I have regularly seen stuff online or in academic publications complaining about professionalization and what it has meant for Political Science. The basic idea is that things were great before people became focused on stuff like citation counts, which has led to all...
The ISA mess is the gift that keeps on giving. Now Nicholas Kristof has written a piece in his NYT column that "addresses" the controversy. The problem is that the column is out of date. Not just...
The so-called Pivot to Asia, or "rebalance" in official parlance, has been one of the Obama Administration's signature strategic moves on the global chessboard. But for all the serious engagement of...
This third activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture on game theory (slides). Look below the fold for details. First, I asked them to fully characterize the optimal strategy...
A few years back, when global warming was near the top of the national and global agendas, a surprising new activist suddenly took the field: the Pentagon. In 2009, it called climate change a “threat” to national security. In 2010, it lauded the climate with its ultimate recognition, inclusion in the Quadrennial Defense Review. All of this was uncritically conveyed by journalists on the Pentagon and environmental beats.Recently, the first effort to test whether climate change in fact has security implications was published by the Journal of Peace Research. Its bottom line: “Only...
Guest Post by Joel OestreichA few days ago I met the woman in the attached photograph. Her name is Karima. She is a college graduate who was born a male and, at 21, had gender reassignment surgery. Some time later she entered the “Miss Transgender India” contest and took fifth place. Her boyfriend, out of jealousy, set her on fire (her neck, torso, and upper arms show terrible scars) and broke her leg so badly that she can no longer stand unassisted.After that experience, Karima joined a group of “hijra”. In India, hijra are communities of transgendered people who identify as women or who...
Go Luxemburg!According to Michael Beckley, the United States should be deeply concerned about the power-political position of Luxemburg, Denmark, Switzerland, and others. Okay, not really. But that's the implication of Beckley's top-line response to Erik Voeten's dissection of his recent article in International Security.Normally economic growth rates dovetail with changes in wealth gaps. But these measures often diverge when comparing a rich country like the United States to a poor one like China. Since 1991, China’s per capita income rose 11 percent annually while America’s rose 3.5...
:Here is part one, where I argued that international relations as a field has become increasingly uncomfortable with the America’s post-Cold War hegemony and the level of force used in the GWoT, but…2. We’re drifting toward R2PSimultaneously, we are elated that the Libya operation worked, (against all odds given the Iraq experience and what we know about foreign intervention in LDCs generally). Lots of Duck writers supported the intervention. (I found Jon Western’s arguments last spring particularly persuasive; some of my writing on Libya is here and here.) Even if you didn’t support it, and...
Lots of folks use war as analogy for football (US version) or football as analogy for war, such as the blitz starting with war going to football and going back to war. How about we take a key concept from football and from other sports and apply it to US (and perhaps NATO) defense policy: the salary cap? In professional sports, leagues have had to impose restraints upon owners of teams since competition among them (combined with nepotism leading to lousy decision-making) cause salaries to escalate. As a result, bargaining with unions tends to be about the split of the income, with each...
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has released a new report alleging that CIA-piloted drones have regularly attacked rescuers and funerals as well as high-value targets - a damning claim given Obama's recent assertion to the contrary in his digital town hall meeting.The report correctly suggests that in the context of international humanitarian law, intentionally targeting individuals who come to the rescue of victims would be considered a violation of the rules of war.* But in doing so, and in using the term "drone wars" to describe this campaign of executions, the BJI also...
THE CANARD"All the fake news that's fit to print."-- Los Angeles*A political science professor at University of Southern California came under fire this week for the role he may have played behind-the-scenes on a recent documentary about the heavy metal band Metallica. Administrators at the university are investigating whether Professor Brian Christopher Rathbun’s participation in the project may have violated rules permitting faculty to consult no more than one day a week on projects outside the university. The film in question, Some Kind of Monster, is described by Rotten Tomatoes as “a...
Taking Brian Rathbun’s advice, I was reading chapter 4 of Perception and Misperception, when it struck me that Jervis’ argument about values incongruity could be applied to the two most popular normative positions in IR today – that western power and international law can help reduce violence and nastiness in the world (R2P), and that a semi-imperial US is killing far too many people against a fairly minor threat and should retrench somewhat. But increasingly I think that retrenchment, which is traditionally associated with the left in IR (US ‘imperialism’), has become a realist position.1....