A strong correlation between cooperation and membership in international institutions is not enough to establish that international institutions cause cooperation. If we're to claim that institutions matter, we need to at least identify mechanisms by which institutions might promote cooperation among actors who would otherwise be disinclined to cooperate with one another. The mere fact that such mechanisms can be articulated does not itself...
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What do we talk about when we talk about world wars?
My Facebook feed filled up this weekend with salutes to veterans. My friends were mostly Americans, and so most of these (indeed, I'd bet all of them) were tributes to U.S. soldiers. For Americans, of course, Sunday was Veterans Day, but for the British and others it was Remembrance Day. Remembrance Day--Armistice Day, as I think of it--is a more fitting holiday than Veterans Day. It asks us to remember something particularly awful and...
Monday Morning Linkage
Good morning, Happy Veteran's Day. In this 100% Petraeus-free edition of morning linkage, we note: Paul Atwood, author of War and Empire: The American Way of Life, meditates critically on the meaning of Veteran's Day 2012. The Article 32 evidentiary hearing on Staff Sgt. Robert Bales revisits the horrific details of the five hour killing spree/alleged war crime that left 15 civilians dead including nine children. Witnesses, survivors, and...
Duck-Proofing Help
No, we're not having avian problems. Rather, we know that our archives are littered with artifacts of conversion: visible code, weird blockquoting, and so on. So, the plea: if you come across anything like this, please email me with the post link so that I can edit it. After a few years, we might have most of the problems solved.
Skyfall and Cyberwar: James Bond Enters the Digital Era
Cyberwar is everywhere. I am sure there is some selection bias in my perspective, but I can't read the news without finding another 'cyberwar will be the new 9/11'article. The narrative? Our digital futures are in a precarious balance and threatened by the great cyber powers itching to destroy our lives, finances, and prevent access to the Playstation network through cyber attacks. Now James Bond is getting in on the fun with Skyfall. In the...
Podcast No. 13 – A Conversation with Nick Onuf (m4a)
The thirteenth Duck of Minerva podcast features Nicholas Onuf.
Friday Morning Linkage
Rob Farley had me on "Foreign Entanglements" yesterday. I'm in "mellow mode," but at least we have hats! Links below: Heather Hurlburt looks at what the election says about US foreign-policy debates. Problem: something like 5% of the electorate gave a &!@ about national security when it came time to vote. Joshua Foust considers a "Chinese Kyrgyzstan." Raffaello Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen examine Chinese policy in Afghanistan. Dan...
Nate Silver and a Dart Throwing Chimp Walk Into a Bar. . .
Since this is my first post, I want to thank Charli, Dan, and everyone else for giving me this opportunity to, well, spout off about whatever I want. They may regret it. To start, as someone of you might remember from a guest post that I did over the summer, one of the projects I am currently working on involves looking at the best ways to accurately forecast international political events such as whether Iran will test a nuclear weapon before...
Selectivity in the ICTR
Last Tuesday, Rwanda’s high court sentenced Victoire Ingabire to eight years in prison for conspiring to harm the country through war and terror and minimizing the 1995 genocide. Some of the evidence used against her include questioning why no Hutu victims were mentioned in a genocide memorial. While the case raised controversy in Rwanda because it called into question the independence of the domestic judiciary and the freedom of political...
Textbooks, Ethics, and Choice
In preparing for my spring semester course, a seminar for honors undergraduates on research methodologies, I've been paring down readings and reviewing potential books to add to my syllabus. My needs are pretty specific, since I need something that bright undergrads can read and is quantitatively informed but that doesn't tread on the actual statistics text I'll be using. What I'd like, in other words, is something comparatively well-written,...
Thursday Morning Linkage – US Election-Free Edition
When time is short, attribution of links is the first casualty. Walter Russel Mead sees evidence of the "Anglosphere effect" in Australian, Canadian, and Indian relations. This reminds me that I am very much looking forward to reading Srdjan Vucetic's The Anglosphere: A Genealogy of a Racialized Identity in International Relations. The Kremlin fires its Defense Minister. Dmitry Gorenburg provides context at the Russian Military Reform blog....
Negotiating with Terrorists
When governments offer concessions to dissident groups in the midst of a terror campaign, they often see an increase in violence take place afterwards. For example, between 1968 and 1977, attacks conducted by the ETA claimed the lives of 73 people. Partial autonomy was granted to the Basque region in 1978, yet despite the fact that this represented a significant shift towards the desired outcome of the ETA, violence increased, over the next...