Climate change will exacerbate many of the political, social, and economic forces that generate conflict and insecurity – with enormous consequences for humanity.
6+1 Questions about States and Nature
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Recent Posts
Will the Dominos Fall in Westeros: When Secession Spreads (or Not)
Folks have been picking on the last Game of Thrones episode for a variety of unrealistic or unearned developments. Here's my take on the secessionist element. Folks have been picking on the last...
What Game of Thrones Got Wrong About Firebombing
Much ink has been spilled since last Sunday about the massacre at King’s Landing. Why did Dany carpet-bomb a civilian population after a city had surrendered? Was this a sign of her growing madness?...
Appetite for Self Destruction, or three suicides and a funeral*
Here’s my argument: Late 80s/early 90s Soviet Union. The United Kingdom in 2016. The United States 2016 to now. Three contemporary examples of international suicide that conventional IR neither...
More Recent Posts
Of Sultans and Soap Operas
This is a guest post by Peter S. Henne. Peter is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University. He formerly worked as a national security consultant. His research focuses on terrorism and religious conflict; he has also written on the role of faith in US foreign policy. During 2012-2013 he will be...
Wednesday Night Linkage
Spent the morning recording a podcast. Except that we just chatted and never got around to the actual interview. Then it was off to job talks and child chauffeuring.... Tom Z. Collina doesn't like the idea of a BMD system for the US east coast. Dan Drezner says that China is involved in a security...
A Semi-Canadian Perspective on the Academic-Policy Divide Debate
The semi-annual policy/academic divide debate is back thanks to discussions about PhDs for the policy world (Drezner v. Foust) and Galluci's piece on the debate, with Drezner's response. I would guess that this event is tied to a lunar calendar as it seems to occur often but not always just after...
“Dangerous Neighborhood:” Operation ‘Defensive Pillar’ and its Interpreters
This is a guest post by Daniel J. Levine (University of Alabama) and Daniel Bertrand Monk (Colgate University). Daniel J. Levine is author of Recovering International Relations: The Promise of Sustainable Critique. Daniel Bertrand Monk is the co-editor, with Jacob Mundy, of the forthcoming: The...
Parsing the DOD’s Directive on Autonomous Weapons
Yes. Only two days after Human Rights Watch launched its "preemptive call" to ban the development and deployment of such systems, the US Defense Department doubled down with a document (shorter version here) that claims: "Autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons systems shall be designed to allow...
2013 Grawemeyer Award Winner
Congratulations to Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan for winning the 2013 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World. As readers may recall, Chenoweth is a Duck of Minerva guest blogger. Chenoweth and Stephan won the $100,000 prize for their 2011 book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic...
Tuesday Morning Linkage
Nominations (and voting registrations) are really starting to come in. I've updated the most recent post to reflect yesterday's additions. Linkage: Leslie Dwyer: "After Aceh's Peace." Foreign People Policy is out with its "Top 100 Global Policy Celebs Thinkers" list, so I suppose we now have to...
Economist 2012 Conference on Korea: Foreign Ownership in Korea
Each year in September, the Economist holds a conference on the Korea economy (a part of its Bellwether series on Asian economies). They invite me to come, and then I try to write up my thoughts on it in the JoongAng Daily (which I think is the best newspaper in Korea) as an op-ed. Each year,...
Climate Policy After Sandy – What Should be Done? Part III
Huzzah! Barack Obama in his re-election night valedictory speech finally acknowledged that climate change is a problem we may have to attend to: We want our children to live in an America that isn't burdened by debt, that isn't weakened by inequality, that isn't threatened by the destructive power...
Winding Down in Afghanistan?
US "combat operations" in Afghanistan are officially scheduled to wind down in 2014. And media attention is now turning toward speculating (i.e. relaying contending institutional preferences between the White House and the Pentagon) on the level of US troop presence in Afghanistan after 2014....
International Studies Blogging Awards Update[d]
I've long warned promised that I would start flogging these awards in a serious way. Due, in part to some prodding from SAGE, that time has now come. Here's where we stand: Nominees for Best Blog (Group): Abu Muqawama Arms Control Wonk Crooked Timber The Disorder of Things IPE at UNC Kings of War...
Late Monday Morning Linkage
Robert Gallucci, head of the MacArthur Foundation and former Dean of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, lays out his view of "How Scholars Can Improve International Relations." Adam Elkus scores the "winners and losers" in the Gaza conflict. Matt Fay answers Max Boot's response to his...