Interview with Daniel Levine.
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A Short (and Hasty) Note on the Current Wave of Attacks
Tunisia Protests, APReaders probably already know that anti-western attacks are spreading beyond Egypt and Libya, and to non-US facilities. In Sudan, the German embassy is "in flames."And so on.How would someone committed to relational social analysis understand what's happening? Here's an 'analytical snap judgment':We have an event -- the emergence of the anti-Muslim film -- that fits a particular pre-existing script concerning identity...
Pyongyang isn’t ‘Laid-Back & Leafy,’ or What Parag Khanna didn’t Learn in NK
I know what you’re thinking – how many more d--- pictures of this guy and Kim Il Sung (left, KJI right) do I have to look at? Well…too bad! They go on and on and on…In the last two weeks I rolled out a series of impressions from my trip to North Korea (one, two, three, four). Apparently Parag Khanna went to NK at the same time I did (last month) and simultaneously put up his impressions at CNN-GPS, making for an interesting comparison of views...
Friday Morning Linkage
Does this cat think that he's a duck?Photo: Dan NexonAsian maritime disputes roundup: background on Diaoyu/Senkaku and on the Southern Kuril Islands; what happened when Chinese ships sailed into the waters around Dioayu/Senkaku. Dan Trombly: "Benghazi and Diplomacy's Hard Power."Peter Rutland discusses rising Armenia-Azerbaijan tensions. If you're not paying attention, you should be. Baku believes that all its shiny new military equipment (paid...
“Reversing the Burden of Proof”: Tactic or Norm
An interesting observation I took away from this meeting is the frequency with which I heard practitioners talking about the need to "reverse the burden of proof" from advocates (to prove that a particular weapon causes significant humanitarian harm) to governments (to prove that it doesn't). As Richard Price documented in his study of the landmines campaign and John Borrie documented in his landmark genealogy of the cluster munitions...
Friday Nerd Blogging
You never know what you'll learn when conducting field research. Refer playfully to a powerful and influential person in the humanitarian disarmament network as the "Jedi Master of arms advocacy" over dinner and drinks? Discover unexpectedly that this individual (who shall remain unnamed) has never seen Star Wars. The easy part: I know what to send him / her as a thank-you present for insights shared. The hard part: how to explain the...
Inside the Bubble, Round II
Richard Grenell was pushed out as Mitt Romney's national-security spokesman. In The Daily Beast, he attempts to defend his former boss.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got it right. The Middle East desk at the State Department got it right, too. And so did Mitt Romney. All three correctly rejected the initial Cairo Embassy statement on the developing violence in Egypt and Libya as weak and inappropriate. And yet Romney was the only one to...
On the “Reality of Nations”
This is a guest post by Peter S. Henne. Peter is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University. He formerly worked as a national security consultant. His research focuses on terrorism and religious conflict; he has also written on the role of faith in US foreign policy. During 2012-2013 he will be a fellow at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. Are some nations more real than others? Does it matter? Wednesday on MSNBC's 'Morning...
How did he screw this up so badly?
I don't really want to pile on, but the question for me is: how does a major presidential candidate in the 21st century (and a guy who has been running for office now for seven straight years) screw this up so badly? As a resident of Massachusetts, I watched Romney as governor, he wasn't a disaster and I don't think he ever displayed the level of incompetence that we've seen recently. So what's going on? I've been pondering this with various...
All Mitt Romney Really Needed To Know He Never Learned In Kindergarten
This is actually a pretty good checklist.I'm busy with other projects--dissertating, researching, and watching Breaking Bad, in ascending order--but I wanted to point out that the problem with Mitt Romney's statement about the attacks on Americans in Libya and Egypt is not what it tells us about foreign policy. We know very little about Romney's foreign policy views, and it is possible that Romney himself hasn't thought deeply about the it....
Inside the Bubble
Erik Erikson's full-throated attack on the US media and Obama is getting bounced around the right-wing twitter-verse today. For those of us who aren't part of that universe, it provides an interesting glimpse inside the bubble. It begins thus: Yesterday, as the American consulate in Libya was smoking and the rioters were returning in Egypt, the President of the United States flew off to Las Vegas for a fundraiser while his spokesman was...
Thursday Morning Linkage
South African miners call for general strike.Paul Rogers at the Agonist on "The Jihadist Element in Syria and its Implications."Karim Mezran & Danya Greenfield: "picking up the pieces and honoring Ambassador Stevens."Wow. As Josh wrote about, the backlash against Romney's comments on the consulate attacks has been.... intense.The Hillsborough coverup just exploded in British politics. Ashamed aside: I had no idea about any of this until...