Good morning... here's your Monday roundup... US & Europe The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found that Macedonian officials handed an (innocent) German citizen over to American officials who sodomized and tortured him in the presence of Macedonian...
Amazing how the Simpsons is still pretty funny after 25 years… In the interest of full disclosure, I thought I’d list the reasons why I voted the way I did. I know conservative media...
One reason we decided to move to WordPress is superior podcast support. Of course, there's a learning curve involved. So this is a test run of the new podcast feed. If it works, you should have the...
US citizens who haven't voted early should exercise axiological rationality and cast their ballots. If you live in Maryland, please consider voting "yes" on Question 6. John Sides takes umbrage at...
SAGE has temporarily un-gated Colin Wight's "Incommensurability and Cross-Paradigm Communication in International Relations Theory: 'What's the Frequency Kenneth?'" Millennium - Journal of International Studies 1996, 25: 291 (PDF). Get it while its hot! Thanks to, and via, David Mainwaring.Â
2012 interview with Ted Hopf.
The Chinese debate over the collapse of the Soviet Union (via Rob Farley)The new labour movement in Jordan (via Laleh Khalili)Syrian rebels parade captured "Iranian drones" on YouTube. Ian Hall argues that the US enjoys preponderance, but not primacy, in Asia, and that this matters a great deal for US-Sino relations. Taylor Favrel links to his working paper on "The United States in the South China Sea Dispute" (PDF).David Schorr eviscerates Henry Nau's critique of Obama foreign policy in National Review Online. There are a lot of things wrong with Obama foreign policy, and Nau's an...
Militant Islamists attack a major airbase in Pakistan.Jeffrey Lewis on recent leaks concerning US intelligence reassessing Iran's nuclear program: "One thing I learned living in Washington is that intelligence leaks are usually the losing side of an argument."Michael Cohen searches for the "Incredible Shrinking GOP Foreign-Policy Expert."Ezra Klein points out that the Presidential candidates talk issues... while the media focuses on trivialities. Daryl Morini projects a Sino-US space race. A less evenhanded variant of Patrick Porter's recent Duck piece upset the national-security...
North Korea: future REM exporter?Washington accuses Iran of training Syrian militia. It seems to me that the "meddling in Syrian affairs" ship has long sailed. Hayes Brown repots on"Somalia's Struggle for Normalcy." Thomas Oatley argues that breaking up the Eurozone won't solve anything. BLTN: Paul Staniland on "Victory in Afghanistan."What causes democracy? James Vreeland and his collaborators dispute numerous variants of conventional wisdom. Phil Arena holds a grudge... but it's rational.Joshua Hersh's piece on Paul Ryan and foreign policy was getting lots of play on Twitter...
All wars end. Or do they?Rather too often, we are being reminded that the 'war on terror' against the Al Qaeda terrorist network is far from over, in fact that it will never end and even, that it can never end. One military analyst, for example,a former employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the US, states OBL and his closest circle in Pakistan were hardly influential to AQ franchises and affiliates. In his last few years as AQ’s leader, OBL was never concerned in the operational aspects of AQ. This perhaps means that the death of OBL, though a great success for counterterrorism,...
One of the defining features of the current era of globalization is the rise in uncertainty and complexity in global politics. There are more actors, more transactions, and more challenges as a result. In the face of this, the United States continues to spend more on national security – the military, intelligence, and homeland security – than almost all other countries in the world combined. And, yet it’s clear that as the world is becoming increasingly more complex, the United States’ ability to influence outcomes – as demonstrated by the Iraq, Afghanistan, and the global economic crisis...