Why and how do authoritarian regimes manage their image abroad?
6+1 Questions About MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR Dictatorship
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The Many Faces of Trump Foreign Policy
It won't be too long before we start to get a better understanding of what foreign policy in a Trump Administration will actually look like. It's useful to keep in mind that current rhetoric is no...
El Salvador’s Restless Peace at 25
Amidst all the political drama this week, one could be forgiven for not noting the 25th anniversary of the Chapultepec Peace Agreement. Chapultepec was the agreement that brought a negotiated end to...
We Shall Overcome
Happy Birthday to Dr. Martin Luther King! In his honor here is his favorite singer, the majestic Mahalia Jackson, singing the theme song for the civil rights movement--"We Shall Overcome." After...
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Friday Nerd Blogging: Walter White’s Next Big Adventure
The only thing scarier than Godzilla? A scared Walter White (Bryan Cranston). This preview is most exciting trailer in a while And, to pass the time, see The Lego Movie as Everything Is AWESOME!
Classroom Activity: Trust and Exploitation
This sixth activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture (slides) about trust and exploitation (see also this post). I asked the students to make more or less the same decision faced by the actors in the formal model discussed in that lecture, though their choice was bit simpler because only one of the actions involved risk. The optimal strategy here was not to cooperate at all, since the expected utility for cooperating with any given state is 0.8 (0.4*2 + 0.6*0) and choosing not to cooperate brings 1 point for certain. Because didn't want a repeat of the near-revolt that...
The “Baptist-Burqa” Network and LGBT Advocacy
It’s been a big and extremely depressing week for the rights of sexual minorities. Despite some minor victories in Texas and Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s veto, anti-gay bills remain on the agenda in many US states. Things continue to get worse in Uganda and Russia. What can be done to help stop the abuse? Unlike many other human rights issues, as former Duck contributor Clifford Bob points out, sexual minority rights promotion is an area with a large and well organized counter-movement. In Bob’s new book, he outlines how this “Baptist-Burqa” network of often religiously-motivated...
Belated Thursday Quick Links
This duck is a bit under water these days. We've reached the mid-semester pre-spring break moment of high activity and low energy (warm weather and SXSW beckon). In the meantime, I've flagged a few stories, a great Economist round-up on the health of the oceans (not good), a post by Chris Bertram on the changing face of blogging (more corporate, less fun), Rosa Brooks tells Sheryl Sandberg to take a hike (lean back, don't lean in), the air quality is so bad in Beijing that (the dogs wear masks) and more... Oceans Not new news but the oceans are in bad shape with overfishing and pollution and...
Political Homophobia in Uganda and a (Very) Belated Apology
In what I suspect is the least auspicious debut ever made by a Duck guest blogger, six months after being welcomed by the Duck team, I'm finally posting. It turns out that starting a new job, prepping a new course, learning how to shovel snow, and attempting to finish a book manuscript all at once is not particularly conducive to being a good guest blogger. I'd like to thank the Duck team for their patience, and for their completely unwarranted confidence in still welcoming me to blog here. And I promise to do better from here on out. As Charli noted, my area of interest is in questions at...
Cyber Spillover: The Transition from Cyber Incident to Conventional Foreign Policy Dispute
*Post written with my coauthor Ryan Maness. We are currently rounding the corner and almost ready to submit the final version of our Cyber Conflict book. This post represents ongoing research as we fill out unanswered questions in our text. My coauthor and I have dissected the contemporary nature of cyber conflict in many ways, from cataloging all actual cyber incidents and disputes between states, to examining cyber espionage, and finally, examining the impact of cyber incidents on the conflict-cooperation nexus of states. What we have not done until now is examine the nature of what we...
Cutting arms and tying hands?
Post by Steven Ward and Paul Musgrave The Obama administration’s plans to shrink the U.S. military attracted intense media attention yesterday. The plan is being described as a maneuver to shift the United States’s defense posture away from protracted occupations, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, and toward a more conventional deterrence role. It’s easy to exaggerate the scale of the changes to the military budget. In particular, the soundbite that the post-cut U.S. Army will be the smallest since before the Second World War is seriously misleading. According to the Historical...
You Think You Have a Facebook Problem? The IDF and Social Media
Dan Levine sent on this great write up of the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF) problems with social media. A few highlights: “In 2010, a soldier in the artillery corps posted this status: “Cleaning up Katana and home on Thursday.” Katana is a village in the West Bank. The status revealed the time of the planned raid and the unit involved. The other soldiers in the unit, also apparently glued to their screens, saw the update and, feeling imperiled, let the authorities know.” “Later that year the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate sent out a bulletin to soldiers featuring photos of drones...