Academics are increasingly becoming targets of online harassment, but too many universities and colleges are unprepared to support and protect their faculty. What steps should they take?
Dealing with the Digital Mob
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Trump’s Treatment of the Press: A Harbinger of Bad Things to Come
Over the weekend, the Trump Administration had some interesting discussions with and about the press. First, talking at CIA headquarters on Saturday, President Trump remarked that he is in a “war”...
The Emperor Has No Crowds
Trump is not a wolf in sheep’s clothing, or even a wolf in wolf’s clothing. Trump is a wolf in no clothing. His campaign, transition, and inaugural weekend lay naked the two driving forces of his...
The Russian Threat and the Poverty of “Post-Truth”
The following is a guest post by Sidra Hamidi, a PhD Candidate in Political Science at Northwestern University, specializing in global nuclear politics and state identity. She has published...
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Ukraine: A Tale of Dueling Humanitarianisms?
This is a guest post by former Duck of Minerva blogger Betcy Jose, Assistant Professor at University of Colorado-Denver and contributor to Al-Jazeera and Foreign Affairs. As the number of posts here suggest, lots of us are watching the fast-moving and somewhat unexpected events in Ukraine with great concern and interest. Others have expertly discussed the reasons for Russian military intervention in Ukraine and how the international community might respond to it (here, here, here, and here). I’d like to contribute a different angle to this complex story by inquiring into Russian narratives...
Will the markets tame Russia?
I don't have an answer for this, as I'm not sure how globally integrated Russia is in to the world economy at this juncture or vulnerable given its fossil fuel resources, but I, along with anyone who knows how to buy shares see that the Russian stockmarket declined this morning as has the value of the ruble. I know Russia experienced significant economic crises in the 1990s after the breakup of the Soviet Union that made it dependent on IMF support, but my sense is that the resurgence of the country's petro economy bolstered its international economic position. That said, I wonder if the...
Russia’s Coercive Diplomacy against Ukraine: The Power Politics Story
*The following post is written by Ryan Maness and myself. Events are in motion that many thought were past us, part of a bygone era where conventional war still had a prominent place in deciding the course of nations. Having done a great amount of work on Russia’s strategic behavior and use of power (we have a book on the topic under review), we were a bit caught off guard too. Not by the course of events, but that our vision was focused on cyber conflict and thus were distracted from the real world developments. The events in Ukraine fit a recent pattern of Russia’s coercive diplomacy...
America’s Strategic Dilemma in Ukraine
[Note: This is a guest post by Sean Kay, Robson Professor of Politics at Ohio Wesleyan University and Mershon Associate at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at the Ohio State University. He has long-researched and written on NATO policy and worked in the US Department of Defense during the first round of NATO enlargement planning. His forthcoming book is America’s Search for Security: The Triumph of Idealism and the Return of Realism (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014).] Russia’s incursion into Ukraine presents the United States with a dilemma. The cries to “do something” are...
Nuclear weapons wouldn’t have fixed what was wrong with Ukraine
Tyler Cowen discovers John Mearsheimer's seminal 1993 Foreign Affairs article "The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent". Since I know I won't be alone in teaching this piece the next time I put together an Intro to IR reading list, let's take a moment to see whether, as Cowen wrote earlier, "the expected rate of return from denuclearization has fallen". International relations scholars disagree about a lot when it comes to nuclear weapons, and the belief, which I mostly share, that nuclear weapons mitigate the outbreak of interstate wars is not the only view. Even Mearsheimer in his...
Analogies Aplenty: Ukraine is ….
Lots of folks are speculating about what Ukraine/Crimea/Russia is like, including not Abkhazia. Right now, the analogies that come to mind for me are: coups d'etat and poker. Coup? Yes, because in a coup, the anti-incumbents (for want of a better term), move first, trying to create facts on the ground that are hard to reverse. If this fait accompli is successful, the incumbents are then put in a position where they are the ones with the pressure to use force. The onus is on them. Which is why Putin would be smart to stick to Crimea. Other deployments in Ukraine might mean trying to...
Conquest by other means, Ukraine edition
Over at the Monkey Cage, Henry Farrell suggests that President Obama is using the OSCE to give Putin an exit strategy. Farrell writes: Obama’s “phone call with Putin on Saturday suggests that the United States wants to invoke the old-style OSCE. It notes that Russia’s armed intervention is inconsistent with Russia’s commitments under the Helsinki Final Act (the agreement that established the OSCE), calls for “the dispatch of international observers under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)... If Putin wants an...
Former Duck Gets Riled Up by Ukraine Coverage
For some smart commentary on what's going down in the Ukraine and how (not) to cover it, I point you to former Duck Dan Nexon on his personal blog (*and also cross-posted below). Dan knows a thing or two about the region having served in the Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia regional office in the Office of the Secretary Defense as a CFR International Affairs Fellow in 2009-2010. Here, Dan bemoaned the coverage in the WaPo of the Ukraine crisis by one Scott Wilson. Wilson lambasted the Obama administration's strategy in the Ukraine writing that: The signal Obama has sent — popular among his domestic...