Judging by the rumors coming out of the media, it appears that we have a deal to avert the fiscal cliff. This is troubling on a number of levels. First, the deal will be agreed to by the outgoing Congress--what we at the Duck are ashamed to call the lame-duck...
Happy New Year to all. While you’re sticking the bubbly in the fridge and mapping out 2013 resolutions, consider nominating your favorite blogs for the 2013 OAIS awards sponsored by the Duck. ...
The deadline for nominations and voter registration is 1 January 2013. The list of nominees has slightly expanded since my last update. You should feel free to add nominations in the comments...
On a plane ride a couple of days ago, I picked up Judith Butler's Frames of War, perhaps a couple of years after I should have. Though there is a lot of the book that I disagreed with, reading it...
The world has payed attention to the gang-rape of a young woman (her name has not been made widely public) in Delhi and her struggle to survive over the last few weeks. The reports of the brutal incident on December 16th broke through the national news of India and set waves of reports through the rest of the world. The sheer violence, randomness, and horror of it seemed to fixate the globe. Now, as we learn that this woman's struggle to survive after multiple surgeries, cardiac arrest, and evidence of brain damage has ended, there seems to be an attempt to shift this story back into...
James Scott Linville passes along Anuradha Roy's comments on the protests engulfing India and the death of the 23-year old victim whose brutal rape galvanized them (via 3QD). Reactions to the Japanese election as covered by the Rising Powers Initiative blog. You know, GWU is much better at Georgetown at establishing a presence for its programs. Just saying. Mark Leon Goldberg on Timor Leste as a "2012 success story" for UN peacekeeping. Nara Pavão explains "attitudes toward corruption." A neat non-Duck post by PM on the Peloponnesian War. If you haven't been following CJ Chivers' blog, THE...
Corey Robin's Jacobin essay is getting a lot of attention, including from Jon Western at the Duck and Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns & Money. I don't think that it detracts from Robin's essay to note that the argument he's making is long-standing in international-relations scholarship. It appears in David Campbell's seminal Writing Security and, more recently, in the form of "securitization theory" (PDF), complete with similar invocations of Thomas Hobbes. Scott's criticisms of Robin gets at an ongoing issue with securitization theory. Scott notes that security threats, particularly in...
Last week I attended our annual neighborhood holiday party and caught up on all the news about the neighbors' kids. One recently graduated with an advanced degree in computer science and is now an "ethical hacker" working in "the U.S. intelligence community." What exactly is an "ethical hacker"? Another spent the last two years in intensive Chinese language study and has a job "following twitter and websites and stuff...for the U.S. government." Both of which seemed a bit strange, until I read this article on the 8 Craziest Job Openings in the Military-Industrial Complex. FYI, I called this...
One of the most repeated, and most dubious, axioms about strategy is the notion that being proactive is wiser than being reactive, and that reactivity is something we should be allergic to. In the words of Briain's foreign secretary William Hague, 'the nation that is purely reactive in foreign policy is in decline.' Likewise, written into the folklore of the US foreign policy establishment is the notion that the 'strategic shocks' that struck America - such as Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor or 9/11 - happened because Washington was passively sleeping. A quick read of Presidential...
I have read with great interest over the last few days posts by Jeffrey Stacey and now Sean Kay on the gap between scholarship and policy. I agree with much of what they said - seriously - and I want to raise a more positive spin on some of these issues. I the gap between policy and scholarship in Washington DC as *mildly* improving when it comes to political science, at least from the political science side of the question. This is not to say things are perfect. Far from it. But rather than thinking about political science in general, and international relations in particular, as a "cult of...
The deadline for nominations and voter registration is fast approaching. The list of nominees is unchanged since my last update. You should feel free to add nominations there, to email us, or in he comments section below. Please do check the eligibility criteria. The two most common ineligible nominees are (1) restrictions on Duck of Minerva pieces and permanent contributors and (2) online articles that don't qualify as blogs, such as Foreign Affairs snapshots. Unfortunately, this double-disqualifies Charli's  excellent "Game of Thrones as Theory"--which, after being named "best of the web"...
This is a guest post by Sean Kay. Jeff Stacey’s introductory blog post at the Duck of Minerva gives important perspective showing that scholarly training helped him in government to frame issues and develop policy. Stacey suggests academic perspectives should inform policy and, indirectly, corrects an argument in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Robert Gallucci. Gallucci, who has a distinguished career in government and academe, asked why scholars are not informing policy. Gallucci faults the scholarly community for an unfortunate turn towards theory and inaccessible discourse which...