About a week ago I published a piece with the International Relations and Security Network (ISN) on the analytical and political utility (or lack thereof) of the concept of terrorism. I cannot reproduce it here in full for Duck readers because the ISN owns it. But, since I think the topic might be of interest to readers, here is a taste of what I argue in hopes of prompting a discussion: With high-profile incidents of political violence...
Save room on your schedules for some Ultimate: I am hoping that there will be enough space and too few drunken folks on the playing field at Woldenberg Park at 10am on Saturday of ISA week. It is just up the river (if you look at a map, it looks is up and to the right of the Hilton along the waterfront). Bring a dark shirt and a light shirt. Cleats are optional. I will bring the cones and the disks. Hope to see you there. Proof...
Get your ballots in soon. We are in the home stretch for the voting for the 2015 OAIS Blogging Awards (The Duckies). Voting closes on Friday, Jan. 30 at 5:00pm EST. All ballots must be submitted by then. We've had a record number of votes and all four categories are very tight. Once all the votes are in, we will tally them and announce the finalists for each category. At that point, a panel of judges will select the winners from among the...
This is a guest post by Dehunge Shiaka, a gender expert in Sierra Leone. This is post #3 of a series he has written on the impacts of Ebola in Sierra Leone (post 1, post 2). How can we ensure that when Ebola ends, Sierra Leone's medical infrastructure and economy doesn't disintegrate with it? Yesterday Oxfam called for an Ebola Marshall Plan to help countries like Sierra Leone, which have been seriously impacted by the deadly virus. This would...
One of the regrets of my career is that I was developing the ethnic security dilemma concept the same time as Barry Posen, who published his in Survival in 1993. As I prepared for my comprehensive exams in 1991 in IR and Comparative Politics, I focused on ethnic politics for the latter exam. I wrote papers that developed the IR concept for ethnic politics, got nice comments from my profs, but moved on to the dissertation. I should have tried...
More information about the genesis of this panel here. Paper abstracts here. Hope to see you February 18 in the Grand Salon 3 at the Hilton Riverside in New Orleans at 4:00!
My first post of the new year (hey, it is still January!) is a bit IR theory geek-ish, so apologies to readers who do not follow those arcane discussions. About two weeks ago I participated in a workshop on constructivism at USC. Not surprisingly given the caliber of the people around the table, the conversation was a rich and enlightening one. A number of things jumped out at me, but the one I want to write on here addresses a tension (of...
Nathan Paxton has a provocative post on The Monkey Cage where he suggests, among other things that the World Health Organization (WHO) is not to blame for the Ebola crisis. Rather, he lays the blame squarely on donor countries. He rightly notes that the WHO's budget and staff was cut after the financial crisis, but I think he lets WHO off too lightly. With many ideas circulating about the future of the WHO in advance of the upcoming WHO...
In last night’s State of the Union Address, President Obama briefly reiterated the point that Congress has an obligation to pass some sort of legislation that would enable cybersecurity to protect “our networks”, our intellectual property and “our kids.” The proposal appears to be a reiteration that companies share more information with the government in real time about hacks they are suffering. Yet, there is something a bit odd about the...
It's always nice to read good news. And it's nice to read evidence-based arguments in the popular press. Over the holiday, Andrew Mack and Steven Pinker offered a little of each over the holidays in their article "The World Is Not Falling Apart." Therein, they marshal of human security indicators upon indicators - number of rapes reported, number of civilians killed, number of wars breaking out, number of homicides - to argue that at the...
It's time to vote! We are asking readers to vote for the finalists in each category. ONce we have finalists for each category, a panel of judges that includes previous years' winners and permanent contributors at Duck of Minerva will select this year's award winners in each category. The winners will be announced at the OAIS Blogging Awards and Reception at the ISA annual convention in New Orleans on Thursday, February 20, 2015. Here's what you...
Last fall, I wrote about how the U.S. government was insisting that any climate mitigation commitments agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate negotiations be non-binding political pledges. I argued that was appropriate because the high bar for treaty ratification in the U.S. Senate made legally binding commitments unlikely. This kind of soft "pledge and review" approach to climate change first emerged at the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations, often...