What if how presidents talk about ending wars contributes to the cycle of U.S. military intervention? Stephen J. Heidt answers 6+1 questions about his new book.
Larry Summers, I’m going to have to disagree with you. It may seem a bit of a mismatch. Summers is a provocative and influential guy: Chief Economist at the World Bank, Treasury Secretary under Bill...
The following is a guest post by Jahara W. Matisek. Jahara “FRANKY” Matisek is a Major in the U.S. Air Force, with plenty of combat experience flying the C-17 and an instructor pilot tour in the...
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...
Yesterday, I suggested that there is little the US/NATO could do about the Russian intervention in Ukraine. That still is very much true. Obama's statement referred to costs--that this would cost Russia and it will (trade, the G8 summit, etc). But that is not a redline or a serious effort at deterrence--just a statement of reality. Russia's relations with the US, EU, NATO and others will be "taxed" by this event--Russia will get less in the near future because of what it does here. The questions this morning (other than "is that a tank or not") revolve around what can we call this...
*this is a guest post by Konstantinos Travlos, currently a Visiting Assistant at Georgia Southern, who writes on international conflict and history. The arguments presented below are based on past research. Russian policy towards Ukraine is partly driven by short term political reasons such as protecting an investment in the form of Yanukovych, the Russian view of Ukraine as a “little brother”, a legitimate worry over the future of the Russian minority in Ukraine, and a very real opposition to what is seen by the Kremlin elite as the meddling of Western powers in its Near Abroad. However, I...
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!
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...
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...
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...
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...
*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...