state takes precedence over their own lives. Focusing on states as persons distracts us from how violence travels across levels of analysis. States don’t do violence to one another. They inflict violence on actual living beings.
Last Sunday, I was having a walk around the city centre of Cambridge when I saw a demonstration of around 50 people rallying for their right to vote in a referendum for independence from Spain. They...
I am (sort of) on vacation and visiting the Motherland. In the meantime, I allowed myself a couple of days of couch potato mode that included some Russian TV. A political scientist in me is never on...
This is a guest post from Aidan Hehir, a Reader in International Relations at the University of Westminster. He has published widely in a number of academic journals including International...
It was revealed this week that the Bush Administration:has secretly been tapping into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions for nearly five years, according to U.S. government and industry officials.Initiated shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, the surveillance program has used a...
Just saw this headline at the BBC: Iran calls halt to petrol importsI have no evidence for this statement, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Iran was somehow readying itself and the public for potential punitive sanctions by the West, which may include disruptions to imported, refined oil.For all the...
Sunship has alerted me to some problems with the XML feed. Feedburner has detected two sets of problems:1. We're using 0.3 rather than 1.0. I'm not sure how to change this. If someone could let me know, I'd appreciate it.2. Peter wrote his first post using a wysiwyg editor, and that created some...
In previous posts and other arenas I have argued that the Iraq War could not be explained simply by the threat of WMDs, the desire to liberate the Iraqi people, to spread democracy, to uphold the credibility of the UN, etc, etc. My point was that you must look at the operation in the larger...
Apparently, three protestors dressed like clowns (no, literally, circus clowns) broke into a nuclear launch facility in North Dakota and, I am not kidding about this, used a sledgehammer to disable the lock on the personnel entry hatch of a Minuteman III missile that provides access to the warhead...
Today's maxim seems particularly appropriate, given recent discussions about Iraq and the potential for military conflict with Iran and North Korea.The worst enemy of someone who begins a war is his belief in easy victory. For no matter how simple and certain it appears, a war is subject to a...
In case anyone had any doubts about the moral relativism of certain segments of the right-wing anti-terror warrior-punditry, Wretched provides a useful reminder. Sleep Management, Stress Positions, Change of Scenery, Dietary Manipulation, Environmental Manipulation and Sensory Deprivation have...
I don't like to discuss domestic political races on the site, but this is such blatant misinformation I really couldn't resist, especially given its relation to US foreign policy debates. I guess this is what you get when your poll numbers look like this:Santorum (R) 34 (36)Casey (D) 52 (49)Filed...
Previously, I've pointed out the overt hypocrisy of American non-proliferation policy. The U.S. continues to seek new nuclear weapons and maintains a very large arsenal of these weapons; yet, it tries very hard to prevent many other states from acquiring these same armaments.Since the U.S....
One rule of international politics: when something interesting happens, look to see what else is going on because sometimes the they are related.In other words, perhaps the North Koreans read the news too and aren't as irrational as the Bush Administration would have you believe. Or, context...
Yesterday Germany handily won Group A of the World Cup, defeating Ecuador 3-0 (their third straight victory) and advancing to the next round of competition. This wasn't a huge surprise; Group A wasn't exactly the strongest of groups this year, and the German team is quite the powerhouse behind...
Much has been made of the activation of the nascent US-based missile defense system seemingly in response to North Korea's imminent test of what we believe (but do not know) to be a long-range ballistic missile. The DPRK is obviously looking for attention given that the focus of the West has...