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Recent Posts
Climate and Security: Bridging the Policy-Academic Gap
In March, I argued that the connections between climate change and security are complex, contingent, and not fully understood. Most of the academic literature has firmly focused on conflict onset...
Rumor, Social Media, and the Question of Knowledge
Some time ago, Charli reviewed an article I published in International Organization. In that review, Charli asked how do we know what we ‘know’ about the nature of external states. At the time, I...
No Supply Without Demand: A Response to Stephen Walt
This is a guest post by Sarah Detzner, a Ph.D Candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Her research is focused on international security, particularly post-conflict...
More Recent Posts
Be Concerned but not Informed: Radical Islamic Terrorism and Mainstream Media since 9/11
The website e-IR asked me to review how mainstream media have represented radical Islamist media in the past decade, and what this means for the spread of radical discourses more broadly. Here is my reply, and you can read the original at e-IR here. Mainstream media’s presentation of radical...
R2Paternalism
The banner image of the ICRtoP (International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect) website features a photo of seven boys under the protective gaze of a UN peacekeeper as he carries his bottled water, while other soldiers patrol ahead on the pathway that they all share together. From a...
On Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the Construction of a Liberal International Order
Debate over NATO's military intervention in the Libyan civil war has reinvigorated discussion among observers of international relations on the merits (or demerits) of the United Nations's Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine. You can find links to important entries in the current debate at...
Conflict prevention and early warnings: closing the gap through communications?
The catastrophes of Rwanda and Bosnia led to a debate in the 1990s about the warning-response gap. Conflict prevention and early warning systems did not seem up to scratch. Third parties intervened too late, if at all. Spending was skewed towards mitigating the effects of conflicts, not on...
Friday Nerd Blogging
Now that Blood and Chrome appears to be at risk of demotion from upcoming TV show to series of webisodes (!) BSG fans among the readership can at least geek out on this documentary. (Because most of us have so little better to do with the start of the term and all.)
On Rick Perry and Superman
A few thoughts from Jay Smooth on Rick Perry's favorite superhero:
Commemorating
The Remote War
This post is a little impressionistic and attempts a few trans-Atlantic generalisations, but is probably still worth a punt.If Clausewitz was right that each period holds to its own theory of war, what do we see when we look in the mirror after a decade of the conflict against Islamist terror...
Friday Nerd Blogging
H/T PhDComics. Hey, there are all kinds of nerds.
International Moxy Fund?
Is the IMF growing a pair....? This past week, the Fund's new Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, delivered a rabble-rousing speech in Jackonson Hole, Wyoming in which she called for a mandatory capital increase for European banks, using public funds if needed. I'm not convinced that's going to...
Open Data, Open Sesame?
In an article last week in the Financial Times on "Sex, Lies, and the Pitfalls of Overblown Statistics," John Kay bluntly wrote: "Always ask yourself the question: where does the data come from?" It's a good question, and one I frequently ask myself when I read yet another story about the hottest...
Armadillo
Last night PBS' POV program aired the Danish documentary film "Armadillo" (filmed 2009; released 2010) about a Danish-British Forward Operating Base in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.Although much of the documentary portrays standard tropes and follows a time honored narrative arc from a long line...