We’re in the middle of a political struggle to define “defeat” in Afghanistan. What does that mean?
The Politics of “Defeat”
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The Case Against “The Case For Colonialism”
This is a guest post by Sahar Khan, a visiting research fellow in the Cato Institute’s Defense and Foreign Policy Department. Sahar holds a PhD in political science from the University of...
Responsibility to Protect the Rohingya?
This is a guest post (begun as a series of tweets) by Phil Orchard, Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies and International Relations at the University of Queensland and the Research...
Why Americans Never Forget to Remember 9/11
As you know, the footage appeared live, as bodies began falling from the flaming and smoke-filled North Tower, as US Airlines Flight 175 was flown into the frame and South Tower at 0903, and as the...
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Joining The Club?
Dan Nexon argues that efforts to have Ukraine join NATO could be self defeating: Moscow’s greatest fear is that Ukraine winds up a member of NATO. The more that NATO suggests it views Ukraine as worthy of military confrontation, the more Moscow will become convinced that an autonomous Ukraine — rump or otherwise — will someday become a member of the NATO alliance. The net result: escalating efforts by NATO at military deterrence actually increase the pressure on Moscow to take decisive action in the near term.The whole post is worth reading, and those few Duck readers who don't follow Dan's...
John Vasquez, Territoriality, and Staying Ahead of the Game
by Brandon Valeriano and Andy Owsiak What follows is a dialog between us on John Vasquez’s contributions to the field of IR based on a recent roundtable honoring his work at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association in Toronto in March, 2014.  Our remarks are cribbed from our statements on the panel.  Brandon-  Sometimes it is so hard to find a picture of a Duck that looks like your mentor… For many scholars, the cap on their career might be a roundtable covering the contributions they have made to the field and the scholars they have ushered into our community. For John...
Preventing Further Russian Aggression
 "The hour is getting late...all along the watchtower, princes kept the view...two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl." Bob Dylan America and Russia are not engaged in a new Cold War, but Russia is playing the global menace du jour. The U.S. and Europe need to take more aggressive action to prevent the annexation of eastern Ukraine, and time is short. Beyond this crisis the West needs an updated defense posture, but for now the road ahead is clear. Russia will take as much of Ukraine as the West allows, nothing more, nothing less. Yet few in Washington and Brussels seem to...
The IPCC Working Group III Report on Climate Mitigation in 11 Tweets
The IPCC released the Working Group III summary report for policymakers on Sunday. I wrote about the Working Group II report on impacts on The Monkey Cage. Working Group III covers climate mitigation, that is the challenges of reducing greenhouse gases. Tonight, I read through the report and tweeted my sense of the main findings in an 11 part series that I embed below. My short take: there is not nearly enough in the 33 page document on barriers to implementation and international cooperation. I'm really looking forward to the release of the longer chapters. In the meantime, I encourage...
ForeignPolicy.Com Fail
As I noted last week, for the final project in my linked seminar this year, my students have to design and launch a website to promote their fictitious human rights NGO. In prepping for the course and in developing the grading rubrics, I've spent quite a bit of time reading the literature on what makes for a strong and effective website and how to integrate design, functionality, and content. My students' websites are evaluated on all of these aspects. The content and text should match the sophistication of the targeted audience -- generally it should be smart and focused. The aesthetic...
An Academic Woman’s Rant of the Week: Self-Promotion
This week’s installment of An Academic Woman’s Rant of the Week concerns self-promotion and self-citation differences between men and women. The idea for this installment came to me while I was having a celebratory drink with K. Chad Clay and Jim Piazza at ISA. We were celebrating our recent Political Research Quarterly article (also coauthored with Sam Bell).[1] Chad had just presented a new Bell, Clay, Murdie paper[2] at a panel that I wasn’t able to attend. When I asked Chad if he had any questions from the floor, Chad said that he did get some questions but that he was able to answer...
Why I Don’t Participate at Political Science Rumors
Over the last week we've had an excellent post by Cynthia Weber on queer theory and the forms of academic disciplining and bullying that take place on the website Political Science Rumors, as well as a interesting (and surprisingly convincing) piece by Steve Saidman on why he participates on the website. At first thought, the question of whether to participate on PLSI rumors or not seems pretty simple to me. In fact, a better question might be, 'why would anyone bother with such a largely negative shit-storm, make-you-feel-bad-about-humanity and the field zone?' However, on second thought,...
Classroom Activity: Commitment Problems
This activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture (slides) on commitment problems. The lecture focused in particular on how the anticipation of future shifts in power can create incentives for preventive war. After walking them through a formal model fleshing out the argument, I then discussed the role of preventive motives in the US Civil War and showed them that interstate wars have occurred more often historically when there was reason to believe that war in the current year would have a significant impact on the distribution of military capabilities in the subsequent...