This is the third and final part of a three part interview between Adam B. Lerner (ABL) and Patrick Thaddeus Jackson (PTJ). It is the first instalment of a new series of interviews on Duck of Minerva entitled Quack-and-Forths.
Today’s headlines in several international newspapers had to struggle with too many possessive male noun forms: Putin’s mentor’s daughter Ksenia Sobchak announced that she would run for Russian...
Our second Bridging the Gap Book Nook entry comes from Sarah Stroup of Middlebury College and Wendy Wong of the University of Toronto, who discuss their new book The Authority Trap: Strategic...
This is a guest post by Jana von Stein, Senior Lecturer, Political Science and International Relations Programme, Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) The recent scandal surrounding...
How much more excitement can the Senate handle? With prospect of a confirmation hearing heating up the Hill, this crosses the web-page of the Washington Post: Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested back in June and plead guilty to disorderly conduct.First, how on earth does this not come out...
Posting at the Duck has been thin of late. Some quick explanations:I'm tied up by teaching responsibilities and the task of finishing my book manuscript. Patrick's similarly swamped with his own responsibilities. Peter's a new dad. Rodger's probably thick into the Grawemeyer-award process. Peter's...
China has over $1 trillion of US treasury bills. Its a well described cycle--China produces massive amounts of consumer goods, the US buys those goods, the trade is imbalanced, so China ends up with a lot of dollars, and they invest them hier in T-bills, essentially loaning them back to the US...
Bennett Richardson of the Christian Science Monitor reports that some LDP politicians are raising the nuclear issue in Japan. The article provides plenty of food for thought about the impact of North Korea's nuclear test on Japanese politics, but it also includes a rather strange quotation from a...
If you missed IR scholar John Mueller's appearance on the Daily Show, watch it soon on the Comedy Central website.Mueller has been writing a great deal about the overblown threat from terrorism -- and he managed not only to plug his current book, but also his next one!Incidentally, that next book...
Always be wary of office furniture that comes in a nice compact box and then says "assembly required." This weekend was the weekend to reclaim the basement and reclaim some functional workspace at home. For the past 10 months, i've been using a half-sized card table as a "desk" in the basement....
Rob Farley of LGM has a thoughtful "web exclusive" article up at The American Prospect that everyone here should read. Here's his question: Does the justification for the invasion of Afghanistan hold up in retrospect, or have our difficulties there belied the wisdom of this war in the same way the...
In my research methods class, I assign David Kang's fantastic article, "International Relations Theory and the Second Korean War." Its a very well written, well argued piece that criticizes IR theorists who have repeatedly been wrong in predicting a second Korean War and then offers a detailed...
I assume we'll be closer to an answer when I get up.The North Korean news agency KCNA says its country has successfully conducted an underground nuclear test."Our science research section has safely and successfully conducted an underground nuclear test on October, 9," it said.It added that there...
Feeling safe? You shouldn't-- its the threatdown!I'm teaching a National Security Policy class this semester, and last week our topic was Threats. The assignment that day was for each student to write a Threatdown--an ordered, annotated list of the top 10 threats facing American.Two things struck...
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and publicly post a response to a debate that I've been having with a friend on email for a while now. Moreover, I'm going to go even more out on a limb and argue, well, you saw the title. The beauty of a blog.Background: What got this started was my earlier...
The ongoing VDH war at Lawyers, Guns, and Money has, at least for the moment, degenerated into an exercise in CV parsing. No. I'm not joking. The question: does Rob Farley's status as an Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky automatically make his arguments concerning President...