The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) originated in provincial-level efforts that sought to simultaneously integrate interior and frontier provinces to the rest of China as well as neighboring countries during the 1990s.
It is not easy waking up in America these days. Sunday morning I woke up from a lazy weekend morning to see that a shooter had committed mass murder at a church in Sutherland Springs, TX. The...
This is a guest post from Katy Collin, who is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Brookings Institution and an adjunct instructor at American University's School of International Service. Her...
Today's post is from Bridging the Gap Co-Director Jordan Tama, Associate Professor at American University’s School of International Service. He is working on a book tentatively entitled...
Just a shout-out to NPR Planet Money for sharing the rock 'n roll reference in the Dodd financial reform proposal, or at least, Dodd's summary of it. A "no escape" clause for companies seeking to evade supervision is called the Hotel California Provison. Yup, it's right there in the text. We...
[I don't mean to rail on the Washington Post's coverage of the war in Afghanistan two posts in a row, but the coverage is honestly a bit dismal this week. In my last post, I showed why Rajiv Chandrasekaran's article "At Afghan outpost, Marines gone rogue or leading the fight against...
Are we doing better or worse than in the Great Depression? Are we coming out of it, or still sinking... or, is there worse to come? Should I be frightened?? Recent reports of millions more foreclosures made me wonder what direction we are going in. A couple of things I've been reading...
Rajiv Chandrasekaran's article in today's Washington Post, "At Afghan outpost, Marines gone rogue or leading the fight against counterinsurgency?" paints a picture of Marines grudgingly guarding a town in no man's land on the edge of the desert:"DELARAM, AFGHANISTAN -- Home to a dozen truck stops...
Now that the fighting is over in the town of Marjah, how did the Afghan media perceive Operation Moshtarak? Here is a cursory round up of opinions from some of the newspapers in Afghanistan.(Unfortunately, I am dependent on reading translations of the local newspapers from thousands of miles away,...
I’m finding it difficult to usefully add to the debate over the “Guantanamo Lawyers”/"al-Qaida Seven" that has emerged over the last week or so. Basically, the fundamental issue is that people “we” dislike or who have (allegedly) done horrible things are actually entitled to certain fundamental...
At the "Theory Talks" Blog, there is an excellent interview with Michael J. Shapiro on "Pictures, Paintings, Power and the Political Philosophy of International Relations." Shapiro argues for the need to awaken the discipline from its pre-Kantian slumber and to move beyond the "anemic, empiricist...
This year at ISA a theme which seemed to crop up again and again (at least among the laws of war crowd – we’re small but mighty) was the idea that “we” (international society, academia, NGOs, I guess) need more information on civilian casualties, particularly those caused by air strikes in...
Not to worry, the World Cup in South Africa is only 100 days away. It's been six years since FIFA awarded the World Cup to South Africa and there is a lot of excitement about an African nation finally hosting the World Cup and how the event has the potential to be a transcendent event. (I still...
Video Source: Channel 4 (UK)One day after peace talks between India and Pakistan, there has been an attack targeting Indian nationals on a goodwill mission in Afghanistan. I don't think anyone seriously doubts that these Taliban-led attacks in Afghanistan are being directed from Pakistani soil....
I, like Laura, am a bit slow off the take regarding post-ISA blogging. In my defence I have a 6-hour jet-lag that was aggravated by United Airlines being successful in severely messing up every single segment of my flight to New Orleans and back. (The friendly skies? More like the unfriendly kick...
My first thought when I heard of the capture of Mullah Baradar, "Mullah Omar's #2 man," was of Stringer Bell, "Avon Barksdale's #2 man" from "The Wire.""The Wire" was the ultimate show for Political Scientists. Beneath the gritty surface of a stale cops-n-robbers thematic is a brilliant show about...