For Mearsheimer “freedom” and “prosperity” are simply weapons of great power politics rather than aspirations sought by the Ukrainian people.
The Invasion of Ukraine is Russia’s Fault
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Recent Posts
Us Too
We knew it was coming and here it is. An open source spreadsheet designed by The Professor Is In blog's Karen L. Kelsky for the purpose of collecting up stories of sexual harassment, abuse, and...
President Trump, You’re No George Carlin
The Trump Administration has decided it’s finally time for it to whip out its best George Carlin impression. It’s announced its own list of seven words you can never say—at least not if you are...
Nothing Compares to You
For Russia watchers Christmas always comes early (or Hanukkah comes right on time!) when Putin gives his annual presser in mid-December to the journalists from Russia and around the world. This year...
More Recent Posts
Headlines
It is all a matter of how you spin it I guess:1. "Pentagon Report Shows Afghanistan Violence Up 87 Percent, Support for Karzai Low" Fox News, 29 April 2010.2. "Pentagon says Instability has 'Leveled Off'" Washington Post, 29 April 2010.3. "Encouraging trends in Afghanistan despite rise in...
The Johnny Foreigner’s Guide to the UK Election Part III – Cursing old ladies edition
I’ve been getting surprisingly decent feedback on these posts. Some of my colleagues at work (who know more about democracy and elections than I do) have said that they felt that they were not entirely wrong or embarrassing so I’ve decided to stick with it until it’s all over next week – and then...
Professor Fred Halliday
I was alerted this morning to the death of Professor Fred Halliday. Halliday, who specialized in the Middle East and was very much a legend around the London School of Economics. I was fortunate enough to be in one of the last classes of MSc students who sat through his IR theory lectures. These...
Brutality and Counter-insurgency
Recently, while discussing the war in Afghanistan with a conflict studies program in the mid-west, I had a rather odd debate with a leftist professor who was devil's advocating what he claimed was a "neo-conservative" position (based on some of his recent interaction with naval officers and RAND...
The Johnny Foreigner’s Guide to the UK Election Part II – The Second Great Debate
I’m planning on writing a larger post on the topic after the Second Election Debate tonight – particularly since it is going to be about UK Foreign policy (and, in theory, more or less related to the topics of this blog...)In the mean time if you haven’t been paying attention, the election has...
My plans for the weekend
Garzon’s Reign in Spain Falls with Mainly Who to Blame?
It was announced last week that Judge Bathazar Garzon will be investigated for over stepping his authority for knowingly taking on a case that was outside of his jurisdiction. Garzon is, of course, famous for indicting Chile’s General Pinochet for crimes against humanity in the 1990s which lead to...
Would you like to map a pandemic?
SupraMap is an on-line tool that traces the mutation and spread of virues around the world. Fascinating.
The Robin Hood Tax
Since we in the US are thinking of taxes today....A tax on currency transactions was proposed in 1972 by economist James Tobin (hence, it is often referred to as a Tobin tax). Wait, don't roll your eyes at a post on tax and finance! This gets better. Tobin argued that imposing this tax would slow...
The Johnny Foreigner’s Guide to the UK Election (in where I demonstrate a very poor knowledge of UK politics.)
So, in Duck ex-pat news it was announced that a general election (a big national election) will be held on 6 May 2010 this week in the UK. At stake are 13 years of Labour rule, debate as to how the economic “recovery” should be protected.Yet, despite the relative importance of the election, coming...
Disorder
"Once the Afghan conflict could no longer be understood in terms of global imperatives, it became part of what the language of international relations refers to as an example of disorder. Thus the war in Afghanistan was described as a Hobbesian situation..." -Gilles Dorronsoro, Revolution...
Smashing as Feminist Practice?
All of five minutes after I posted thoughts from a conference I am currently at , a "response" (in scare quotes because that's a charitable characterization) was posted on American Power called "13 year-old smashes post-colonial feminism". My response here comes little slower (because I value...