According to conventional wisdom, Disney’s Andor is the best Star Wars narrative in years. Political scientists seem to agree. Dan Drezner speaks for many when he writes that the show's "writing is stellar," its "locations...
ess than a year after the appearance of "The False Promise of International Institutions," the journal International Security published replies from Robert Keohane and Lisa...
Professor Francois Debrix of Virginia Tech University joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Francois grew up in France, attending college there with degrees in Spanish and English, and then...
For decades, many International Relations (IR) scholars portrayed experiments with foreign policy elites as too risky, too costly, or too difficult to implement. Faculty mentors discouraged graduate...
I used to be a Senate staffer, and one of the most interesting parts of my job was helping Senators prepare for hearings. If I were a Senate staffer now, here’s hearing questions I’d recommend for President-Elect Trump’s national security nominees, Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State), General James Mattis (Secretary of Defense), and General John Kelly (Secretary of Homeland Security). These questions would serve as starting points for dialogue during the hearings and I’m sure would lead to other questions. On Whether War Works: Over the past 15 years, we have used military force (or, as we...
To be clear, the latest news is "intra-civilian" but is likely to cross over given the stakes. Remember the old days where the "smart" Bolsheviks left the personnel and other boring issues to Stalin? Yeah, so Stalin staffed the new Soviet government with his guys, and the theorists, well, they did not end up this way. That might be too bloody of an example, but I am not at all surprised that General (retired) Mattis is having tensions with Michael Flynn and the other Trump folks over who to staff the Pentagon. If Mattis can't pick his own staff, it will mean not only that he will not have...
In conversations with friends, I quickly realized that the International Studies Association faces some significant problems ahead. The advent of the Trump administration is likely to lead to two kinds of complications: it may be hard for foreign scholars to get visas to attend the conference that scholars may want to boycott conferences that take place in the US if Trump follows through on a variety of things he promised/threatened/tweeted during the campaign. I have not yet gotten numbers from the ISA about the composition of the membership, although it is largely a North American...
Consider these two presidential statements: “Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!”—President-Elect Donald Trump’s New Year’s Twitter greeting “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of our affection.”—President Abraham Lincoln, from his first inaugural address Both Lincoln and Trump wrote their words after heated and divisive elections. Both won their elections though they lost the popular vote. Lincoln spoke to...
Putin’s annual press conference is a chance for regular citizens to spend 3 hours in a great and rich Russia, where everything is in order and Putin is capable of installing presidents in foreign countries (according to one journalist). In general, the press conference strived to paint a picture of a great power facing some economic problems and who is constantly challenged by other countries (they are probably jealous and/or Russophobic). For me it was also a chance to wonder at Putin’s stamina. He might not be Superman, as one of the posters brought by the journalists stipulated, but his...
The President-Elect has called for expanding the US nuclear arsenal, not just modernizing it (old warheads may not be good warheads). And when asked about whether this might lead to an arms race, he said woot! Who wins arms races? Arms manufacturers and their stockholders Maybe Ken Waltz (who is already dead) Yeah, that's about it. How about who loses? Each country that is involved The taxpayers Pretty much everyone else. Really? Is it that bad? Yes, it is. Why? There are two possibilities when it comes to a nuclear arms race: either the competition among nuclear powers to build more...
I'll confess that post-November 8th, 2016, I spent a large amount of time in despair and unable to write anything coherent on the topics I am most interested in contributing here at the Duck of Minerva. It was hard for me to imagine what the global order would look like with someone like He Who Shall Not Be Named at the helm of one of the most powerful nations in the world, and not despair. But throughout the next few weeks after the US election, I have seen numerous colleagues in the IR and (more broadly) political science fields engage with society at large, trying to educate the masses on...
Grades are in, reviews submitted, and I'm headed out for the holiday season. I hope you are wrapping up the semester and/or enjoying a well-deserved break. Please remember to submit your nominations for the 2017 Duckies before the end of the year. And, please remember to attend the The Duckies at ISA: Thursday, February 23rd at 7:30 pm. The ISA Online Media Caucus (OMC) is very thankful to have the support of Sage in hosting the reception. Send your nominations to onlinemediacaucus@gmail.com. Duckies will be awarded in the following categories: Best Blog (Group) in International Studies...