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
A solid investment if you know what you’re getting: Why continued support for UN peacekeeping is good policy for the US
The following is a guest post by Jay Benson and Eric Keels. Jay Benson is a Researcher at One Earth Future (OEF), with research focusing on issues of peacekeeping, civilian protection and...
Re-Branded and Expanded: Visual Politics and the Implications of Guantanamo’s Make-Over
There is a certain theatre to the Global War on Terror (GWoT). From the opening sequence of 9/11 to the shock and awe campaign’s projection of American sovereign power through the broadcast of the...
Broken IR? It is worse than Walt lets on
As Josh has already noted, grandee of IR Stephen Walt published a condemnation of US professional schools of IR, calling them broken and claiming that while there is superficial innovation the ‘rot...
More Recent Posts
Miliband of Brothers (Stolen from Channel 4, but too good not to reuse)
For my first Duck post to be so parochial is a shame, but I can’t resist commenting on the result of Labour’s leadership election, declared a couple of hours ago. For someone such as myself who was once, briefly, one of Ralph Miliband’s students at LSE in the 1960s, the idea that the son of the...
Cyber warfare and legal responsibility: drifting further apart?
Two cyber warfare trends are catching the eye, but both raise the same major question. First, cyber attacks have been democratised in recent years because of social media and easy to use denial of service attack (DDoS) tools. Popular armies have returned, made up not of a mass of bodies charging,...
Driving Parents Crazy: Why are some violent radicals fathers?
My blogging has been light lately as I have been on the road travelling a lot. This recent period has had me travelling like something of a crazy person with trips all over the Centre/East Coast of North America.Part of this trip included some time in Ottawa, where it was some interesting times....
Institutionalized Riot Systems and the Hyper-real Koran
Fourteen civilians and two security officers have now died in Kashmir in violence related to rumors about the "Burn a Koran Day" in Florida. When added to the death in Afghanistan, this brings the total number of deaths to seventeen so far. Many more will die in the coming weeks and months even...
The Local is Global
For those of you who do not know, I live in Gainesville, Florida, a college town in Northeast Florida with lots of wonderful things - like a great bunch of colleagues, a great bunch of graduate students, weather to write home about, and a (frequently) rocking football team. It is (largely) a...
The APSA Drinking Game
The following, unless otherwise specified, result in the taking of one drink for every observation/sighting at the Annual Conference of the American Political Science Association. The Duck of Minerva is not responsible for any liver damage or unfortunate choice of panel questions that may result...
Methodology411: the jury of one’s peer reviewers
Ah, the viciously gate-keeping peer review, the contemporary equivalent of burning the heretics at the stake. Receiving such a review seems to be a rite of passage in virtually every academic field and discipline of which I am aware, and though the details change, the general theme of such a...
A Rock in the River
Here at the opening of the new academic year, I sometimes find myself called on to make speeches welcoming students to campus and that sort of thing. I can't resist the opportunity to actually inject a little practical-moral content into what can otherwise be fairly fluffy events, and this year...
Indian Pro-Americanism
Since the Nineties, Indian elites have been increasingly described as "pro-American." While attending a mini-conference of a segment of India's foreign policy and security elite in New Delhi last week, I kept noting how widespread the "pro-American" sentiment seemed to be. In fact, I heard one of...
That’s President Timberlake to You!: Which Rock Stars Should Rule the World?
After hearing that former Fugee and musical star Wyclef Jean is running to be the President of Haiti (despite not having lived there for decades and apparently not actually speaking French very well), I got to thinking – what other musical super stars could run as leaders to help fix the nations...
Perspective
I am in New Delhi doing research on elite perceptions of India's strategy in Afghanistan. I just thought I would share a few quick observations from conversations with Indian security experts... One of the greatest benefits of coming all the way out here is to help situate research questions...
Duch-ing the issue: International Justice in Cambodia?
Lots happening on the international law front – A Spanish judge (not Garzon!) has indicted three American soldiers who fired upon a hotel in Iraq which resulted in the death of a Spanish journalist. (Those Spanish judges sure love their universal jurisdiction...) Also, the Cluster Munitions Treaty...