Foreign Affairs ran a poll on the question. A few of us expressed skepticism about the debate itself.
Was NATO expansion a mistake?
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Recent Posts
Cabinet Reshuffling and the Patrimonial Presidency: Lessons from Tunisia
This post marks the return of the Bridging the Gap channel at the Duck after a short hiatus. It comes from Gregory White, Professor of Government at Smith College, who will be attending our...
A Jacksonian Moment in U.S. Foreign Policy: Will it Last?
I had the good fortune during my brief appearance at ISA to take part in a roundtable on “Jacksonianism” in U.S. foreign policy. Organized by Jon Caverley, the roundtable sought to assess whether...
A Global Response to Climate Change: In, through, and for Cities?
This is a guest post from Sander Chan[1], David Gordon[2], Emma Lecavalier[3], Craig Johnson[4], Angel Hsu[5], Fee Stehle[6], Thomas Hickmann[7], Jennifer Bansard[8], Paty Romero-Lankao[9] Cities...
More Recent Posts
Blegging: Did no one complain about the Soviet Use of landmines in Afghanistan from 1979-1989?
I am trying to find examples of humanitarian organizations that spoke out against the use of landmines by the Soviet Union during its invasion of Afghanistan from 1979-1989. Landmines were big as one of the weapons issues put up for debate in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the UN General...
In Praise of Straw Men
How many times have you been accused of making a straw man argument? How many times have you deployed that rhetorical trump card against a foe? In blogs, in debates, in academic conference rooms, the straw man charge is a tried and true way of undermining an opponent and advancing your own...
We were Winning the War on Terror!
So he wasn't armed, and maybe it wasn't legal, and we should have found him a long time ago. But we are missing the point. Our soft power was winning the war on terror. We just had to give it some time.The Financial Times reports: "Shopkeepers remember the [Osama] household demonstrating a...
Tere bin Laden
"You Americans, you think when something dies, it goes away." - Robin Williams in the play "Tiger"In Urdu/Hindi the phrase "Tere bin Laden," which was also the title of last year's hit Bollywood comedy about the American War on Terror, is a play on words which can be read as "Your bin Laden" or...
Local Game Theorist Afraid of Credible Commitment, Girlfriend Says
The Canard"All the fake news that is fit to print"Rochester--Local game theorist Zofran Economakis is afraid of making a credible commitment to his longtime girlfriend, Lisa Johnson, his girlfriend reports. "He tells me that he loves me," Johnson told the Canard, "but how do I know he means it? He...
The 2011 Canadian Election: Lessons Learned and Mindless Amateur Speculation
Canadian democracy rests in this man's hands. Yesterday I provided a fully superficial background and survey of developments regarding the 2011 Canadian Election. The short version is 1) We’ve had a series of minority governments. 2) Stephen Harper probably thought he could get a majority, and now...
The 2011 Canadian Election: I don’t even know
Last year I was much better at blogging about the UK General Election. I thought it was going to be incredibly boring, but then there was the rise of a third party in an unexpected way which changed the balance of power. This year with Canada’s turn to re-stack the deck, I thought the election was...
North Waziristan: Drones and Compellence
North Waziristan has witnessed 20 drone strikes in the first four months of this year, which is a relatively lower number than the previous year (in 2010 there were a record setting 104 drone strikes in North Waziristan or 8.67 strikes per month). The relative "silence of the drones" this year is...
New Breed of Chicken Hawks?
John Bolton writes in the LA Times, which unlike the rest of the world I read because where else could I find out who died in my neighborhood recently, that we must stay in Afghanistan forever! Until the job gets done. I have no particularly informed opinion about this, which is kind of sad, but I...
Most Entertaining IR Scholar? None of the Above?
Steve Walt has a challenge: ...who are the most amusing, entertaining, or witty writers in the field of international relations and foreign policy? I don't mean books or articles that are "funny" because they are wildly off-base; I mean scholars who are a joy to read because their prose is lively,...
Shabby Sheik: Gaddafi’s ‘fashion’ and cultural property
As much as the proposal to put Mummar Gaddafi’s outfits up for display at the Costume Institute of New York should be true in a fully just world, I would imagine that it isn’t.Alas, the West shall be deprived of “four decades of Colonel Gaddafi’s superior dress sense”. And we are weaker for...
Presidential Reading List: (After you probably get through the ones with ‘Bacevich’ on the cover)
Dan Drezner has issued a call to arms!... or to your library card:"I therefore call upon the readers of this blog to proffer up their suggestions -- if you had to pick three books for an ambitious U.S. politician to read in order to bone up on foreign affairs, what would they be?"I have a gut...