• Michael S. Chase reports on the internal Chinese debate over Beijing’s role in international affairs.
• A new China Security Report from Japan’s National Institute of Defense Studies (via Taylor Fravel).
• Daniel Larison sees Chuck Hagel’s potential SecDef appointment as a wakeup call to the GOP about its continued embrace of neo-conservative foreign-policy principles at the expense of realism and what used to be called “establishment internationalism.”
• Robert W. Merry discusses the growing attacks on Hagel for his statements on Israel. Steve Walt describes the developing kerfuffle as “the art of the smear.”
• John Hannah blames the Obama Administration for “Syria’s disaster.”
• Two pieces at Registan.net on the anniversary of the violence in Zhanaozen, Kazakhstan. Also Joshua Foust on the “contradictions of Kazakhstan’s national narrative.”
• The Global Sociology Blog presents some basic scatterplots about guns and violence in advanced industrial democracies (via Rob Trager).
• Jonathan Ladd points us toward “some experiments examining the connection” between “gun ownership and authoritarian notions of masculinity.”
• BLTN: Philip Krausse discusses “Of Institutions and Butterflies.”
• UBS to pay $1.5 billion for LIBOR manipulation.
• The Benghazi report is out.

And also:

• Tau Ceti may have planets in its inhabitable belt. With increasing evidence of possible way-points within fifty light years, the possibility of interstellar expansion for our distant descendants looks more plausible.