At Foreign Policy, CFR's Micah Zenko has examined the best civilian casualty data available for both manned airstrikes and drone strikes between 2009-2015 and concluded, pretty damningly, that "Drones Kill More Civilians Than Pilots Do." According to the best publicly available evidence, drone strikes in non-battlefield settings — Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia — result in 35 times more civilian fatalities than airstrikes by manned weapons...
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So, You Want to Be a Liberal Arts College Professor: Life in the Liberal Arts edition (Part I)
[Note: This is the first of two guest posts on life in the Liberal Arts Colleges from Sarah Stroup and Amy Yuen, both Associate Professors of Political Science, Middlebury College] Job market season is fast approaching, but information about those jobs can be scarce. For those on the market, just starting a liberal arts job, or just curious, we offer a little insight from two women recently tenured at a liberal arts institution. Elaborating on...
Adaptability or Compliance? Modular Weapons and the Rules of International Law
As many who read this blog will note, I am often concerned with the impact of weapons development on international security, human rights and international law. I’ve spent much time considering whether autonomous weapons violate international law, or will run us head long into arms races, or will give some incentives to oppress their peoples. Recently, however, I’ve started to think a bit less about future (autonomous) weapons and a...
Bernie Sanders’ Foreign Policy is Neither Realist, Pacifist, nor Liberal. He’s a Foreign Policy Progressive.
I have a new article up this morning at Washington Post's Monkey Cage, responding to those who have previously tried to classify Bernie Sanders as a "pacifist" (Krauthammer who calls his view "part swords-into-plowshares utopianism, part get-thee-gone isolationism") or alternatively as a "realist" (Katrina vanden Heuvel , likening Sanders' to Obama vis a vis Clinton's more hawkish liberal internationalism). Many have argued he actually...
Restoring Conventional Deterrence in Europe: How to Climb Out of the Joint Security Trap
Russia is currently riding high on the geostrategic landscape, despite a trove of domestic economic woes that stem partly from Western sanctions. But Vladimir Putin has successfully wagged the dog and distracted Russians from this by illegally annexing Crimea by force, occupying eastern Ukraine with a proxy force upheld by Russia, and successfully keeping the Assad regime in force in Syria with a surprise intervention that has not only sent...
Chasing our tail: The Zika ‘emergency’ and stalled U.S. Congressional appropriations
On April 13th, the Centers for Disease Control reported 358 travel-associated Zika virus disease cases in the U.S. spanning 40 states and the District of Colombia. The U.S. territories of American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico reported 471 locally acquired cases and 4 travel-associated cases. Since Zika is primarily transmitted by the Aedes species mosquito, the numbers of Zika virus disease cases are anticipated to rise once...
8 Strategies For Men To Combat Gender Bias
This is a guest post by Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham (@kgcunnin), Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland. Foreign Policy recently published our article on women and the tenure process in International Relations. The article centers on the challenges women face and offers some suggestions on how to manage them for pre-tenure women based on our experiences. We conclude the article, in part, with a call to...
The Paris Agreement: When is a treaty not a treaty?
Tomorrow is Earth Day, and there is a push in the climate community to encourage states to sign and ultimately ratify the Paris Agreement on climate change. With each of the last 11 months having been the hottest months on record and 93% of Australia's Great Barrier reef experiencing "coral bleaching" from record-breaking hot ocean temperatures, the stakes for the world are high. The #ParisAgreement was an historic event. Time now to sign and...
International Theory Edited Volume, Special Issue, or Symposium Award
The ISA Theory Section Edited Volume, Special Issue, or Symposium Award recognizes the best edited volume, special issue, or symposium published in the two calendar years prior to the meeting at which the award will be given that contributes to the theorization of world politics. The award is open to all forms and styles of theorization. Criteria include such considerations as innovativeness, quality of argumentation, and significance for the...
“Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Know ‘Enough’ About Foreign Policy”? Who Does, Really?
On April Fool's Day, Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders did an interview with the New York Daily News, perceived by many to have been a botched performance. Yesterday, the New York Daily News followed up with a piece entitled "Bernie Sanders Doesn't Know Enough About Foreign Policy, Pros Say." (The 'pros' cited were not some representative sample of beltway illuminatis but rather various Clinton foreign policy advisers who will reportedly...
Distance and Death: Lethal Autonomous Weapons and Force Protection
In 1941 Heinrich Himmler, one of the most notorious war criminals and mass murders, was faced with an unexpected problem: he could not keep using SS soldiers to murder the Jewish population because the SS soldiers were breaking psychologically. As August Becker, a member of the Nazi gas-vans, recalls, “Himmler wanted to deploy people who had become available as a result of the suspension of the euthanasia programme, and who, like me, were...
Tweeted and Deleted by APSA: Gender and Race in the Academy
I’ve been wanting to write a Duck post about the experience of a woman with visible minority status in IR for quite some time now. I was waiting for the right moment. So thanks to the American Political Science Association (APSA), the professional association for US-trained political scientists, the moment has come. Yesterday morning, an email came from a friend with a screenshot. The screenshot showed an attractive Asian woman in a...