by Jon Western | 14 Dec 2012 | Featured
Friday is here. SEMESTER IS OVER. Fresh snow on the Vermont slopes. Three very good things. I'm surprising my wife with this news -- I've already lined up the kids for summer camp. More fodder on Nixon and Kissinger's support for a corrupt Shah. Kind of where we are in Syria. Not good. I guess this is pretty obvious. Pete Muller has his own short take on events in Cairo. Everything we need to know this month about U.S.-South Korean relations....
by PM | 14 Dec 2012 | Featured
I don't want to say too much about the Rathbun-Arena smackdown (smackduck?) taking place but I will say this: We often rely on maps that are not "true." The Mercator projection is "wrong" if our criterion is "showing countries according to their relative size" but "useful" if our criterion is "helping to plot sea voyages." Moreover, we sometimes explicitly distort maps to make them more useful: As Wikipedia notes, the Tube map is considered a...
by Brian Rathbun | 14 Dec 2012 | Featured
Many of you seem to have read my earlier post knocking the use of assumptions in theory-building, particularly rationalism, and Phil Arena's defense of it. My earlier post was a little over the top and insulting, which led him to take umbrage. I called him a dick; he called me a dick. We were both right, although I guess I started it. When we are thinking about who to ask in as guest contributors, my main criteria was theoretical and...
by Robert Kelly | 14 Dec 2012 | Featured
Does anyone else find Fox News strangely appealing to watch? For some reason I watch it all the time. As ideology that is inadvertently entertaining, interwoven with a veneer of ‘news,’ it’s a freaky, terrifying wonder to behold. It is vastly more interesting – maybe because it’s akin to experiencing an alternate reality - than it’s-so-bland-what’s-the-point-anymore CNN. Watching Fox is like watching yourself become dumber, all while...
by Dan Nexon | 14 Dec 2012 | Featured
Here's where things stand: Nominees for Best Blog (Group): Abu Muqawama Arms Control Wonk Crooked Timber The Disorder of Things IPE at UNC Mideast Matrix Kings of War Nominees for Best Blog (Individual): Abu Aardvark’s Middle East Blog (Marc Lynch) Chris Blattman Dart-Throwing Chimp (Jay Ulfelder) Daniel Drezner International Political Economy Zone (Emmanuel Yujuico) iRevolution (Patrick Meier) M. Taylor Favrel Ottomans and Zionists (Michael...
by Phil Arena | 13 Dec 2012 | Featured
Earlier today, Brian Rathbun criticized "rationalists" for making assumptions.* I have some thoughts on the matter, and I expressed many of them on Twitter. And in the language of Twitter -- snark. That was not the best response, and I regret the tone of my reaction, if not the substance thereof. I'd like to try now for a more constructive dialogue. Let's start where we agree. Brian writes It seems for rationalists that assumptions are...
by Megan MacKenzie | 13 Dec 2012 | Featured
There are seriously multiple articles on why sex is best on Thursday (don't ask how I got there). So let's riff on that and go through some sex/gender inspired links for the day (a quickie, if you will): The Republican witch hunt of Susan Rice is over as she withdraws her name from consideration for Secretary of State. Pundits are still arguing that she's been criticized for the wrong reasons, while others feel that all the flack she's gotten...
by Michael C. Horowitz | 13 Dec 2012 | Featured
Some of the big news out of Europe this week surrounded Mario Monti's upcoming resignation from his current post as Prime Minister of Italy. Recall that Monti became prime minister on November 11, 2011 as the leader of a technocratic government. Monti's government was charged with beginning to dig Italy out from significant economic turmoil, including record bond spreads and fear that Italy could be the next Greece. Well, as we learned on...
by Brian Rathbun | 13 Dec 2012 | Featured
I got some snippy responses, well one in particular, to my post on the future of international relations theory based on a reading of the tea leaves over the last year or so. And it made me realize that there is a fundamental divide between me (and I hope others) and rationalists on the issue of assumptions. I thought I’d write about and get some feedback. I’m sure that there is a literature and debate on this somewhere else, but I blog about...
by Dan Nexon | 13 Dec 2012 | Featured
Last summer some readers suggested that we run open-ended posts designed to spark discussion. So consider this another attempt to do so. My challenge: (1) name the most thought provoking piece -- or pieces -- that you read this year dealing (in a broad sense) with international studies concerns and (2) justify its inclusion on such a list. I don't mean pieces that you agreed with, or even that you thought were good. But pieces that made you...
by Dan Nexon | 13 Dec 2012 | Featured
If you are a member of the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) of the International Studies Association (ISA) please remember to vote in its governance elections. And you should, of course, cast one of your votes for the Duck of Minerva's own Jon Western. Jon is running for a seat on its Governing Council. As he will admit (after a sufficient number of drinks), amounts to a well-paid sinecure with many opportunities for corruption...
by Dan Nexon | 12 Dec 2012 | Featured
The Onion reports on a story of profound importance to readers of this blog. Well, go read!