At the moment many of us are watching the news with bated breath. New sites, facebook and twitter feeds are filling with images of civilian deaths and the leveling of Gaza. There is growing sentiment that the 'targeted' operations in Gaza by the IDF have been willfully indiscriminate- with example upon example of civilian safe havens being directly targeted (4 UN schools in 4 days, 46 schools in total, 56 Mosques and 7 hospitals). The UN has...
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In Search of a New Warrior Ethos
It’s not often that a Marine officer writes a book that goes head-to-head with a title currently listed as “Commandant’s Choice” book by the Marine Corps, but in this case, I had little choice but to lay down the sword and take up the pen in order to debunk the honor-bound, shame-based relic of dead cultures espoused by Steven Pressfield’s 2011 monograph, which the current Commandant has made mandatory reading for all Marines. Unfortunately,...
Genital Mutilation: Facts, Fictions, Faux-Feminism and Fortitude
Although I'm technically off the grid, the news that ISIS proclaimed women and girls in Mosul should submit to genital mutilation (FGM), and the report's subsequent debunking, compel me to emerge from hiatus. Leaving aside why a fake report on FGM should be viewed as needed to discredit a group who is executing civilian, forcibly displacing minotiries and destroying cultural property, I have mixed feelings about the outcry this story raised....
Confronting the Putin Doctrine in Full Force
Just as the international community appeared at long last to be taking a stronger stand against Russia, President Putin upped the ante. Unlike its annexation of Crimea, Russia is now in open warfare with Ukraine on its eastern border. There is fresh evidence indicating not only that Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by Russian-aided rebels in eastern Ukraine, but also that the Russian military has been firing missiles and artillery...
Anti-Semitism in Germany: A Comment
“Mutti,” aka Angela Merkel, is not amused. Neither is the rest of the German political establishment, the German media, or the vast majority of German people. Three days ago, some of the protesters against the Israeli campaign in Gaza yelled anti-Semitic hate paroles, a man wearing a kippah was chased through Berlin, and the police didn’t interfere. This is absolutely shameful for all of us Germans and it is very understandable that the Israeli...
Thursday Linkage: Gaza, Russia, Rhinos
This past week has been a doozy for awful international news, and I've been thinking about a post on Gaza, another on Russia, possibly a third on immigration, or staying in my lane of expertise by commenting on wildlife conservation, the environment, and public health. Well, Thursday is upon us, and I've taken the path of least resistance for now. There are far too many good pieces out there worth a read on all fronts. So, read on for links and...
Why Do Peacebuilding Interventions Often Fail?
Why do international peacebuilding efforts often fail in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and the Central African Republic? Séverine Autesserre's work in the DRC suggests that a variety of factors explain these disappointments, including peacebuilders' failures to engage in local peace building. In her new book, Peaceland, Autesserre argues that the everyday habits of peacebuilders matter as well. I sat down with...
The Responsibility to Protect: Israel & Gaza
The London School of Economics Middle Eastern Studies Center recently advertised that it is going to hold a symposium on whether the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) Doctrine applies to the current conflict between Israel and Palestine. In particular, it is gathering a cohort of experts to debate R2P’s standing in the conflict, as well as if the norm is the correct framework to be “useful;” however, “useful” for what is not at all clear. R2P,...
What I’ll Be Reading While Off The Grid
As of tomorrow I am turning on my "vacation" auto-responder, ceasing blogging for a bit, and hitting the road for some combined business/leisure. Highlights will include: Some Colorado conference travel to present my research findings to one of the activist communities whose work I profiled in my book London for a week of exploratory research among NGOs that specialize in civilian casualty-counting, plus visits with my son to the newly...
Germany: Beyond Its History, Again
Germany won the World Cup in soccer, demonstrating to all that its team truly is the best in the world. The German players and coaches were dominant, dispatching a succession of opponents with near masterly strategy and skill—including a historic drubbing of the overwhelming local favorite Brazil, expected by many to emerge with a symbolic victory for the host country. Instead, the Germans beat them handily at home, before going on to prevent...
Generations of Presidential Voting
As we all know, the social sciences are a messy business. People change their minds, don’t always follow law-like rules, and often have the guts to defy our theories by reflecting on their past behavior. For these reasons, it is always nice to see when our work receives support from other scholars, especially when these scholars operate within another paradigm, sub-field, or use a different methodological approach. In the case of my own work,...
Israel in Gaza: What’s the Plan?
(Photo by Oliver Weiken—EPA) What's the Israeli plan with all of this? According to the Israeli Defense Forces statement, "The IDF's objective as defined by the Israeli government (in the ground offensive) is to establish a reality in which Israeli residents can live in safety and security without continuous indiscriminate terror, while striking a significant blow to Hamas' terror infrastructure." Despite the somewhat ambiguous language here,...