2017 was not a great year for international politics. The sentence I heard the most during conferences and other academic gatherings was that “the global order is in crisis.” Granted. It all started in 2016 with the victory of Trump, Brexit and the No to the Peace...
[Note: A more detailed version of this post appeared at my personal blog.] The Cairo protests that ultimately led to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak received a great deal of attention on Twitter—the...
[Note: This is a guest post by Joshua B. Spero, Associate Professor of International Politics and Coordinator of International Studies at Fitchburg State University.] Since the Russia-Ukraine crisis...
I’m leaving for the Midwest Political Science Association conference this afternoon, a wonderful 3 days since I returned from ISA. I’m a little (*cough*) “conferenced-out” – it wasn’t a good idea...
New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy is now available via the iTunes store.Bizarro 2004 continues: this time, Republicans spend lots of time complaining about systematic bias in polling (via).Protest September continues: Islamic world, China, Chicago, OWS....Taylor Favrel provides analysis of the Sino-Japanse island dispute. Civil war continues in Syria (Syrian aircraft hit Lebanese territory, Revolutionary Guard said to have advisors in Syria, Rebels accused of torture, etc.) and Mali.A narrative of power, corruption, and "justice" in China (via Victoria Tin-bor Hui).Andrew Yeo argues...
The cheesecake wore a raspberry sorbet.Photo: Dan Nexon Oops (updated)..., I forgot to add a link to coverage of the anti-Japanese riots and protests in China, and to backstory on the purchase of the islands. A thoughtful piece by Jill Sargent Russel at Kings of War on Syria, diplomacy, and intervention.Jay Ulfelder expresses concern about the future of democracy in South Africa. BLTN: my colleague Chris Fair argues that it is time to "blacklist Pakistan" (via zenpundit).Matt Stoller reviews Tim Mitchell's Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil.The New York Times chronicles the...
Interview with Daniel Levine.
Tunisia Protests, APReaders probably already know that anti-western attacks are spreading beyond Egypt and Libya, and to non-US facilities. In Sudan, the German embassy is "in flames."And so on.How would someone committed to relational social analysis understand what's happening? Here's an 'analytical snap judgment':We have an event -- the emergence of the anti-Muslim film -- that fits a particular pre-existing script concerning identity relations: "Americans/Westerners hate/disrespect Islam/Muslims."We have a script about what happens next: 'Believers protest.'We have pre-existing scripts...
I know what you’re thinking – how many more d--- pictures of this guy and Kim Il Sung (left, KJI right) do I have to look at? Well…too bad! They go on and on and on…In the last two weeks I rolled out a series of impressions from my trip to North Korea (one, two, three, four). Apparently Parag Khanna went to NK at the same time I did (last month) and simultaneously put up his impressions at CNN-GPS, making for an interesting comparison of views this week. (You don’t have to go to the Khanna link, as I have reprinted the piece after the break, with some response comments.)Dan Nexon and Dan...
Does this cat think that he's a duck?Photo: Dan NexonAsian maritime disputes roundup: background on Diaoyu/Senkaku and on the Southern Kuril Islands; what happened when Chinese ships sailed into the waters around Dioayu/Senkaku. Dan Trombly: "Benghazi and Diplomacy's Hard Power."Peter Rutland discusses rising Armenia-Azerbaijan tensions. If you're not paying attention, you should be. Baku believes that all its shiny new military equipment (paid for with carbon dollars) give it a growing strategic advantage. Stephen Lacey notes that eighty percent of the US is "now in some form of...
An interesting observation I took away from this meeting is the frequency with which I heard practitioners talking about the need to "reverse the burden of proof" from advocates (to prove that a particular weapon causes significant humanitarian harm) to governments (to prove that it doesn't). As Richard Price documented in his study of the landmines campaign and John Borrie documented in his landmark genealogy of the cluster munitions convention, the ability to shift the terms of debate in this way is a pivotal component of successful campaigns in the area of weapons. At the same time, this...