In September, the UAE and Israel signed "the Abraham Accords," normalizing relations between the UAE and Israel. The Trump Administration presented this as if it was equivalent to the Camp David Accords, a ground-breaking peace agreement that would transform the...
This is a guest post by Philip Baxter, Â Ph.D. Candidate in International Affairs, Science, and Technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Senior Research Associate with the James Martin...
...has escalated. First, Jeff took his argument to Foreign Affairs.  Now I've retaliated—and brought in Alex Cooley in an attempt at establishing escalation dominance. These interpretations...
Today, the Hon. Lynn Smith issued her report on the UBC academic freedom controversy that I discussed here. Jennifer Berdahl issued her response at her blog. The key pieces of the report are: "UBC...
Buzzfeed reports Internet memes about Obama's Syrian policy are 10-1 negative. And some are pretty funny. Will Imboden on why professors don't make good presidents. The Arab League has endorsed international action on Syria. Human Rights Watch points out that as norms go, the civilian immunity norm is also worth "reinforcing." The Economist has a write-up about how chemical weapons came to be so much more taboo whose authors actually seems to have read Richard Price's book on the topic. Price's January Foreign Affairs piece is worth re-reading as well. Opinio Juris has a terrific symposium...
Editor's Note: as per my earlier announcement, I am phasing out of the Duck of Minerva. But my blogging won't officially end for around another two weeks. That means that, although administrative inquiries should be sent to other team members, I have not gone cold turkey on the writing front. I remain uncertain as to the wisdom of any kind of US-centered military action in Syria. But if the Obama Administration is going to act, then it needs a broad Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). Indeed, today has seen significant concern about the breadth of the proposed AUMF. Jack...
As many of our readers know, I am the incoming editor-in-chief of International Studies Quarterly, the "flagship journal" of the International Studies Association. My team will begin to take new submissions in October. The full handoff occurs in January of 2014. The scope and nature of the responsibilities involved are inconsistent with an active presence here. Indeed, my time-management and logistical skills are insufficient to support both activities. Thus, I will be phasing out of my various roles at the Duck of Minerva over the next few weeks. In practice, this means that my last major...
To my mind, the situation in Syria has prompted an incredibly thoughtful debate within the political science community, one that undermines the idea that scholars have become irrevocably detached from policy. Ian Hurd and Charli Carpenter have written excellent pieces on the legality of chemical weapons and military intervention. James Fearon contributed this superb piece on the strategic dilemmas involved in the US response. And once again, The Onion has shown us all that it is the smartest game in town when it comes to foreign policy.Much of the conversation has concerned the question of...
The Chinese state media could perhaps be forgiven for mistaking  fictional Battlestar Galactica blueprints for future US fleet schematics this week, given this. This incident has me thinking about Nexon/Neumann's argument regarding the fuzzy relationship between science fiction and ""reality."" (Yes, you did just read scare quotes in scare quotes.) In their Harry Potter and International Relations introduction, they point out that the "reality" we distinguish from "fiction" is itself expressed and accessed through representations that themselves include elements of fiction and narrative....
Syria updates: The White House's public assessment of last week's chemical weapons attack. Deborah Avant -- Action is not synonymous with intervention. Is there a moral argument for intervention? Tony Lang unpacks some of his comments on various threads hereat Duck below with his own post at Carnegie on the case for punitive action. Given all the discussion surrounding chemical weapons, Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction ed, by Sohail Hashmi and Steven Lee  is the most extensive ethical IR discussion on the topic and should be required reading. A set of commentaries from CNAS Tim Hoyt...
You might not have been aware of this when the Washington Post paywall went up back in June, but there is no paywall if you have a .edu/.mil/.gov email address. Go here to obtain your free access. From the website: By registering with a valid .gov/.mil/.edu email address, you will get free, unlimited digital access to washingtonpost.com whether you are at work, at home or on your mobile device. Not sure what this means for their business model, but I'm certainly appreciative because the proliferation of paywalls meant limited the number of publications most of us could afford. I'm not sure...
One line of discussion this past week has been whether it makes any kind of moral sense to think that  death by chemical weapon is so much worse than death by "conventional" weapons. Video imagery captured by BBC in the aftermath of another horrific massacre in Syria yesterday throws this into stark relief. At least ten children burned to death and scores others were left with horrifying injuries after a flammable substance was dropped on a school playground yesterday. I will put together some thoughts on why the chemical weapon taboo is so politically robust whereas an equally comprehensive...