This is the third and final part of a three part interview between Adam B. Lerner (ABL) and Patrick Thaddeus Jackson (PTJ). It is the first instalment of a new series of interviews on Duck of Minerva entitled Quack-and-Forths.
It is not easy waking up in America these days. Sunday morning I woke up from a lazy weekend morning to see that a shooter had committed mass murder at a church in Sutherland Springs, TX. The...
Earlier this year, I wrote a piece for Duck regarding “declinist” arguments about liberal world order under Trump. I don’t think these arguments are going away, and in fact—just this week—they are...
“In the first place, we don’t like to be called ‘refugees’.” ~Hannah Arendt This past weekend was a weekend full of birthdays. Hannah Arendt’s 111th birthday fell on Saturday (October 14th), and—in...
The arrival in the UK of the Libyan Foreign Minister and former Head of Intelligence, Moussa Koussa, raises some interesting questions. Consider the facts: one the one hand, although Moussa Koussa has, apparently, been a force for moderation in recent years, in his heyday he was an unapologetic defender of the use of force against Libyan dissidents and other opponents of the regime. Quite possibly he planned the Lockerbie and Niger airline bombings, and, if he didn’t, he knows who did and was complicit in the crime and in other acts of terrorism by Libya. In short, there is a prima facie...
Since Stephanie has quoted me on the subject, I thought I’d share some thoughts on intervention and consistency. 1. Consistency is a virtue – but it isn’t the only virtue. Sometimes good judgement points us in the direction of inconsistency; this is so in personal life as well as domestic and international politics. We (most of us) overlook failings in our friends which would upset us in our enemies. In the realm of sexual politics, we (most of us) cut some slack for Bill Clinton in a way that we wouldn’t, and didn’t, for Clarence Thomas. We (most of us) were prepared to see force used...
There’s been some really interesting posts here on R2P in the last few days. At the risk of kicking a dead horse – although I hardly think this horse is dead - I’d like to raise a few points. (I've actually been writing this post over the past few days, and was going to post it later in the week, but Obama's speech tonight made me want to post it earlier. You know, because hasty blogging is always a good thing.)Most of my thinking has been on the issue of consistency/inconsistency with regards to R2P. I think I agree with Charli, there is no consistency requirement when it comes to R2P. For...
International politics is such a bore these days, right? Good thing we have Canada to spice things up for us!There were two interesting developments yesterday for those living in the northern end of North America. First, it was announced that a Canadian, Maj. Gen. Charles Bouchard, will be heading up the NATO mission in Libya. My first thoughts about this were that the choice represents an interesting compromise. Canada, the (French?) vanilla ice-cream of the Western alliance (normally boring, but safe and reliable) represents a non-American and non-European choice. Yet, since the Americans...
At the beginning of every war, journalists must quickly find a frame that makes the new violence intelligible to their audiences. It is often convenient to compare new events to old events, to see what looks similar and what looks different (journalists routinely follow the principle of comparison earlier articulated by Sesame Street). In 2006, during the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman employed the Vietnam template in an op-ed: ‘in time we’ll come to see the events unfolding — or rather, unraveling — in Iraq today as the real October surprise,...
The 15th Century take on ShrekA friend of mine linked to a fabulous post by Lindy West at the Guardian “The Five Most Pathetic Female Film Characters of All Time”. Okay, not the most inspiring International Women’s Day post. But if I’m honest with you, I think she’s spot on with her list (although I haven’t seen Twilight so I can’t really judge that... but it seems to confirm everything I’ve heard about Bella.)There is nothing worse than a horrible female companion/character/lead in a film. I find it like being on a long car ride with a whiney companion. And that’s the very least damage they...
Not so much.Lawfare blog has a post on today’s Executive Order on Guantanamo Bay. (Link to the Obama administration's fact sheet PDF here). Lawfare tends to be more conservative than most international law blogs, but it’s excellent and an absolute must-read for keeping up-to-date on all things law, national security and the war on terror. (Or as I like to call it, Saturday night!) There’s some good commentary on the refusal of Congress to help fund any progress on Guantanamo and some discussion of the return to military commissions. More interesting for me is the section at the end of the...
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1970 is a pretty amazing document. Over the last few days I’ve found myself trying to decide if this a rare example of the UN Security Council doing what it was originally designed to do – or an example of an international organization working because there is a relatively powerless state with no allies involved. I suspect it’s probably both. Still, I’ve been following The Multilateralist blog over at Foreign Policy and I think David Bosco has it just about right: Last night, the UN Security Council passed unanimously a resolution imposing an asset...