At its core, the current war in Ukraine reflects an incompatibility of nationalist narratives. Many Ukrainians want to escape Russia’s imperial shadow. Putin wants to reextend that shadow – to erase Ukraine as an independent national identity.
It's happened to all of us (or least those of us who do quantitative work). You get back a manuscript from a journal and it's an R&R. Your excitement quickly fades when you start reading the...
This is a guest post from William Kindred Winecoff, Incoming Chairand Brent E. Sasley, Outgoing Chair of the Online Media Caucus The Online Media Caucus’s 2019 Duckies have come and gone. The...
I arrived in Toronto for ISA on Thursday and went straight to the annual luncheon hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, which featured some of my favorite policy oriented scholars, Kori...
I don't want to say too much about the Rathbun-Arena smackdown (smackduck?) taking place but I will say this: We often rely on maps that are not "true." The Mercator projection is "wrong" if our criterion is "showing countries according to their relative size" but "useful" if our criterion is...
Many of you seem to have read my earlier post knocking the use of assumptions in theory-building, particularly rationalism, and Phil Arena's defense of it. My earlier post was a little over the top and insulting, which led him to take umbrage. I called him a dick; he called me a dick. We were...
Does anyone else find Fox News strangely appealing to watch? For some reason I watch it all the time. As ideology that is inadvertently entertaining, interwoven with a veneer of ‘news,’ it’s a freaky, terrifying wonder to behold. It is vastly more interesting – maybe because it’s akin to...
Here's where things stand: Nominees for Best Blog (Group): Abu Muqawama Arms Control Wonk Crooked Timber The Disorder of Things IPE at UNC Mideast Matrix Kings of War Nominees for Best Blog (Individual): Abu Aardvark’s Middle East Blog (Marc Lynch) Chris Blattman Dart-Throwing Chimp (Jay Ulfelder)...
Earlier today, Brian Rathbun criticized "rationalists" for making assumptions.* I have some thoughts on the matter, and I expressed many of them on Twitter. And in the language of Twitter -- snark. That was not the best response, and I regret the tone of my reaction, if not the substance...
There are seriously multiple articles on why sex is best on Thursday (don't ask how I got there). So let's riff on that and go through some sex/gender inspired links for the day (a quickie, if you will): The Republican witch hunt of Susan Rice is over as she withdraws her name from consideration...
Some of the big news out of Europe this week surrounded Mario Monti's upcoming resignation from his current post as Prime Minister of Italy. Recall that Monti became prime minister on November 11, 2011 as the leader of a technocratic government. Monti's government was charged with beginning to dig...
I got some snippy responses, well one in particular, to my post on the future of international relations theory based on a reading of the tea leaves over the last year or so. And it made me realize that there is a fundamental divide between me (and I hope others) and rationalists on the issue of...
Last summer some readers suggested that we run open-ended posts designed to spark discussion. So consider this another attempt to do so. My challenge: (1) name the most thought provoking piece -- or pieces -- that you read this year dealing (in a broad sense) with international studies concerns...
If you are a member of the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) of the International Studies Association (ISA) please remember to vote in its governance elections. And you should, of course, cast one of your votes for the Duck of Minerva's own Jon Western. Jon is running for a seat on...
The Onion reports on a story of profound importance to readers of this blog. Well, go read!
I stayed up too late last night drinking cheap Scotch and playing Borderlands 2. Then I accidentally snagged the wife's computer -- she's somewhere that has a high of -40° today -- but, thanks to the wonders of multiple-user operating systems and Dropbox, I think I'll get some work today....