Josh’s excellent tripartite (1, 2, 3) discussion of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy record in conjunction with with the narratives of Putin’s strategic leadership accompanying Russian military involvement in Syria have me thinking about the concept of authority. Specifically, I do not think we as academics (and as a result, policymakers) have a very good set of tools for thinking about leadership and authority in the international...
The mysterious crash of a Russian charter plane in Sinai over the past weekend is causing all kinds of turmoil in the international arena. As you probably know, there is lots of confusion about exactly what happened to bring the plane down. Shortly after the crash, the ISIS wilayat (province) in the Sinai claimed responsibility, releasing a video purporting to show them shooting the plane down with a surface-to-air missile, a claim that was...
So, this is third installment of my series on defending Obama's foreign policy, part of an extended set of remarks for a debate with Colin Dueck that one day, weather permitting, we shall have. In part 1, I laid out the legacy of the Bush years and in part 2, I identified the Obama administration's strategic inclinations and achievements. Here, in part 3, I try to identify lines of critique from Dueck and other folks critical of the Obama...
Yesterday, I posted about my canceled debate with Colin Dueck on the Obama Administration's foreign policy. In part 1, I reflected on the Bush administration's legacy. Here is part 2 of what would have been my defense of the administration's achievements. Again, it was a debate, where each of us were tasked to assume a side, and I wrote this to be delivered as oral remarks with attempts to dramatize things for a live audience. My thinking is...
If you have been living under a rock as I apparently have, then like me you may be unaware of the DA-RT controversy that is brewing in the American Political Science Association.* Turns out that some of our colleagues have been pushing for some time to write a new set of rules for qualitative scholarship that, among other things will require “cited data [be] available at the time of publication through a trusted digital repository” [This is...
Well, I was supposed to be debating Colin Dueck on the Obama administration's foreign policy tomorrow, but the residue of last week's weather took much of the Austin airport out of commission, leaving his flight to be canceled. So, I'm going to be posting my prepared remarks in a series of posts as well as my quick take on Dueck's 2015 book The Obama Doctrine which sought to critique the administration's grand strategy and offer up an...
This is a guest post by Luke M. Perez, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin where he studies religion, ethics, and foreign policy. Luke is also a graduate fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas. He can be reached at lukemperez@gmail.com. __________________ The Empire apologists are making their case, and it is convincing. Perhaps we were wrong all along to support the Rebellion. But...
I have spent much time here at the Spew discussing various analogies and kinds of analogies, including how IR can be like tacos and how to make a good IR pop culture analogy. I love using analogies, and have often used them in my teaching, even as I know that they have their limits (thanks, Robert Jervis). But if I had to nominate one analogy to kill, to kill with fire, to destroy utterly, it would be the use of the occupations of Germany and...
Done. Here is the transcript. You can scour it for an odd line from Christie about "isolationism" or "ISIS." There was a question about climate change which lasted for all of a minute where Christie fumbled something about investing in clean energy but not through the government. There was a bit more in undercard debate, mostly introduced by Lindsey Graham who wanted to talk about defense spending, terrorism, and tie Secretary Clinton to...
I just read David Edelstein and Ron Krebs' provocative piece ($) in Foreign Affairs on how the practice of grand strategy leads to threat inflation. One section struck me as somewhat problematic in that it seemed to derive little influence for ideational factors in the construction of the liberal order, as if the United States was materially driven to choose that path. They write: Indeed, the United States has acted as a liberal hegemon, more...
The controversy surrounding the coalition airstrike in Kunduz continues to rumble on this week after military investigators drove an armoured personnel carrier into a hospital’s front gate. A spokesperson for the Pentagon was quick to apologise for any damage caused, telling reporters (without a hint of irony) that the team were simply trying to gain access to the facility so that they could assess the structural integrity of the buildings hit...
Like most Canadian citizens, I was delighted to see the back end of our former Prime Minister Harper as he conceded defeat to the Liberal Party's Justin Trudeau. Although I've felt slightly disconnected watching both the campaign and the reaction to Trudeau's win from my home in Sydney, Australia, I've been fascinated by what arguably became one of the main campaign foci: Trudeau's hair. 'Hair' clearly stood in for much larger hang ups about...