The Duck of Minerva

Daniel McIntosh

Professor Emeritus of International Relations, Slippery Rock University. Passionate about liberty, security, foreign policy, political economy.

Daniel McIntosh

Recent Posts

Going to court

by | 1 December, 2009 |

Serbia is going to the World Court today to ask for an advisory opinion on the independence of Kosovo. The US and most of the EU has recognized a new Kosovar state; Russia, Serbia, and most of the rest of the world has not. The Serbian Foreign Minister observed that the decision to go to court marked a "paradigm shift...the first time in the history of the Balkans that somebodyhas decided to resolve an issue of significance using exclusively peaceful means." That's a bit of a stretch. Serbia's ambassador to France said that Kosovo's declaration, as well as its recognition, "is a challenge to...

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China: democracy and warlords

by | 15 September, 2009 |

A reporter for OpenDemocracy spent the month of August touring China, looking for signs of democratization. He finds more than he bargained for: Indeed, in interviewing people from various organisations and from very different perspectives, I was struck by a consistent undertone of worry about the prospect of a regime change (even a "colour revolution") along the lines of those in the post-Soviet states in the early 2000s - which culminated in the governing communist or reformed-communist parties being ejected from office. elections China's clear official aim is to ensure that it doesn't...

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