My post at e-ir on how folks understand IR and its manifestations in Game of Thrones is eclipsed by this series of videos. For the conclusion with heaps of paens to teen movies:
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Iraq 10 Years Later (3): Why the Neocon Theory behind the War Failed
My first post on the Iraq War asked if academic IR had any responsibility to slow the march to war. The second tried to formulate what the neoconservative theory of the war was, because many of us, in retrospect of a conflict gone so badly, desperately want to un-remember that there really was a logic to the war, that it was at least somewhat intellectually defensible, and that a lot of us believed it. We may want to retroactively...
Friday Nerd Blogging: Game of Thrones and Popular Understandings of IR
Check out my new post at e-IR for a consideration of how Game of Thrones tends to reflect how non-IR scholars might be thinking about IR.That's all, folks.
Six Degrees of Securitization (F*@k you, Senator Coburn!)
Yesterday the Senate passed the Coburn amendment cutting off funds for political science research through the National Science Foundation. It was by a voice vote, which is another way of saying that it was so unanimous that no one bothered to even count hands. So that doesn’t bode well. I heard on NPR that the money will instead go to cancer research, which is a pretty clever move. Needless to say, APSA didn’t mention that in the press release....
Iraq: It takes a President
Some further thoughts on why the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. We've had a few posts already now that the tenth anniversary has come. But given the magnitude of the decision and since even its most vocal defenders were caught off guard by how costly, lethal and protracted it was, it is worth lingering on the question. In varying degrees of sophistication, there is a recurrent argument that the Iraq war flowed out of pre-9/11 developments,...
10 Years On in Iraq: the Chance We Missed
The debate is indeed on, and the Duck is paddling rapidly on this one with excellent posts from Robert, Jon, and Dan. I take/took a slightly different tack. I opposed the war at the time and like everyone else watched how President Bush--whose job ratings were so low on 9-10 that he was rapidly on his way to being a one-term president--relied on Karl Rove to use 9-11 to his supreme political advantage. A la Jon's post, it took the American...
Blog Archeology: The Discursive Bundle that Justified the Iraq War
Yesterday morning I forgot to link the National Security Archive's "Iraq War Ten Years After" page. It highlights some of the greatest hits of the period. I founded the Duck after the start of the Iraq War, but, as was the case for many US political and international-affairs blogs, the team blogged a fair amount on the subject. Given Jon's recent post, I thought I'd dredge up an old one that I wrote on the framing of the Iraq War. Given how...
Yes, Bush and Cheney sold the war, but why did Americans buy it?
OK, the 10-year retrospectives on the Iraq War are in and the debate is on. Yes, Bush, Cheney, and the neocons sold the country a bill of goods on Iraq. They are war criminals and should be held accountable. Iraq was a strategic disaster, it was a financial disaster, and for far too many it was a human and humanitarian disaster. Yes, yes, yes, the intelligence was faulty, the pundit class failed, Judith Miller was wrong, and the New York...
Thursday Morning Linkage
Manta rays and sharks get new protections, CITES closes on a hopeful note Yet new slaughter of elephants in Chad Black market for sea cucumbers in Mexico, driven by demand in China Oh yeah, Senate passes measures restricting NSF funding for study of democracy (cuz that's not important), NSF can only fund study of issues germane to national security so we're okay (just kidding) Will Obama use Nixon-era NEPA to fight climate change and/or is he...
Midweek Linkage
I've realized that it is mathematically impossible to finish what I need to get done before ISA. So this will be brief. Some of this morning's world-politics headlines: deposit levy fails in Cyprus, leading to emergency talks; ROK banking and television computer networks hit by "virus"; and Al Qaeda in Africa claims to have beheaded a French hostage. Joe Cirincione rips into the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system. And more on the Phase 4...
Tuesday Morning Linkage Club
The Globe and Mail investigates why Japan is falling in love with robots (by the way, I know we're supposed to love longform journalism now because it's long, but you can read either half of this piece and you won't miss the other half) [The Globe and Mail] U.S. Naval War College Professor Tom Nichols argues the U.S. should adopt a minimal deterrent---albeit in a piece that mentions "China" only once and "extended deterrence" never. [The...
Iraq 10 Years Later (2): What was the Neocon Theory behind the War?
My first thoughts on the war’s ten year anniversary are here. There I asked if there was any defensible theory behind the war, anything that might explain why we launched it, because weapons of mass destruction were not really the reason. Paul Wolfowitz notoriously admitted they were just a pretext to rally the country behind the invasion. And it’s hard to argue it was about pre-emption either; Iraq was hardly a looming military threat in 2003....