By and large, world leaders have gone from being taken aback about Donald Trump’s unexpected victory to being outright alarmed. Exceptions to this rule are Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad, both of whom expect Trump to be far better to deal with than Secretary Clinton. Yet, while it still is not remotely clear what a Trump Doctrine will strategically comprise, his coming moves in Syria do not bode well. Russia and the Syrian regime look to be...
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What Does Trump’s Victory Mean for the Environment?
Much has already been written about the significance of Donald Trump's victory for the environment, with particular emphasis on climate change. There is some speculation that Trump, based on campaign promises, will try to undo some of President Obama's signature achievements, namely some scuttle that he's looking for a fast exit from the 2015 Paris climate agreement that recently entered into force. The noted climate denier Myron Ebell was...
Trump and the Fall of Númenor—a comment from a sad political scientist
This is a guest post by Eric Grynaviski, an Associate Professor of Political Science at International Affairs at George Washington University. He is the author of Constructive Illusions (Cornell, 2014) .He studies sociological approaches to cooperation and conflict, and international ethics. Over the last few days, protestors have taken to the streets to combat what they believe is an evil power that will soon occupy the White House. The...
What does Trump mean for global health?
Well, that was unexpected. But it’s happened. The question now is, how will the election of Donald Trump change international relations? That question itself is overwhelming on multiple levels. There are Trump’s personal international business ties, unparalleled in modern American political history. There’s his wariness of multilateralism and diplomacy. There’s his stated intention to go after China. There’s Trump’s lack of experience in...
The Death of Political Science is Greatly Exaggerated
There is a lot to think about in the aftermath of Trump's win. Lots of early hot talks will be wrong. One of the first reactions has been to wonder about the value of political science (which is not the most important thing to think about but we have plenty of time and bandwidth to cover this and everything else): "Should we just bury political science as a discipline?" Some of this week's best reactions to Trump's win:...
Should we empathize with Trump voters?
In the wake of the shocking US election results, what sometimes seems like an agreed-upon virtue has become controversial: the demand for empathy. Writing in the New York Times, longtime Democrat Rabbi Michael Lerner has put out a call for empathy towards the many voters who supported Trump. As Lerner sees it, there are deep class fissures in America coupled with a spiritual crisis that requires redress. “We need to reach out to Trump voters,”...
Processing this Election
So this is ostensibly an academic blog, though there is something quite confessional and personal about the blog format. I suspect many readers of the Duck are experiencing what I'm feeling, which is profound heartache over the election results. I've been writing on Facebook and trying to grieve and process with others, but I've got to stop. Life has to go on, and other urgent writing and work require my attention. Still, I thought I'd share...
What Cholera Tells Us About Global Health
I’ve been marking essays for the past week (two big advantages of Australian academia: November is a spring month, and second semester ends before Halloween), and a lot of my students were writing about the right to health and what it would take to realize it in a meaningful sense. That, naturally, led me to thinking about cholera. Few diseases can kill as rapidly as cholera. That alone should make it a key issue for global health. What makes...
Analogies in War: Marine Mammal Systems and Autonomous Weapons
Last week I was able to host and facilitate a multi-stakeholder meeting of governments, industry and academia to discuss the notions of “meaningful human control” and “appropriate human judgment” as they pertain to the development, deployment and use of autonomous weapons systems (AWS). These two concepts presently dominate discussion over whether to regulate or ban AWS, but neither concept is fully endorsed internationally, despite work from...
Nicaragua: Less Interesting Than Netflix
An American first lady is about to make history. No, not that one. Nicaragua’s November 6 election has drawn few headlines internationally, but this week the New York Times ran a profile on Rosario Murillo, the first lady who appears on this year’s ballot alongside her husband Daniel Ortega. With the outcome relatively certain, this will be Ortega’s third consecutive term in power, and his fifth time overall leading the country. Constitutional...
GOTV
I'm on blogging lockdown to GOTV. Back soon.
Why Would Legislators Want to Know Less Rather than More About Military Stuff?
The joy of blogging is that one can come up with whatever title one wants. An agony of academic publishing is that one cannot do the same for articles published in academic journals. However, getting published is the thing, so I am mighty pleased that the first piece of the Phil/Dave/Steve project on legislatures and oversight over the armed forces of the world's democracies is now published: "Public critic or secretive monitor: party...