Some more excerpts from G. Loews Dickinson’s writings on international affairs.
The More Things Change…
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Recent Posts
Episode 5 – Jennifer Mitzen
rent chats with Jennifer Mitzen of Ohio State university. Jennifer talks about growing up in Evanston, Illinois, going to Wesleyan, living in New York after college and being an...
Agent. Foreign Agent
Warning! According to the law that the Russian parliament passed yesterday, this post might need to be prefaced with a disclaimer that the following text has been compiled by a foreign agent. An...
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Policy Engagement* (*But Were Too Afraid to Ask)
Earlier this year, our team at the Sié Center at the University of Denver announced our program on the three R’s of Academic-Policy Engagement (or R3, if you prefer): Rigor, Relevance, and...
More Recent Posts
Friday Nerd Blogging: Globalization Edition
Why show a trailer for an Indian zombie movie? Two reasons: it has the word globalization in it; and it helped me make it to the Final Four of Twitter Fight Club 2013. To newbies, the first rule of #TFC13 is to talk about it. So, check out the competition of the international security wonks, and...
Jeffrey C. Isaac on the NSF and Political Science
In a piece that's bound to generate controversy among political scientists, Isaac looks at the "big picture" of the defunding of (many forms of) political science via the Coburn Amendment. What's likely controversial about the piece? First, Isaac argues that the defunding of political science is...
Debating the Benefits of Nuclear Superiority for Crisis Bargaining, Part IV
Editor's Note: Back in February I riffed on a post by Erik Voeten in which Erik discussed two articles in International Organization (IO). One, by our colleague Matt Kroenig, argued that nuclear superiority gives states advantages in crisis bargaining (PDF). Another, by Todd Sechser and Matthew...
Did You Know that WMD is DMW Spelled Backwards?
Herbert Marcuse had some interesting things to say about certain political acronyms. The meaning is fixed, doctored, loaded. Once it has become an official vocable, constantly repeated in general usage, "sanctioned" by the intellectuals, it has lost all cognitive value and serves merely for...
Friday Morning Linkage
Joshua Goldstein and I look at R2P After Syria. But, what will Syria look like after Syria? And, what exactly is the Obama administration doing there? Training and arming the rebels covertly but not with non-lethal military aid -- body armor and night vision. UN arms treaty blocked by Iran, North...
Guest Post by Tom Nichols — Iraq War Debate too Driven by Bush Resentment: A Response to Bob Kelly’s Iraq Posts”
I am happy to invite my friend Tom Nichols to guest-post about the continuing Iraq War debate. Tom responded so substantially to my original post series on the war (one, two, three), that I invited him to provide a longer write-up. Tom is a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval...
Rule Number One For Graduate School Applicants
Spring (where it exists) is the time of year when applicants to PhD programs find out the outcome and decide where, if any place, to go. While there are many factors that one must take into account, including what might happen if your preferred adviser leaves (Will Moore's take and mine),...
Bargaining, Capabilities, and Crisis Outcomes
I have enjoyed the recent exchange between Kroenig and Sechser & Fuhrmann (see here, here, and here). One interesting point that came up regards the role of conventional military capabilities in determining crisis outcomes. Kroenig says that the MCT data S&F analyze must be flawed...
Debating the Benefits of Nuclear Superiority, Part III
Nuclear weapons may be useful for deterrence, but can they also coerce? Our theories reach opposite conclusions: we say no; Kroenig says yes. Both sides marshal evidence to support their arguments. So who is right? Our goal in this post is to evaluate Kroenig’s empirical results and respond to his critique of our article.
Amooc Time
About a month ago I wrote that: The recent obsession with MOOCs has its roots in three interlocking trends: the application of business-school speak to higher education, technology fetishism, and the quest to push down labor costs. It wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say that these are...
Thursday Morning Linkage
Here is your Thursday Morning Linkage with some categories for helpful reading... Global Economy Cyprus and EU avert financial catastrophe but EU looks like "gang that can't shoot straight" Krugman recommends Cyprus exit from the Euro Energy and the Environment Wildlife returns to Guyana CFR hosts...
Midweek Linkage
Dan Trombly worries about the effectiveness of proxy warfare in Syria. Drone reconnaissance aids archeology. Chinese missile porn. US policy toward Bahrain. Did the US once save Hugo Chávez's life? Colin Dueck thinks that the US is strategically overextended. Andrew Yeo looks at the NRA and...