Tony Lang discusses philosophy, writing, and why the International Ethics section of the ISA developed into such a friendly environment for junior scholars.
Episode 18 – Tony Lang
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NATO Ministerial FAQ
This week is another NATO ministerial. What is that? Here's a handy guide to the basics and why NATO is run like an academic conference. What is the NAC? Nope, not these guys. The North Atlantic...
Drones, Mansour and Policy Problems
This is a guest post by Tobias T. Gibson, Associate Professor of Political Science and Security Studies at Westminster College, in Fulton, MO. Late last month, a U.S. military “drone” killed Mullah...
Brexit Epiphany
As I was chatting with my dissertation adviser yesterday while in DC (yes, my dissertation was completed in 1993 but the relationship goes on), I had an epiphany that had been on the edges of my...
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Halloween in Turkey
Halloween is not celebrated in Turkey. Yet if they were celebrating Halloween, Turks who support democracy, secularism, human rights, and the rule of law would not have a hard time finding a haunted house. The country seems like a haunted house. This group of Turks, “modern bandits” in the eyes of the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, have long been fearful of Turkey’s future. Now they are even more alarmed. And there is good reason for that. A glance at few of the scary things that have happened since spring/summer 2013 explains why. Gezi protests of last summer were not about a park. People...
The United Nations and American Public Opinion
The following is a guest-post from Martin Edwards, professor at Seton Hall’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations. Martin’s website is here. How do Americans think about the United Nations? The results of recent surveys by the Pew Research Global Attitudes Project and the Better World Campaign offer some insights on this question. These organizations have tracked opinions on the United Nations since 2004 and 2009, and the findings are based on random samples of adults and registered voters, respectively. One of the findings in both surveys is that there are partisan differences in...
Why the US Spies on Its Allies
The Guardian article this week that disclosed the story of U.S. eavesdropping on the leaders of several US allies said that the surveillance produced "little reportable intelligence." This isn't really a surprise -- I can't really imagine that listening to German Chancellor Merkel's phone conversations are going to give US analysts and policymakers a whole lot more than they get from open source and normal diplomatic channels. So why does the US do it? The cheap answer to this question is that it comes from that sinister NSA organization. From this morning's NYTimes: In Washington, the...
Friday Nerd Blogging Extra: Just Some Good Advice
Watch Game of Thrones or you might be foolish enough to dare a mighty Khal to engage in a slap game.
The power of mentorship: a reflection
In the Monkey Cage’s recent symposium on gender and political science, David Lake writes how important it is that our scholarly networks become less gendered, how male scholars must make an effort to mentor women in the field. In my view, the importance of mentorship cannot be understated. Without the support of several scholars in security studies, not all but many of them men, I may have indeed decided that this field was not for someone like me. In my first year of graduate school, I was beginning to see myself as more of an “IR theory” than a “security studies” student (yes, whatever...
Engineering Peace
Can third parties do more than foster temporary, unstable ceasefires? Without perpetually holding the belligerents at arms' length via heavily militarized buffer zones? Is it possible to make peace self-enforcing at a reasonably low cost? Recent work on conflict management suggests not. Less intrusive approaches to mediation, such as information provision, fail to solve the problem that poses an obstacle to efficient negotiate between the belligerents in the first place. More intrusive approaches such as deploying armed peacekeepers are often successful, at least if they come after a...
Friday Nerd Blogging: Indiana Jones and the Plot Hole of Power
Two CBS sitcoms have references Indiana Jones in the past couple of weeks: How I Met Your Mother invoked Last Crusade as Barney imagined that Ted and he entered the room where the grail and the fake grails were stored at the end of Last Crusade. The ghostly knight kept playing a role, telling Ted in "reality" that he was choosing poorly. Not a bad bit. Big Bang Theory had the Amy Farrah Fowler character bust a big plot hole in Raiders, arguing that Indiana Jones was unnecessary for the outcome. Whether he tried to stop the Nazis or not, they would have been killed by the power of the ark...
Thursday Morning Linkage
Here is your morning linkage with stories on energy and the environment, conservation, conflict in Africa, and health. Energy and Environment Alex Wang on the really bad air in the Chinese city of Harbin, buses getting lost, school canceled, video here 4.5% drop in GHG emissions in the U.S. between 2011 and 2012, but methane rising in shale gas producing states? Questions about whether China is last best hope for carbon capture and storage Newish IEA report on what is needed for redrawing the climate and energy map Conservation EU Parliament rejects additional subsidies for fishing fleets...