I am currently at the Social Science Research Center in Berlin to present a paper on norm suppression. While here, I had the opportunity to learn more about some of the work being done by the Civil Society, Conflicts, and Democracy research unit. Listening to these...
I've been curious why John McCain is pursuing Susan Rice with such a vengeance for her inopportune remarks on Sunday talk shows in September about the not-so spontaneous attacks on the U.S....
First off, this is my first post. Thanks to Dan and the rest of the crowd for inviting me, though I fear they – and Duck readers – may soon tire of hearing about how building effective control over...
I got back from an extended trip to London last night. To all the people who hosted me for talks, entertained me, and generally made the trip both fun and productive: a big thanks! I also bought...
Eleven years ago today, the human security threat on many policy-makers' minds was attacks against civilians by transnational terror networks. So it's a good moment to reflect on the state of human security today - both the issue agenda in this network and the global burden of other human security problems, and particularly the gap between the threats people face and the issues that get global policy attention. This week I'm attending the Cluster Munitions Convention Third Meeting of States Parties (3MSP) in Oslo, and I was invited to speak on "neglected human security issues" at a seminar...
This morning, the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville hosted CIA Director David H. Petraeus. The event was not publicized and required a ticket for admission. As chair of the Political Science Department, I was invited to hear the talk -- and had a seat very near the front and center of the stage, less than 25 feet from the speakers. Unfortunately, very few students outside of the (approximately 40) McConnell Scholars were invited to the event.The lecture hall was instead filled with older guests, including many veterans and some active duty servicemen (and women, though I...
Michael Horowitz and Philip Tetlock have an interesting piece in Foreign Policy that examines the record on long-range forecasting of global events -- 15 - 20 years into the future. They acknowledge the inherent difficulties of such a projections, but still wonder:whether there are not ways of doing a better job -- of assigning more explicit, testable, and accurate probabilities to possible futures. Improving batting averages by even small margins means the difference between runner-ups and World Series winners -- and improving the accuracy of probability judgments by small margins could...
These are not ducks.Photo: Dan NexonKelly defeats Khanna. It isn't even close.Michael S. Chase writes about "China’s Search for a 'New Type of Great Power Relationship'" at Jamestown's China Brief.Rob Farley and Michael Cohen hold a "Foreign Entanglements" on the RNC, DNC, and foreign policy in Campaign 2012. I haven't watched it yet, but given the two participants I bet that it is pretty good. Dan Drezner deviates from his standard take on foreign policy and the 2012 campaign: this time foreign policy might matter. Maybe, but not buying it yet. Michael Krepon provides details on the history...
It's time for the annual Asian multilateral alphabet soup round up... Long story short: APEC's proposed Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), the US backed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the Chinese backed Tripartite Agreement all appear to have lost some of their thunder to the ASEAN+6's decision to begin negotiating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) next year.In fact, if the ASEAN+6 negotiations are substantively successful and not riddled with exceptions clauses it will create the largest economic bloc in the world, the Asian Economic Community (AEC), by...
This is my final post about NK; here is one, two, and three. The post title comes from a remark a local guide made to me, and that is the standard KIS image in the pic.7. The Korean People’s Army is pretty much everywhere.This is easily the most militarized state I’ve ever been in. Soldiers and other uniformed military are everywhere, and units of KPA were doing all sorts of even banal things, like going to the Pyongyang fun fair, together en bloc. Guards carried automatic weapons openly in public with disturbing frequency. And the KPA was pretty clearly a captive, exploited labor force....
Is the society depicted in this film historically accurate? Let's perform a social-network analysis! Here's a helpful hint: the "realism" of social networks in the Iliad, Beowulf, and the Tain tell us squat, zero, nothing, zilch, not a bit about their historicity.From the New York Times (h/t Daniel Solomon): Archaeological evidence suggests that at least some of the societies and events in such stories did exist. But is there other evidence, lurking perhaps within the ancient texts themselves? To investigate that question, we turned to a decidedly modern tool: social-network analysis. In...
Robert Golan-Viella reflects on a tectonic shift in partisan foreign-policy debate, i.e., the fact that the Democrats have the upper hand. He chalks this up to campaign politics: the key to a Republican victory runs through the economy. I agree that there are "strong critiques" of Obama foreign policy and that "leading Republicans aren't making them." But I don't think this is "politically smart," insofar as leading Republicans are making attacks on Obama foreign policy--just not very good ones.As Blake Hounshell noted on twitter of the latest broadside from the Romney campaign: I expect...