Matt Hancock, a Conservative MP and the UK’s Health Secretary during most of the Covid lockdowns, has failed upwards.
Failing Upwards and Global Elitism
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Hey, NYT, we need to talk.
I know, democracy dies in darkness (sorry, WashPo put it better) and we need good journalism, but what you publish in the Opinion Section often does not qualify as journalism, like, at all. I am not...
Under Pressure
Somewhat cranky and slightly under the weather Putin graced the foreign journalists with his presence for almost 4 hours. Starting right off the bat with some optimistic economic indicators (that he...
Aid and Diplomacy, Not Tear Gas: How to Address the Central American Migrant Crisis
On Sunday, the US Border Patrol fired tear gas into Mexico at migrants, including children, attempting to enter the US near the San Ysidro border crossing between Tijuana and San Diego. The use of a...
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Tweets of the Week
Though I've been blogging at the Duck of Minerva for more than 9 years, I haven't posted much content for several years. My last post here was in mid-February. You can find maybe half a dozen posts in 2013 and 2014. It's a terrible record. Embarrassingly, I had to look up my username just to log in. There are multiple explanations for my silence: the U.S. withdrew from Iraq, which was my original blogging muse. I became department chair. My hair is turning very gray. Blah, blah, blah. However, in my own defense, I should note that I am a much more frequent contributor to the Tweets sidebar...
Military Officers on Women in the Infantry: Five For, One Against
Contenders for the Marine Corps Association's Major General Harold W. Chase Prize, ($3000, publication, and a plaque) are supposed to "propose and argue for a new and better way of “doing business” in the Marine Corps. Authors must have strength in their convictions and be prepared for criticism from those who would defend the status quo." Therefore it came as a surprise to many military professionals when the 2013 winner was Marine Captain Lauren F. Serrano, whose winning essay was an opinion piece that called for maintaining the status quo and excluding women from the infantry. But in the...
Obama’s ISIS Strategy: A Clausewitzian Perspective
Much ink has been spilled over the last few days concerning President Obama’s speech on Wednesday evening regarding ISIS, as well as how his strategy will face many challenges going forward. Some cite that he does not go far enough, others that he has not fully laid out what to do in Syria when he has to face a potential deal with Assad. I, however, would like to pause and ask about the motivations on each side of this conflict, and whether we have any indications about how the asymmetry of motivations may affect the efficacy of Obama’s campaign. Moreover, we ought to also look to how this...
Thursday Linkage
Well, this semester is off to a brisk start, and I can't say I'm fully recovered yet from #APSAOnFire, though the subsequent events near AU added considerable intrigue to what transpired. I watched the president's speech on ISIS tonight, and I think my wife summed it up best, he looked like he wanted to give the speech about as much as we wanted to hear it. I think Jeffrey Goldberg summed it up best when evoked the Godfather and Obama's desperate efforts to extricate the United States from the Middle East to no avail. However pedestrian the speech, at least Obama did not hype the threat to...
The First Year on the Tenure-Track: Wanting to Give the White Whale Back
As a grad student, I used to the think longingly about the day when I would finally hold a tenure-track job. I could almost taste the thrill of the teaching and the joy of faculty resources. You mean, someone will pay for my copy of [insert software you’d like to use legally]? And, textbooks will be free? I also fantasized about how wonderful it would be to not be under the thumb of my advisors. Of course, I thought I could live like a queen on a faculty salary, too. The tenure-track position was my white whale. Three months into the job, however, I wanted to give my white whale back. ...
NATO Puts Credible Deterrence Back in Place
The evidence that President Putin has lost Ukraine in the most important senses has been around for months--Ukrainians want to be western even more now, eastern Ukrainians in majority terms continue to want this as well, Ukrainians elected a pro-western President, the EU trade deal is going forward, and Poroshenko is pushing for NATO membership with NATO not ruling this out--but crucially what was not in place until recent days is credible conventional deterrence against additional territorial annexation by Russia. In an even more substantial indication of Putin disastrously overplaying...
Doubts on Doubts: Part Two
In part one, I shared my views on whether international law is really law. As promised, this post cuts into the conversation on whether international law matters. Violations of international law lead many to question its effectiveness. Non-compliance especially by powerful states reinforces the instrumentalist view which characterizes international law as a strategic instrument of statecraft. States make laws that serve their material interests. Compliance takes place as long as it is convenient. I am not going to downplay the negative implications of non-compliance for the international...
Saturday Nerd Blogging: The Skynet Factor and the Killer Robot Campaign
A day late, but not a penny short: at the Monkey Cage this week I look at the interplay between science fiction references and the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots: The media might be forgiven for using such terms and images as click-bait. But some people have accused the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots of invoking “Hollywood paranoia” as well. NBCNews tech writer Keith Wagstaff asked whether “hysteria over the robopocalypse could hold back technology that could save human lives.” At the conference, autonomous weapons proponent...