In my grad class every semester, I always ask the students if IR is really the best field for studying human security. Undoubtedly, I get some students who respond that political science is the best discipline and IR is the best field – or even the only field – to really study human security. However, I usually also get a large minority of the students who acknowledge off the bat that most of the phenomena we study could be similarly examined...
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Are US Interests At Stake in Egypt and Syria?
Steve Walt asked a great question the other day: Are U.S. Interests Really at Stake in Egypt, Syria, etc...? In posing the question, he cited a recent comment from Brendan Green, a visiting professor at the LBJ School at the University of Texas-Austin: "Pre-2011, if you said that Mubarak would fall, that Egypt would experience a mass political mobilization that destroyed its political order several times over, that the streets of Cairo would...
Krugman’s (Probably) Wrong about Apple and Network Externalities
Paul Krugman has an op-ed in today's New York Times in which he likens the rise and decline of technology companies to Ibn Khaldun's account of the rise and decline of dynasties: success breeds complacency and soon the barbarians are running the show. This happened, he argues, to Microsoft, which once upon a time dominated the computer industry thanks to network externalities: The odd thing was that nobody seemed to like Microsoft’s products....
Monday early morning linkage
Syria agrees to allow a UN team of experts access to the site of last week's alleged chemical weapons attacks. US government officials says it's too little, too late. The Tunisian opposition is back in the streets and is again calling for the government’s resignation. FP’s James Traub remains optimistic. Saturday was the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. The Atlantic examines why it’s so hard to find a copy of MLK’s “I Have a...
The Glass Half Empty: Gendered Problems in Academic Networking
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, Professor and Department Chair of Political Science at the University of Iowa. It is Part 1 of a 2-part discussion. Many recent posts (e.g., posts here by David Lake, Dan Nexon, and Laura Sjoberg, and elsewhere by Christian Davenport and Steve Saideman) have discussed professional networking in political science. Given my belief that academic experiences are not universal, a...
Sunnanæfen Commentary and Linkage
I still believe that some of Snowden's disclosures, and his actions, have forfeited his whistleblower status. But if he'd been a bit more circumspect about what he'd leaked and how he had done it--e.g., not brought US government secrets into the range of Russians and Chinese intelligence agents--that would emphatically not be the case. His disclosures have prompted chilling information about the activities of the NSA and forced a necessary...
Don’t Stress About Networking
Editor's Note: This is a guest post from Professor Peter M. Haas of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Finding myself on the grey haired side of the academic divide and having experienced both sides of the process, let me reiterate David Lake’s points about networking with senior faculty. While networking to make friends is a lovely idea, it doesn’t always work at a large professional event, nor with senior people who aren’t...
Friday Morning Linkage
Update on the international community's reaction to events in Syria: Russia calls on Assad to cooperate with the weapons inspectors. Says it has evidence the attack was propagated by the opposition. Pressure building in Washington and Europe to do something. Obama announces that the time frame for U.S. action may have shortened. Kerry's diplomatic efforts. Congressional doves rethinking Syria. The view from Ankara. And Lebanon. Early...
Friday Nerd Blogging: Into Darkness
Sure, the movie came out months back, but this Honest Trailers does a nice job of capturing why Star Trek Into Darkness was meh. JJ Abrams does not apparently get it that the even numbered movies are supposed to be better. Spoilers boldly go below: This video is perhaps inconsistent in pointing out the retrograde gender dynamics in the movie, but gets its point across.
Ham Omelettes and Taiwan’s Defence
In the old old question of why the weak occasionally beat the strong, my favourite metaphor is the Ham Omelette. In a Ham Omelette, the chicken is involved but the pig is committed. In a clash over the Taiwan Strait, who would be the pig, who the chicken? This matters, because in the end predicting the outcome of a China-Taiwan clash would not be about the absolutes of military victory narrowly conceived, but about the issue of cost tolerance...
Thursday Late Afternoon “Morning” Linkage
It's morning somewhere, right? Here are some belated links to stories, covering Richard Haass and Syria, climate change and the IPCC 5th assessment, a lethal bat-born virus, gay rights and Russia, and the new Fukushima nuclear worry... Syria FT op-ed by Richard Haass of all people urging the president to intervene in Syria Environment Draft IPCC Fifth assessment report on climate change impacts leaks, guess what, more climate change Andrew...
Blogging the syllabus, international security edition: what is security?
With all of the focus on APSA, there’s been little discussion of another Labor Day ritual—the Revising of the Syllabus. In truth, I should have begun this ritual a few weeks ago. Now that the panic dreams have kicked in—you know, the ones where you show up to class on the first day without a syllabus and thus lose all authority over your students for the rest of the semester…you do get those too, right?—I know I must take action. My first task...