via Geek in Heels, your friendly Friday Star Wars Meyers-Brigg test. Which character are you? Also: Star Wars VII release date has been, well, released. Doug Mataconis comments.

Lionel Beehner and Joseph Young write in The National Interest that while targeted killing by drone strike is increasingly denounced (and decreasingly used by states), cross-border incursions by counter-terror ground troops are an increasingly accepted practice – despite the fact that both violate state sovereignty. Citing the capture of Abu Anas Al-Libi by US special ops in Libya, drug kingpins by Brazil in Bolivia and Peru, and the frequency...

The year 2014 is nearly on us, and reflections on World War One are already weighing down bookshop shelves. In my own research, I've stumbled across an odd tendency: that whereas in Britain the cause of World War One, if not its conduct, attracts strong supporters as well as critics, the first Gulf War is remembered as a bit of a disappointment. Consider the difference with one of history's archetypal 'limited' wars, which few seem keen to...

As part of World Politics Review's new feature on "winding down the war on terror," I rant about the US' continuing use of a war paradigm for global law enforcement operations: The term “shadow wars” aptly describes the U.S. approach to the war on terror. Policymakers perceive they are fighting an enemy composed of shadow and dust, one hidden in and facilitated by the dark underworld of global politics. But to prosecute this campaign, the U.S....

I left academia because I wanted to make a difference. I went to graduate school for the normal reasons: I’d done well in school, I didn’t really want to get a job, and I needed to learn how to free my mother from the eternal torments of the demon Mephisto. For a while, everything was great. I slept in, worked late, and made excellent ramen. I loved being a part of the laboratory: running experiments, writing up results, and especially making...