Syria continues to dominate the news. President Obama will appear on television both tonight and tomorrow to make the case for intervention in Syria. Both Senate and House votes are leaning against authorization. Assad will appear tonight on Charlie Rose (!) to deny responsibility for last month’s chemical weapons attack. More Syria linkage after the jump. The most important non-Syria international news story of the past ten days is the United...
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Symposium — The Mother of All isms: The paradigm is dead. Long live the paradigm!
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Stacie E. Goddard. It is the sixth installment in our "End of IR Theory" companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post responds to Andrew Bennett's article (PDF). His post appeared earlier today. Other entries in the symposium--when available--may be reached via the "EJIR Special...
Symposium — The Mother of All Isms: Curmudgeon Edition
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Andrew Bennett. It is the fifth installment in our "End of IR Theory" companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post refers to Bennett's article (PDF). A response, authored by Stacie E. Goddard, will appear at 10am Eastern. Other entries in the symposium--when available--may be reached...
The Complexities of Intervening in Syria
Well into the Syrian civil war the Assad regime has made a costly miscalculation by staging a significant chemical weapons attack. The U.S. and its allies have been wary of a full-scale military operation in Syria, but spurred by this attack they are now preparing to intervene. To succeed western allies must be focused not only on degrading Syrian capabilities but also on avoiding mistakes beyond the short term that they made in Libya and Iraq....
Hypotheses Tested
The Duck has a symposium which engages the European Journal of International Relation's special issue on "The End of IR Theory." One of the pieces is the final version of the draft that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt circulated last winter. If y'all remember, I had a few words to say about the paper. In short, I was not a fan. Now that the final version is out and they have a post at the Duck, I could take more swings at it, but I don't...
Win Phil’s Money
My views on the role of assumptions are no secret. Nor are they without detractors. In hopes of advancing the debate, I invite anyone who disagrees with me to enrich themselves while proving me wrong. Pick any scholarly paper you have written, published or not. If I cannot identify three patently false or fundamentally unfalsifiable assumptions in the paper, as judged by a mutually agreed upon third party, I will pay you $1000. If I can, I...
Symposium — In Defense of Simplistic Hypothesis Testing
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Dan Reiter. It is the fourth installment in our "End of IR Theory" companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post responds to John J. Mearsheimer's and Stephen M. Walt's article (PDF). Their post appeared earlier today. Other entries in the symposium--when available--may be reached...
Symposium — Leaving Theory Behind: Why Simplistic Hypothesis Testing is Bad for IR
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt. It is the third installment in our "End of IR Theory" companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post refers to the article of the same name (PDF). A response, authored by Dan Reiter, will appear at 10am Eastern. Other entries in the...
Clarifying Punitive Intervention
[Editor's Note: This is a guest post from Professor Anthony F. Lang, chair in International Political Theory and Director of the Centre for Global Constitutionalism at the University of St. Andrews.] Since I wrote my short defence of punitive air strikes against Syria last week in a post at Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs , a number of commentators have given their own, more critical, accounts of this use of military...
Symposium — Defining Theory Down
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Inanna Hamati-Ataya. It is the second installment in our "End of IR Theory" companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post responds to the introduction (PDF), written by Tim Dunne, Lene Hansen and Colin Wight. Their own post is available here. Other entries in the symposium--when...
Friday Morning Linkage
Syria: Richard Betts cuts to the core of Obama's challenge on Syria: "To the extent that any policy is strategically sensible, it is unlikely to be politically palatable; to the extent that a policy can be accepted as politically legitimate, it is unlikely to be of much strategic merit." I can't see how Obama is going to secure Congressional support -- here are the latest numbers. Here are some numbers on public opinion from around the world....
Symposium — The End of International Relations Theory?
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Tim Dunne, Lene Hansen and Colin Wight. It is the first installment in our "End of IR Theory" companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post refers to the issue's introduction of the same name (PDF). A response, authored by Inanna Hamati-Ataya, will appear at 10am Eastern. Other entries...