Exhibit A: Rep. Tom Lantos"The international community must use all our available means to stiffen Lebanon's spine and to convince the government of Lebanon to have the new UNIFIL troops on the Syrian border in adequate numbers," said Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House of...

I am officially declaring that all future invokations of the reputation frame (and its cousin, the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics, which focuses on the importance of 'will') by neoconservatives be renamed "henny-penny arguments", since they invoke the same feeling of hysterical irrationality...

Its the first day of school today, such an exciting time. And what are we greeted with? A prime example of the power of globalization to shape international markets--even the vaunted US economy and Federal Reserve Board.Today, the NYT reports on the Fed's retreat/conference out in Wyoming (casual,...

Turkey has long been viewed as one of a number a "pivotal states" for US foreign policy. According to scholars, These are countries whose fate determines the survival and success of the surrounding region and ultimately the stability of the international system.Turkey is additionally Samuel...

It would appear that, like Bill Murray before us, we are doomed to repeat the insufferable lead up to the Iraq War and endure major strategic blunder numero dos.Shorter Frederick Fleitz: 'US intelligence is faulty because they haven't managed to dig up enough evidence to support my beliefs about...

I'm on an academic IR theory mailing list that frequently receives email about possible 9/11 conspiracies. Most of the time, I just delete these posts, but every now and then I click a link just to find out what the writers are claiming. One recent link led me to an August 2 Washington Post story...

For those that haven’t been paying attention, the Bush administration has launched its 2006 midterm-framing campaign for dealing with the Iraq debacle. Not surprisingly it’s a familiar riff, one that has been analyzed at length here at the Duck as well as more prominent outlets: 'If you think...

Everyone knows that there are 9 planets:Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Plutowhich you remember by saying My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickels (or some variation on the theme.Except that now, there are only 8 planets.Pluto just got demoted.So, a once...

Dan encouraged me to mention a new book that some Duck readers might find interesting, Hitting First: Preventive Force in U.S. Security Strategy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), edited by William W. Keller and Gordon R. Mitchell of Pitt's Matthew Ridgway Center for International Security...

"We're talking a whole lot worse than Three Mile Island," he said. "If an insider knows where the target sets are, in other words, the way to damage the reactor or to blow a hole in the spent fuel pool, it would be a hell of lot worse than anything we've ever seen in this country before." ---...

Ned Lamont's primary victory over Joe-Mentum Lieberman was certainly seen as a watershed political moment, where the anti-war message toppled an incumbent. Given that incumbents in Congress have something like a 90-95% success rate in re-election (actually, I think its higher than that, but i'm...

An addendum (and yes, I still have internet access) to my post on progressive foreign policy. Ron Suskind, in his interview with Salon, gets it mostly right:One of the things that I think is clear about the moment we're in now is that in a way this is a new kind of war, a new kind of conflict...