The latest issue of Foreign Affairs has a fascinating piece by Alex Cooley called "Base Politics." Cooley writes about the dilemmas posed by American basing policy in the context of the kinds of political regimes that play host to US military bases. Cooley echoes some of the claims I made way back...

Stuff worth looking at:Zenpundit's roundtable on "Globalization and War" kicked off today. Mark put together a good, and very diverse, group of people to contribute. I'm already annoyed by some of the pieces, which is a good sign (I hope) that the roundtable will provoke some more general...

John Whitesides, of Reuters, writes:Voters across the United States went to the polls on Tuesday in elections that could gauge the depth of President George W. Bush's political woes and affect next year's critical congressional elections....With control of both chambers of the U.S. Congress and 36...

There's an interesting discussion (see also here) of the issues raised by the existence of an "information aggregator" for the International Relations job market over on IR Rumor Mill.The experience of looking for a job in the academy - or, at least, in the field of International Relations - can...

Who, in the wild world of sports, speaks out for peace and social justice in the way that Muhammad Ali once did? After all, this is the age of Nike endorsements and globalization, not protest. Well, did you hear about the former Argentine soccer star who is speaking out against the Free Trade Area...

I've been meaning to write a new post on the question of threat inflation and intelligence failures in the run-up to the Iraq War that reacts, in part, to some questionable arguments put forth by one of my favorite center-left bloggers. However, as should be clear from my sparse posting lately, I...

Ivo Daalder an email from Stephen Cimbala attacking humanitarian interventions. Here's a representative expert:The mechanics of Bush policy are bad enough, but the discussions on policy related Websites show that, in academia as in policy studies, there is insufficient regard for geostrategy and...

Both Patrick Jackson and I taught in Columbia's Contemporary Civilization program (CC) during our stint in graduate school. Contemporary Civilization is the capstone (or, at least, we viewed it that way) in Columbia's core curriculum; it is a classic "Western Civilization" course in the "Plato to...

I got this email from the powers-that-be at Georgetown yesterday:As part of his official visit to the U.S., His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales will be attending a seminar on Faith and Social Responsibility at Georgetown with academic and faith leaders from across the nation on [xxx].The...

A minor brouhaha over at America Abroad. David Rieff sent an email to Anne-Marie Slaughter (short version: liberal interntionalism inevitably leads to neoconservativism, so stop enabling!). Today, John Ikenberry summarizes Reiff's argument:Behind Rieff’s comments is his own intellectual journey...

Chris Bertram received some flack, apparently, for describing the recent Birmingham race riot as a "pogrom." Today he gets to enjoy a qualified (and somewhat angsty) last laugh:But I see that both the conservative columnist Theodore Dalrymple and the Observer’s Nick Cohen have also noticed the...

I recently wrote about the misuse (or, more to the point, apparent schizophrenic understanding) of reputational logic in the war on terror. Administration officials have repeatedly utilized rhetoric which rationalizes US policy against terrorists and rogue states on the basis of maintaining a...