by Charli Carpenter | 27 Nov 2012 | Featured
Yes. Only two days after Human Rights Watch launched its "preemptive call" to ban the development and deployment of such systems, the US Defense Department doubled down with a document (shorter version here) that claims: "Autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons systems shall be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force." Comforting? On the surface this sounds like a nod to...
by Rodger Payne | 27 Nov 2012 | Featured
Congratulations to Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan for winning the 2013 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World. As readers may recall, Chenoweth is a Duck of Minerva guest blogger. Chenoweth and Stephan won the $100,000 prize for their 2011 book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia University Press). This is a succinct description from the press website: Combining statistical analysis with case...
by Dan Nexon | 27 Nov 2012 | Featured
Nominations (and voting registrations) are really starting to come in. I've updated the most recent post to reflect yesterday's additions. Linkage: Leslie Dwyer: "After Aceh's Peace." Foreign People Policy is out with its "Top 100 Global Policy Celebs Thinkers" list, so I suppose we now have to slavishly dissect it. Or, we could read Audrey Waters' "top 100 reasons why I hate lists" (which isn't super-relevant, but whatever...) BLTN: The...
by Robert Kelly | 27 Nov 2012 | Featured
Each year in September, the Economist holds a conference on the Korea economy (a part of its Bellwether series on Asian economies). They invite me to come, and then I try to write up my thoughts on it in the JoongAng Daily (which I think is the best newspaper in Korea) as an op-ed. Each year, unfortunately, we seem to argue about the same things – a proper, untweaked float of the won and the openness of the Korean economy to foreign products...
by Josh Busby | 27 Nov 2012 | Featured
Huzzah! Barack Obama in his re-election night valedictory speech finally acknowledged that climate change is a problem we may have to attend to: We want our children to live in an America that isn't burdened by debt, that isn't weakened by inequality, that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet. I seem to recall that candidate Obama said something audacious calling on the global community to prevent the oceans from rising...
by Vikash Yadav | 26 Nov 2012 | Featured
US "combat operations" in Afghanistan are officially scheduled to wind down in 2014. And media attention is now turning toward speculating (i.e. relaying contending institutional preferences between the White House and the Pentagon) on the level of US troop presence in Afghanistan after 2014. Current estimates, in case you still care, are that US troop levels will be roughly around 10,000 assisted by a couple thousand NATO troops -- assuming,...
by Dan Nexon | 26 Nov 2012 | Featured
I've long warned promised that I would start flogging these awards in a serious way. Due, in part to some prodding from SAGE, that time has now come. Here's where we stand: Nominees for Best Blog (Group): Abu Muqawama Arms Control Wonk Crooked Timber The Disorder of Things IPE at UNC Kings of War Nominees for Best Blog (Individual): Dart-Throwing Chimp (Jay Ulfelder) Abu Aardvark's Middle East Blog (Marc Lynch) Chris Blattman International...
by Dan Nexon | 26 Nov 2012 | Featured
Robert Gallucci, head of the MacArthur Foundation and former Dean of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, lays out his view of "How Scholars Can Improve International Relations." Adam Elkus scores the "winners and losers" in the Gaza conflict. Matt Fay answers Max Boot's response to his criticisms of comparisons between Iron Dome and US BMD. China's successful aircraft carrier flight landing at China Defense Blog. More from Rob Farley on the...
by Rodger Payne | 24 Nov 2012 | Featured
Yesterday, climate activist and environmental writer Bill McKibben tweeted a link to this eye-opening graphic: In many ways, this chart is merely another disturbing bit of information about weather in a year of shocking weather news. The United States experienced a record drought this summer -- and many areas are still facing tremendous water shortages. As a fairly direct consequence, the U.S. also suffered near-record wildfires this year,...
by Megan MacKenzie | 23 Nov 2012 | Featured
The James Bond movies aren't the first place most would look to learn about masculinity; it's an action movie, the special effects are always amazing, and most of us just leave the gender analysis at home...BUT just humor me for one scene. In my view the best part of an otherwise mediocre movie (sorry super-Bond fans!) is when Bond is confronted by the ultimate villain, Silver (played spectacularly by Javier Bardem). Silver is a unique...
by Dan Nexon | 22 Nov 2012 | Featured
Now something of a cliche, but still one of the best. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VbYZDohsHk&sns=em
by Josh Busby | 22 Nov 2012 | Featured
I've been curious why John McCain is pursuing Susan Rice with such a vengeance for her inopportune remarks on Sunday talk shows in September about the not-so spontaneous attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. As I think about other prospective nominees to lead the State Department like John Kerry, John McCain actually has more in common with Ambassador Rice. Susan Rice has been one of the Obama Administration's more ardent interventionists...