The security dilemma plays a central role in Walt and Mearsheimer’s reading of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But what if they get the security dilemma wrong?
What Walt and Mearsheimer Get Wrong About the Security Dilemma
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Recent Posts
Wash Your Hands: It Has Not Been Contained
A quick update to my series from last week. The coronavirus has not been contained to China, and there are now nearly 1000 cases in South Korea, 270 in Italy, and 60 in Iran. Health experts and...
Now What? Health Security after the 2020 Coronavirus
On the same day that the World Health Organization said that there were now only 889 new cases of the coronavirus in China (down from 1749 on Wednesday), there were also reports of new outbreaks in...
China and the Coronavirus: Getting It Right or Very Wrong?
In the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak, the stories on China's quarantine and population control measures seem downright crazy, with people needing hall passes to go out of their apartments,...
More Recent Posts
Welcome Changes in America’s Funemployment Rate
As the Great Slump continues to grind down Western twenty-somethings, some welcome news: America's funemployment rate is slowing. Funemployment, as the Los Angeles Times put it, is the trend by which twenty- and thirty-somethings, finding themselves cast aside from their temporary and entry-level...
Call for Participants: Interpretive and Relational Research Methodologies
“Interpretive and Relational Research Methodologies” A One-Day Graduate Student Workshop Sponsored by the International Studies Association-Northeast Region 9 November, 2013 • Providence, Rhode Island International Studies has always been interdisciplinary, with scholars drawing on a variety of...
Agree with Heinlein’s ‘Citizens vs. Civilians’? then this US Military History is for you
I was asked by a participating member of the H-Diplo/ISSF network to review The American Culture of War. Here is the original link to my review, but it’s off in some far corner of the internet, so I thought I’d repost it here. In brief, I found the book a pretty disturbing rehearsal of right-wing...
Monday Morning Linkage
Hey. Here's your linkage... Data Mining No, I don't care where Snowden is going next... but I am happy to see that Hong Kong used the opportunity to request clarification about US hacking of their computer systems. (h/t E. Webb) Drones Paradoxically, there's something about James Bridle's outline...
Sunday Reading
The "debate on missile defense" leaves Robert Farley feeling very, very tired. Sean Kay wants the US to go cold turkey on European troop deployments. Heh. Heh. "Snowden Crash." Heh. "The Strangelove Caucus." Cute. And also: Virtual transitions: The World SF Blog ends, The Smoked-Filled Room...
Could the Youth Protests of the EU, Middle East, Turkey, and Brazil Spread to Asia’s Corrupt Democracies?
Jay Ulfelder and I had a Twitter conversation on this question in the last few days (here and here). But Twitter has such limited space, I thought I would break out our discussion on the blog and ask what others thought. Watching all these riots – driven heavily by youth dissatisfaction, it seems...
The Whole of Government Needs a Game Changer
Here are some recent phrases that entered the policy lexicon in the last few years that I absolutely hate – “whole of government” and “game changer.” There is a faddishness to tropes in the policy arena that proliferate, that capture a certain sentiment of the moment that soon become over-used....
Friday Nerd Blogging: The Long Con
H/T to Jacob Levy for pointing this out on twitter.
The Relational Sociology of Rational-Choice Theory
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Eric Grynaviski, who is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. There has been a debate on the Duck lately about the meaning of rational choice theory and game theory, and how it’s different from varied alternative...
Moving Beyond Tilly
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Michael Martoccio, who is a PhD candidate of Early Modern History with a minor specialization in IR Theory at Northwestern University. His research broadly examines the role of cooperation in shaping political change in Europe, c. 1300-1700. His projects...
The “Fear” Factor in “Killer Robot” Campaigning
One of the more specious criticisms of the "stopkillerrobots" campaign is that it is using sensationalist language and imagery to whip up a climate of fear around autonomous weapons. So the argument goes, by referring to autonomous weapons as "killer robots" and treating them as a threat to...
War Law, the “Public Conscience” and Autonomous Weapons
In the Guardian this morning, Christof Heyns very neatly articulates some of the legal arguments with allowing machines the ability to target human beings autonomously - whether they can distinguish civilians and combatants, make qualitative judgments, be held responsible for war crimes. But...