Happy NATO Day! Okay, this is not an anniversary of anything NATO-esque. But heaps of posts a-twitter about NATO, its members and so on. So, some semi-random shots at some semi-random NATO members and NATO in general.First, France is the best-est ally ever! Lots...
I am pretty much as ignorant about Libya as the next person, so let me just suggest a few generic lessons learned from other conflicts:Don't hold elections immediately. Everyone likes to do so to...
Does pastoralism -- the livelihood of semi-nomadic animal herders like the Maasai -- have a future in East Africa? In my concluding post on the famine in the Horn of Africa, it seems like a fair...
Of note to those following developments in autonomous lethal robots should be an article published this summer in the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review, entitled “International Governance...
Syllabus-revamping time this year coincides with the last few quiet, pre-soccer-season weekends available for paint-balling with my son. With both BT Omegas and class prep on the brain, thought I'd reach out for ideas on how to integrate class trips to the arena into a course on the laws of war. I've done this once before, when I taught "War and Gender" back at Drake University. In that case, the students organized it as an experiment in sex-specific tactics on the field. They ran variations, pitting all male and all-female teams against one another, or working in mixed-gender teams. It was...
Recently I offered an "argument" about what conservative males find attractive about Sarah Palin -- her attractiveness -- and I provided some "evidence" by reference to the parallels between pretty female candidates and women sideline reporters with two XXs (Chromosomes, you creeps! Get your mind out of the gutter!). I made the claim that Bachmann's support rested more on her craziness than her beauty, but then I found this. I am recalibrating my argument..... But I want to push the analogy further, and ask -- who gives a f*#k about the Iowa Straw Poll? Why, when Michele Bachmann wins, do...
In today's 'horrors of bad social science', we have a piece by Jennifer S. Bryson, director of the Witherspoon Institute’s Islam and Civil Society Project, (which seems to be a conservative think-tank) who has written a piece for the Institute's blog on the threat of pornography for national security. (No really.)Bryson asks the question that no serious scholar has ever, ever addressed and comes up with an argument to be considered. In fact, she is getting right on top of this hard and pressing issue.She reaches around the boundaries of conventional thinking about terrorism and slowly but...
George R. R. Martin to JK Rowling: via GameofLOLs:Harry Potter spoiler: Snape kills Dumbledore. A Song of Ice and Fire spoiler: EVERYONE YOU LOVE IS KILLEDOh about that? here is one awfully funny ASOIAF essay (I really do mean 'awfully').
There is a near absence of calls for accountability in the international responses to the ongoing and escalating violence in Syria. Unlike in the Libya situation, where there was a swift UN Security Council Resolution mandating both the use of force and a referral to the International Criminal Court, influential states and human rights groups have yet to stand firm on either type of response for Syria. Is it simply premature or counter-productive to demand justice when violence has yet to cease? Or are the political and security implications of removing Assad greater than the risks of...
“We were in a political movie ... Walt Disney with blood.”I generally do not discuss films unless I enjoy them and intend to recommend them without hesitation. Jean-Luc Godard's "Made in U.S.A." is an exception, worth mentioning in part because it has so rarely been viewed in the US. Godard made the film in 1966, during an incredibly prolific period of his career. Ostensibly, the film pays homage to "The Big Sleep," a Humphrey Bogart-Lauren Bacall detective story based on a book by Raymond Chandler. That earlier film classic is well-known for the sizzling chemistry between Bogart and Bacall,...
Foreign Policy's latest foray into the nexus between science fiction and political reality is a lively sketch on post-conflict reconstruction, Harry Potter style. Written by experts on the topic from the Marine Corps War College, Human Rights Watch and the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, the key point is this: though the "story" ends when the bad guys are vanquished (be they Deatheaters or Saddam Hussein's forces) is is then that the real battle begins.Former U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre and retired Gen. Gordon Sullivan have described four pillars of post-conflict...
Yesterday the ICRC released a report on the very scary and depressing trend of attacks on medical workers in situations of armed conflict and civil disturbances:According to Dr Robin Coupland, who led the research carried out in 16 countries across the globe, millions could be spared if the delivery of health care were more widely respected. "The most shocking finding is that people die in large numbers not because they are direct victims of a roadside bomb or a shooting," he said. "They die because the ambulance does not get there in time, because health-care personnel are prevented from...