The Duck of Minerva

Ben Rhodes, Part the Second: Or, Journalistic Interpolations are Not Evidence

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by Dan Nexon

6 May 2016, 1340 EDT

For those of you not on Twitter.

(yes, I know the post is displaying parent tweets; WordPress is stripping the code to remove them)

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

3 Comments

  1. anthony
    anthony on 6 May 2016 at 23.55 EDT

    What? This is utterly incoherent. Is there a point? If so….what is it?

    • Dan Nexon
      Dan Nexon on 7 May 2016 at 07.47 EDT

      I have long adopted the honorary American misspelling of “bollocks.” Partly as an in-joke. Partly to draw out spelling trolls. :-)

      Yes, this requires contextual knowledge of the debate. It isn’t intended to be accessible for people who don’t already know the nature of the arguments — such as, apparently, yourself. But this was a “going out the door” thing.

      However, point taken and, time permitting, I will make it more understandable.

      • LFC
        LFC on 7 May 2016 at 22.59 EDT

        Haven’t read the Samuels piece, just learning of it now. However, given this description:
        The problem is that the story is so oddly constructed that it isn’t
        clear whether (1) Samuels just likes to summarize in his own words or
        (2) has put together a collage of his own views and quotations that
        don’t really support them — but in a way that sort of makes it look
        like they’re talking about the same thing. I don’t know. And there’s no
        way to tell.

        …I infer that the piece is horrible, sub-standard journalism.

        On the Iran deal: not all that many people had/have the technical expertise to evaluate the ‘quality’ of the Iran deal re the nuclear details. I certainly don’t. One had to choose which nuclear experts to believe/trust. Most of them seemed to support it, though it wasn’t unanimous.

        And I think *one* aim, call it a secondary one if you like but definitely there, was to begin a thawing of relations w Iran. Though my impression is that even a casual observer cd tell that that was going to be a glacially slow process and that the U.S. was not going to begin “disentangling” from Saudi Arabia anytime soon. And afaict it hasn’t.

        Item: Saudi Arabia uses/used U.S.-supplied weapons to kill civilians in Yemen (either intentionally or, more likely, via what amts to criminal negligence). Asked about this, U.S. officials and/or commenters close to them give mealy-mouthed responses along the lines of (1)not sure US weapons involved in particular incident X; (2) US not involved in targeting; (3) (ill-trained) Saudi pilots flying too high. Etc. But iirc no US official criticized in any incisive and strong way the Saudi air campaign in Yemen. So much for “disentangling.”