The Biden administration’s jarring revisionism on economic policy toward China (and by extension the world) is reviving discussions (most acute during the Trump and George W. Bush years) about whether it’s right to label the United States a...
We've all spent the weekend processing the killing of Iranian official Qassim Suleimani by a US airstrike. While this is obviously very important, we should think about a secondary implication of...
Depending on your Twitter addiction, you either went to sleep or woke up with the news that America had assassinated Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran's Quds force. Suleimani was one of the...
On an ice-cold winter evening I arrived in Moscow to untangle the riddle that is Russia. After reading two op-eds by Anne Applebaum and Bill Browder I knew what this country was about but I just...
Omid Kokabee is a University of Texas PhD student from the Department of Physics who was arrested in 2011 when he returned home to Iran over the winter break to visit his family. Though he is by all accounts apolitical, Omid was sentenced to 10 years for conspiring with foreign governments and...
The word 'global' has become so frequently used in Western strategic debate that is has almost become background music. On one level, overuse robs it of resonance. But on another, it might be contributing to the conceptual and rhetorical overstretch that has led the US to overextend itself....
"This is what winning looks like" I have to confess, I was late to watch "Zero Dark Thirty" (ODT). I read a handful of reviews and blogs about the movie, had arguments with friends about its message, and even wrote it off completely--all weeks before I bothered to watch it. I wasn't interested in...
Apparently, the Arab Spring will not come to the UAE this weekend. Planners of an LSE conference on the implications of the Arab Spring set for this weekend in UAE have cancelled the event after efforts by senior UAE officials to control the content. From the BBC: A senior LSE academic told the...
Thanks to a very awesome grad student of mine, I just realized that last week marked the second anniversary of the start of the Bahrain uprising. Fueled by protests in Tunisia and Egypt, citizens of this small and very beautiful island state took to the streets to demand political changes. For...
Here's the round-up: The United Nations refuses to pay compensation to victims of the cholera it brought to Haiti. Not really a surprise. Read Jonathon Katz's The Big Truck That Went By. Joshua Landis' survey of the debate over counting casualties in Syria. There is a strong sense that the...
And thus Bret Stephens lambasts Democrats for daring to tell the GOP to moderate its foreign policy. Stephens' recipe for "Getting the GOP's Groove Back"? Obama foreign policy, but with an assist from the Resolve Fairy on Iran. I'm not kidding. If you have a Foreign Affairs subscription, you can...
We should stop using the term “isolationism” to describe policies tht entail a more restrained U.S. role in the world.
No, this isn't one of those posts where we go all "Monkey Cage" on our readers and pimp (sorry) promote political-science research, but rather a "Dan is befuddled, perhaps readers might help" kind of thing. In other words, I make no effort to answer the question of the title. The post is an...
I have an update for those interested in the decision by the University of the West of England to shutter its Politics and IR programs. Last night, I sent the following message to UWE Vice Chancellor Steven West: 19 February 2013 Dear Vice Chancellor West, I learned today that the University of...
I apologize for my radio silence on the OIAS awards since we announced the finalists. The winners are being selected by a panel of judges for each award. Each panel is composed of staff from the Duck of Minerva and "outside experts." The latter have PhDs in political science and are "blog savvy,"...
• Belusconi offers tax rebates. Opponents accuse him of seeking to "buy votes." The letter came in an official-looking envelope, headed: "Important notice: reimbursement of IMU 2012." "The refund will be available either through a transfer into your bank account, or to you personally at the...