly inappropriate conversations between the White House and candidates for federal office. But while these narratives may affect fleeting public perceptions, Americans will ultimately judge Obama on the crude economic fundamentals...
I don't have a lot to say intellectually about the BP oil spill... others can do that perhaps more coherently. But between Hurricane Ivan and the oil washing up, the town I grew up in ...well, is a very different place. There's a sense of decenteredness that comes with that, and I got to thinking ...maybe that's just a small little piece of what a lot of people in conflict zones and disaster areas feel every day. Maybe. So even in the decenteredness ... I'm pretty lucky.
Can't generate sufficient public support for closing Guantanamo on legal and moral grounds? The Washington Post takes another tack -- your taxpayer dollars at work. The UPI picks up the report here and I bet this will make the lead in every local and regional newspaper around the country in the morning. Among the highlights: $683k to upgrade Starbucks and $773k for interior decoration of KFC/Taco Bell. Domestic mobilization on foreign policy issues often requires a blend of interest and value-based arguments. Efforts to link Guantanamo as antithetical to American strategic interests has...
The Karzai regime's three day "National Consultative Peace Jirga" is now concluded. As expected, the 1,400 member Jirga (and 200 guests) decided to proceed with a plan to offer amnesty to the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami -- i.e. yes, the same groups which were firing rockets at the Jirga tent. The Taliban have made it quite clear that they have no desire to negotiate an end to hostilities until foreign forces leave. So it is unlikely that the Jirga's decisions will create a path to peace. The main thing that the Jirga demonstrated was the willingness of the Karzai regime to compromise and...
Two somewhat parallel stories have emerged, one from Europe the other from the Americas, about political leaders who believe that war fighting may be necessary for a strong economy. First, according to the Guardian:In a radio interview given on his return from a tour of German military bases in Afghanistan earlier this month, Köhler, a former head of the International Monetary Fund, said that the largely pacifist German public was finally coming to terms with the concept that their country could no longer avoid involvement in military missions, which helped "protect our interests, for...
First, from the archives: Vice President Dick Cheney was quoted by Hamish McDonald, "Cheney's tough talking derails negotiations with North Korea," Sydney Morning Herald, December 22, 2003: The Knight-Ridder newspaper chain said a senior official had quoted Mr Cheney as telling the meeting: "I have been charged by the President with making sure that none of the tyrannies in the world are negotiated with. We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it."Next, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this past week, as quoted on May 27, 2010: “This was an unacceptable provocation by North Korea and the...
I wanted to write/post something about the Israeli-Turkish ship incident but this post here on Information Dissemination pretty much sums up everything I wanted to say: the attack was legal… but this doesn’t mean it was in any way intelligent or a clever thing to do. (Hat tip to LGM's Robert Farley's Twitter for pointing out the post.)Drezner also has a post on this last point (ie: that it wasn’t really clever) at FP and brings up the the North Korean angle: Indeed, the parallels between Israel and -- gulp -- North Korea are becoming pretty eerie. True, Israel's economy is thriving and North...