After a two-year COVID-induced hiatus, the International Studies Association Online Media Caucus (OMC) is pleased to announce the return of the Duckies! Please send you nominations to onlinemediacaucus@gmail.com by February 25, 2022. We encourage...
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...
By now we are all familiar with the current status of the civil war in Somalia. Last week, Islamic militias in Somalia seized the capital of Mogadishu, defeating the US-backed coalition of warlords. The Christian Science Monitor had an interesting article discussing the next step for the US in its...
During my guest stint at Lawyers, Guns and Money I got involved in a spat with Unfogged's LizardBreath over Linda Hirshman's argument that highly-educated professional women who choose to become stay-at-home moms are the contemporary Quislings of the feminist movement.Despite our disagreement, I...
Some interesting Sunday morning reading:The Washington Post today reprints a rather lengthy cable from the US Embassy in Iraq to Main State. Its worth a read.The Post introduces the Cable: Hours before President Bush left on a surprise trip last Monday to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat...
Not long after I started the Duck of Minerva I began a series called "Wednesday's Maxim". Like a number of my series, I let it fall by the wayside. Witness the revival of "Wednesday's maxim," but on Friday!Considering its origin carefully, all political power is rooted in violence. There is no...
A couple of weeks ago the Cunning Realist wrote:This has probably been discussed at great length elsewhere, and undoubtedly will strike some as a dumb question. But before tonight was anyone besides me unaware that U.S. citizenship is not a requirement for military service?Which reminded me of a...
President Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad today.For several days, the Administration had been promoting a "major" cabinet meeting to "hone" its post-Zarqawi Iraq strategy. Up at Camp David, Bush had all of his Cabinet and senior advisors either in attendence or hooked in via...
As the Czech Republic leads the United States 2-0 at the half in the first World Cup match for both teams, it occurs to me how odd it is to be able to watch the game live on ESPN2 (which I am in fact doing at the moment). Last World Cup, it was much harder to get live coverage, even of the US...
A mutual friend sent my wife an email about EssayFraud.org. The site claims to protect students against "fraudulent" mail-order foreign-operated academic paper services. These scam artists, claim the staff at essayfraud.org, will either steal unsuspecting students' money or send them papers...
Victor Davis Hanson reviews Cobra II. Some of the highlights: Gordon and Trainor do not even inquire whether the ties between al Qaeda and Saddam’s intelligence agencies, which had prompted formal condemnation from both the Clinton administration and the Senate, might not have been a worthy casus...
Many prominent bloggers on the left side of the blogosphere are meeting this weekend in Las Vegas for the first annual "YearlyKos" convention. There are certainly multiple panels that sound interesting, though I have no idea how meaningful this convention will prove to be. From a social science...
To say this event is dominating discussion in the MSM and blogosphere would be an understatement. So I'll do my part to pass along some things worth reading:David Ignatius on the potential breathing room afforded by Zarqawi's demise.Defense Tech on the weapons systems and techniques that took...
My colleague Dan Byman explains why Zarqawi's death probably won't make things better, and may even make them worse (via Robin Varghese of 3 Quarks Daily):Still, the history of killing terrorist and insurgent leaders suggests that we must be cautious before declaring the death of any leader to be...