We're a few weeks into the call for nominations for the 2014 OAIS Awards. Â It's time to get serious. Â We've had a number of impressive nominations, but given the excellent content out there, we're looking for a much larger pool of nominees. Â We want to hear your...
As part of World Politics Review's new feature on "winding down the war on terror," I rant about the US' continuing use of a war paradigm for global law enforcement operations: The term “shadow...
This is my first time doing the Duck linkage, as I will be alternating with Charli on Tuesdays. I may eventually figure out a style, a pattern, a focus, but my first shot at this will be either...
I left academia because I wanted to make a difference. I went to graduate school for the normal reasons: I’d done well in school, I didn’t really want to get a job, and I needed to learn how to free...
Well into the Syrian civil war the Assad regime has made a costly miscalculation by staging a significant chemical weapons attack. The U.S. and its allies have been wary of a full-scale military operation in Syria, but spurred by this attack they are now preparing to intervene. To succeed western allies must be focused not only on degrading Syrian capabilities but also on avoiding mistakes beyond the short term that they made in Libya and Iraq. The U.S. needs to intervene with as much legitimacy as it can muster, which appears to have a fighting chance in Congress (though Congressional...
The Duck has a symposium which engages the European Journal of International Relation's special issue on "The End of IR Theory." One of the pieces is the final version of the draft that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt circulated last winter. If y'all remember, I had a few words to say about the paper. In short, I was not a fan. Now that the final version is out and they have a post at the Duck, I could take more swings at it, but I don't think that is necessary as Dan Reiter has an excellent and much more succinct take on it. Plus I said much of it last January. Instead, other than a...
My views on the role of assumptions are no secret. Â Nor are they without detractors. Â In hopes of advancing the debate, I invite anyone who disagrees with me to enrich themselves while proving me wrong. Pick any scholarly paper you have written, published or not. Â If I cannot identify three patently false or fundamentally unfalsifiable assumptions in the paper, as judged by a mutually agreed upon third party, I will pay you $1000. Â If I can, I ask only that you admit publicly that your view about the role of assumptions is untenable. Â You won't owe me any money. I'm completely serious about...
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by  Dan Reiter. It is the fourth installment in our "End of IR Theory" companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post responds to John J. Mearsheimer's and Stephen M. Walt's article (PDF). Their post appeared earlier today.  Other entries in the symposium--when available--may be reached via the "EJIR Special Issue Symposium" tag. Thanks to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt for writing such an important and provocative article. I agree...
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt. It is the third installment in our "End of IR Theory" companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post refers to the article of the same name (PDF). A response, authored by Dan Reiter, will appear at 10am Eastern. Other entries in the symposium--when available--may be reached via the "EJIR Special Issue Symposium" tag. Theory is the lodestone in the field of International Relations (IR). Its...
[Editor's Note:  This is a guest post from Professor Anthony F. Lang, chair in International Political Theory and  Director of the Centre for Global Constitutionalism at the University of St. Andrews.] Since I wrote my short defence of punitive air strikes against Syria last week in a post at Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs , a number of commentators have given their own, more critical, accounts of this use of military force (see, for instance lots on Duck itself, such as Charli Carpenter; Stephanie Carvin on Opinio Juris ; , and Dan Kenealy and Sean Molloy in The...
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Inanna Hamati-Ataya. It is the second  installment in our "End of IR Theory" companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post responds to the introduction (PDF), written by Tim Dunne, Lene Hansen and Colin Wight. Their own post is available here. Other entries in the symposium--when available--may be reached via the "EJIR Special Issue Symposium" tag. The EJIR Special Issue is not only a new opportunity to collectively reflect on the...
Syria: Richard Betts cuts to the core of Obama's challenge on Syria:  "To the extent that any policy is strategically sensible, it is unlikely to be politically palatable; to the extent that a policy can be accepted as politically legitimate, it is unlikely to be of much strategic merit." I can't see how Obama is going to secure Congressional support -- here are the latest numbers. Here are some numbers on public opinion from around the world. Samantha Powers' comments yesterday at the UN. Richard Price thinks the chemical weapons taboo will hold without a strike. Memories of Kosovo:...