Joshua Goldstein and I look at R2P After Syria. But, what will Syria look like after Syria? And, what exactly is the Obama administration doing there?  Training and arming the rebels covertly but not with non-lethal military aid -- body armor and night vision. UN arms...
Matt Kroenig argues that states should strive for nuclear superiority as it confers strategic advantages.
Catch my prescient NCAA prediction at the beginning.
Good morning, Duckaroos! Â Here's your Monday linkage from... "Dixie": The South will rise again - according to the UN. Â No, not that South, the Global South. Â For the first time in two centuries,...
Henry Farrell reflects on political economy, game theory, and methodology [Crooked Timber] ICYMI: Voeten links to Fukuyama on new measures of governance (ungated) [The Monkey Cage, Governance] Fukuyama seeks a measure of the actual quality of governance, regardless of regime type. For my part, I'll note that I've discovered "political scientists measure democracy using quantitative indices" is an unintended laugh line with students and economists. I attended a great talk by UVa. prof. Craig Volden yesterday afternoon; his forthcoming projects on legislative effectiveness are truly exciting....
I’ve been thinking a lot about the war this month. I’ll be teaching it in the next few weeks at school because of the decade anniversary (March 20). My quick sense is that any defensible theory behind the war was simply buried by an execution so awful, disorganized, mismanaged, and incompetent that it invalidated the whole premise. The whole episode became just shameful, and regularly teaching and conferencing with non-Americans these last few years has made this so painfully clear. My students particularly are just bewildered to the point of incredulity. Again and again, the basic...
In the aftermath of a long war, a new degree of suspicion ensues between two powerful countries that were nominally on the same side…one rattles its sabre, threatening small countries on its borders…the other shores up relations with the very same countries… a tit-for-tat arms race begins, waged with the advantages of recent technological advances…espionage takes the form of a new battleground as the stakes move progressively higher…for the most part the top leaders of each continue to say nice things about each other in public, but a new undertone of tension has become apparent…privately...
How do we know the job market is broken for academics? Because people are willing to spend money hiring advisers. Really. This article documents the costs of being on the market these days. To be clear, this piece is deceptive and unrepresentative. But as a result, it is representative. Huh? How does that make any sense? Because the academic job market is so tough, it is poorly understood, and people then perhaps over-think what it takes to succeed. Plus some stuff has changed, some has not. First, let's talk about the biggest expense: conference travel. In some fields (not...
Good mornin' Duck-o-nauts!  Let's start the week in ... Space (i.e. Asia's Playground)... India is goin' to (orbit) Mars with a launch set for November 2013, only a few years after India landed an unmanned probe on the moon and detected water on the lunar surface. (The US is also sending an atmospheric orbiter to Mars this year.)  India is not exactly new to space; it has had 101 successful space missions but mainly with satellites. The mission to Mars will cost about as much as buying one Boeing passenger airliner.  Yes, India is still poor and beset with numerous problems, but India...
Last week, Naazneen Barma, Ely Ratner, and Steven Weber offered "The Mythical Liberal Order," a provocative update to their earlier article on the world without the West. They sought to puncture certain mythologies about the strength of the liberal order, that it never was a strong as defenders thought: its decline is much exaggerated since there was not much to begin with. Moreover, they seek to offer more convincing and significant evidence that non-Western countries are "routing around" the West through currency swaps and discussion of a new multilateral bank and other actions. Both that...
Who is the most admired woman in the nerd universe? Hmmm. Could it be: If loving Princess Leia is wrong, I don't want to be right. I also don't want to be her brother.
. Happy International Women's Day. Remembering events in Bosnia twenty years ago and how the world was changed. The Guardian's profile of a few voices from around the world. Urvashi Sahni and Xanthe Ackerman offer strategies for action. In my weekend reading, I'll be trying to make sense of some of this week's bizarre events. North Korea ends peace pact and ratchets up the threat. Jeffrey Lewis worries about the next moves Senator Robert Menedez says Congress and the United States must "ensure that North Korea pays a price for its continued reckless behavior." BBC has video of North Korean...