Academic debates about NATO-Russian relations are deeply entangled with policy preferences.
Confronting Biases in Policy-Engaged Research: The Case of NATO and Russia
read more
Featured
Either DA-RT Works, or It Does Not
This is a guest post by Theo McLauchin (@TheoMcLauchlin), Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Université de Montréal When is a norm not a norm? I ask this question when I read Colin...
Speed Kills: Why we Need to Hit the Brakes on “Killer Robots”
This is a guest post by Juergen Altmann and Frank Sauer. Juergen Altmann is a Researcher and Lecturer at Technische Universität Dortmund, a specialist in military technology and preventive...
Friday Nerd Blogging: Does Cosplay at Conference Panels Render Pop-Culture Research Less Serious?
An argument broke out about this question after the "Star Wars and International Security" panel at ISA this month. A few people on Twitter and PSRM (or so rumors have it) say dressing up renders...
More Featured Posts
Why Didn’t the US “Re-interpret” the UN Charter on Syria?
[Note: This is a guest post by Ardeshir Pezeshk, PhD candidate at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, in collaboration with Charli Carpenter.] For a brief moment a few weeks back, law and policy elites in the US gave serious consideration to whether there was a legal basis for a military strike in Syria, either under the auspices of civilian protection or norm protection. White House rhetoric quickly shifted away from humanitarian intervention and toward “norm enforcement” and with it the policy debate shifted from whether or not military strikes were the best tool toward that end (for now,...
Is Capture and Kill Bad Guys Good Counter-Terrorism?
The U.S. had two dramatic efforts to capture high priority terrorist targets, one in Libya and another in Somalia. The snatch and grab operation in Libya was a seeming success (though I'm wondering if last night's kidnapping of the Libyan Prime Minister was retaliation). The Somalia mission, coming one day after the 20th anniversary of the Black Hawk Down episode, was aborted when the team recognized that there was no way they could take their target alive, given heavy resistance and potential civilian casualties. The question that emerges from all this is: what the hell is the United...
International Institutions Mobilize Opponents Too
Members of international institutions typically honor their commitments. But that does not, by itself, tell us much. States are unlikely to join institutions that require them to do things they have no intention of doing. Indeed, some argue that institutions merely act to screen out those least likely to comply. Others, however, have argued that institutions do in fact constrain states - that they are not mere epiphenomena. One prominent mechanism through which institutions are thought to alter state behavior is by mobilizing pro-compliance groups domestically. Institutions may lack...
Citation Counts are Like Democracy
There is much gnashing about citations of late. This tweet inspired the ensuing spew below: Formula predicts research papers' future citations https://t.co/4Hy8j3Glqj. I am afraid the citation game is getting out of hand. — John Panaretos (@J_Panaretos) October 5, 2013 But also this series of posts at the Monkey Cage last week on gender bias in citations (the link points to the final piece in the series, so it has links to the rest of the posts) raises questions about using citations as a metric of success. If the numbers are problematic, what should we do? Let's move back a step. ...
Taboo or Not Taboo?
[Note: This is a guest post by Richard Price, Professor of Political Science at University of British Columbia and author of The Chemical Weapons Taboo.] Counter-intuitively, the first large-scale attack of chemical weapons (CW) in twenty five years is having the effect of actually reinforcing the CW taboo. Notably, both sides in Syria continue to deny that they used CW, reinforcing view that CW use unacceptable for anyone wanting to be accepted as a legitimate state actor in the international community. While there are of course counter-narratives, the fairly widespread government, public...
Friday Nerd Blogging: Mashing The Best
Some spoilers below re Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad, but good fun for a Friday chock full of deadlines Still just as much death, perhaps even more....
Chinese Hegemony in Asia is Unlikely, so AirSea Battle Unnecessarily Provokes the Security Dilemma
The following is a re-up of a piece I wrote for the Diplomat last month as part of an informal back-and-forth series with the National Interest this summer on the US pivot to Asia and AirSea Battle. (Here and here are some of the other entries.) That pic, which has got to be the grossest river in all China, is from here. In brief, I increasingly think that ASB is a mistake, because it’s almost impossible to read it as anything other than hugely provocative from the Chinese point of view, no matter what we say to them about our peaceful intentions. (Read this, and tell me reasonable Chinese...
A Tale of Two Poverties: Sachs versus the world
Interpreting evidence related to poverty and development is never straightforward. Neo-liberal supporters of free market economics tend to point to economic growth as evidence that global inequality is stabilising, while those "closer to the ground" often point out the limitations of economic measurements and encourage a broader understanding of the everyday signs of exploitation and inequality in countries around the world- classic Development Studies 101. Evidence of this sustained divide between those who talk about poverty and those who seek to understand global economic inequality can...