How a shift in tactical orientation by activists opposing the border camps might make all the difference.
The Enemy’s Gate is Down
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A Strategy of Appeasement: Winning the Revise and Resubmit
You hear the “ping” of an incoming email and quickly check the subject – oh, crap, it’s from a journal![1] This could make or break your day. You open the email and quickly scan for the word...
“and Elinor?”: when winning a Nobel Prize isn’t enough…
This is a guest post from Leslie Johns, an Assistant Professor of political science at UCLA. The Public Choice Society---an academic organization of scholars who study the interaction of politics...
Tweets of the Week #3
It's the weekend, so it's time for the third edition of “Tweets of the Week.” My twitter feed was again filled with some interesting micro-blogging. By the way, I apologize for the way last week's...
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An Actual Expert on the Caucasus….
Charles King at The Daily Beast: In other words, the focus now should be on the Tsarnaevs as homegrown terrorists, not on the ethnic or regional origins of their family. Journalists’ initial conversations with family members in Dagestan amplify that point: a sense of shock that two nice boys who had gone to America for their education could have been involved in such a brutal act. Dzhokhar, for example, was reportedly a successful student and championship wrestler in Cambridge, Massachusetts—hardly the typical foreign jihadist. People with family roots in the Caucasus are often perceived in...
Brief Notes on 4/15
Boston on lockdown. One suspect dead. One--apparently a CRLS graduate--still at large. The fact is that we still don't have adequate information for much in the way of meaningful speculation. But I do think it useful to call attention to three related issues: One of the major memes developing among the online national-security community is a welcome one: dread about the inevitable emergence of self-styled regional experts and terrorism-analyst "usual suspects" in the media. There simply aren't that many specialists on the North Caucuses around; we need to be on guard for the blather of...
Thursday Morning Linkage
On this awful news week, I'm feeling like some Thursday Morning Linkage needs a little opening joy before launching into the useful reads of the week: Here are some useful Africa-centric readings on this awful, awful news week: Cullen Hendrix examines the links between food price rises, regime type, and subsidy policies in Africa Jennifer Bussell researches why some African governments are more able to prepare for and respond to potential natural disasters Jennifer Hazen's new book What Rebels Want drawing from substantial fieldwork in West Africa explains how rebel movements that lose their...
2013 Yale Ferguson Award: Call for Nominations
The Yale H. Ferguson Book Award The Yale H. Ferguson award, presented by International Studies Association-Northeast, recognizes the book that most advances the vibrancy of international studies as a pluralist discipline. Any book or edited volume published within the field of international studies in the previous calendar year is eligible for consideration. The award winner is selected based on two criteria: (1) that it makes an outstanding contributions to concept-formation, theoretical analysis, or methodological issues in the study of world politics; and (2) that it contributes to the...
The Syria Endgame: A Way Forward
With the increased likelihood that Assad will fall, even were he to hang on until a Gaddafi-style bitter end, pressure is mounting on the U.S., Europe, and Turkey inter alia to come up with a game plan for the post-endgame. The good news is progress is rapidly being made: stepped up aid from the U.S., aid from Europe, intelligence sharing among Turkey-Jordan-US-Europe, and direct training of Syrian opposition forces. All of this may be enough to tip the balance against the Assad regime, leading to its end sooner rather than later. But it is not nearly enough to handle the widely...
Why I’m not Blogging about 4/15
Because we don't know enough to engage in anything resembling responsible commentary. And those things that we can say something worthwhile about--including comparisons with other terrorist attacks past and present, such as what happened on the same day in Iraq; and the socio-political dynamics of the US response so far--don't exactly demand my input. That's all.
Tuesday Morning Linkage Club
Via Marginal Revolution, the always-interesting Xavier Marquez writes about Randall Collins' sociology. [Abandoned Footnotes] Obama staffers find jobs in white-shoe Washington. It turns out that the new boss is much the same as the old boss [The New Republic] Phil Schrodt talks about GDELT: Global Data on Events, Location, and Tone, a global events database that Jay Ulfelder has called the future of political science. Rolf Friedheim gives a detailed case-study of using the data in R to map some Russian protests. Good news for (consumers of) higher education: Marginal Revolution argues that...
What if US/Japan Try to Shoot Down a North Korean Missile & They Miss?
If the Japanese miss but take out MTV & Jersey Shore instead, that would still be ok I think my toaster has more computing power than that guidance system… I thought the North Koreans would launch a test missile on the ‘Day of the Sun’ – that would be Kim Il Sung’s birthday for you imperialist running-dogs yet lacking in proper ideological orientation. But I still think it’s likely. So my confidence was raised when I re-watched Spies Like Us as a primer on US BMD technology. I feel better already, and that kid who says ‘Excellent!’ was pretty much me in 8th grade. Finally, I think...