Christopher Clary on his new book, which looks at why international rivalry is a hard habit to break.
6+1 Questions about The Difficult Policies of Peace: Rivalry in Modern South Asia
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Recent Posts
Failed National Military Strategy Analogies
by Anonymous US National Security expert, as part of a new series of posts providing insights into the policy-making process Sir:Per your request at the 0500 stand-up, I have compiled the full set...
Does IR really have a “culture problem?”
Is it a mistake to push back on a senior scholar (whose work you admire) right before ISA? Maybe. Is it overkill to post twice in one week? Probably (sorry Duck superiors). But I had to say...
Citation Conversation Continued
My post on citation got far more engagement than nearly all of the things I have posted over the years, so I thought I would return to the scene of the crime/post. While many academics agreed whole...
More Recent Posts
Monday Morning Linkage
Mark Adomanis looks at Moscow's decision to expel USAID. Taylor Fravel analyzes recent Chinese statements on the East China Sea dispute. Zachary Keck worries about the US-ROK alliance. Cyril Almeida on the drone debate in Pakistan (via 3QD).The most recent green-on-blue attack in Afghanistan...
Pastiche Fantasy in Song of Ice and Fire
There's much to like about what George R.R. Martin does in his juggernaut of a fantasy franchise: his juggling of a ginormous cast of compelling characters, his willingness to kill and maim those characters in horrible ways, and his relentless critique of the way that high fantasy handles class...
Saturday Afternoon Video
Apologies about the lack of morning linkage today. Things were hectic and I simply forgot. Because it's Doctor Who season....
A Pre-Post-Mortem on Romney’s Defeat
It increasingly looks like Romney is gonna lose. Intratrade now puts that likelihood at 75%. Now it’s my understanding from the American politics subfield, in which I took exactly zero courses in grad school, that the state of the economy is supposed to be the great determiner of American...
Concert of Asia in Crisis
The often maligned aspiration for a "Concert of Asia" appears to be even more unlikely this year as Japan and China trade barbs at the UN and spray water cannons at each other over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. Meanwhile in Southeast Asia, China has succeeded in fracturing the...
Syria and the magic wand
Yesterday’s NYTimes had an op-ed from Michael Doran and Max Boot on five reasons why the U.S. should show some backbone and intervene in Syria now: 1) it will help contain Iran; 2) it will help contain the regional spread of conflict; 3) it will contain the influence of Al Qaeda and other...
How to Survive a Plague
I am putting the finishing touches on a new book manuscript on social movements and market transformations with my co-author Ethan Kapstein. In the process of researching that book which focuses on the global AIDS treatment advocacy movement, we tried to get our hands on any relevant material. We...
Podcast No. 10 – Interview with Vincent Pouliot
2012 interview with Vincent Pouliot.
Friday Morning Linkage
AJ Hartley: "why books are better than movies." I'm not sure that's always true -- surely some films surpass their source material, but I'm hard pressed to think of an example off the top of my head.Erik Voeten asks an incisive question: "Is the Marginal Cost of Drone Strikes Too Low?"Brad DeLong...
I CAN HAS IR THEORY?
I'm presenting PTJ's and my "End of IR Theory" paper at Berkeley next week. Here's a sneak peak at some of the lecture slides.Unfortunately, my LOLspeak is rusty.
(Political) Scientists
Fellow Duck Brian Rathbun has a new piece in International Studies Quarterly comparing international relations scholars' paradigmatic preferences to their political preferences, based on TRIP survey data:Are international relations scholars objective observers of political events, or do our...
A Return to Summer?
The meme of the summer meets the graphic du jour: