by Dan Nexon | 13 Sep 2012 | Featured
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...
by Jon Western | 13 Sep 2012 | Featured
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...
by PM | 13 Sep 2012 | Featured
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....
by Dan Nexon | 13 Sep 2012 | Featured
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...
by Dan Nexon | 13 Sep 2012 | Featured
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...
by Charli Carpenter | 12 Sep 2012 | Featured
A heavily attended side-event today was the Norwegian Red Cross' panel discussion "Looking Back to Look Forward: The Cluster Munitions Convention and What it Means for Limiting the Impact of Other Weapons Systems."Richard Moyes, coordinator of the International Network Against Explosive Weapons, presented a compelling address about the importance of regulating the use of explosives in populated areas, and putting the burden of proof on states...
by Josh Busby | 12 Sep 2012 | Featured
U.S. Consulate in Benghazi 9/12/2012I heard Dan Drezner in the car on NPR yesterday talking about whether foreign policy might matter in this election. And, last night and today, with the events in Egypt and Libya, he may be more right than even he anticipated.We may have an incident, in the wake of the 11th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, that will shape the contours of the election and have wider repercussions for U.S. foreign policy in the...
by Dan Nexon | 12 Sep 2012 | Featured
One of my daughter's favorite videos. I love that this song has evolved into a theme for general tolerance and... respect.
by Dan Nexon | 12 Sep 2012 | Featured
Note: this started out as "Morning Linkage" but quickly became an extended comment. I apologize for the poor proofing.Four Americans, including US ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the extremist Islamist attack on the American consulate in Libya, Hayes Brown has a good, quick, overview of the circumstances surrounding the attacks in Libya and Egypt. As he concludes: Finally, the relationship between the United States and the...
by Charli Carpenter | 11 Sep 2012 | Featured
At multilateral "Meetings of States Parties (MSP)" conferences, delegates are there to review progress made since the establishment of some treaty standard or another - in this case the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CMC) three years ago (3). In the plenaries, therefore, diplomats praise one another's efforts to implement the treaty with fancy prepared speeches, congratulate their hosts for a beautifully organized event, call on...
by Dan Nexon | 11 Sep 2012 | Featured
Image from: https://hub.pastbook.com/en/book/instagram/earth/tag/september11Our memories of "big events" are generally collective in character. Their status as such manifests in a number of ways, but an important one is that their cognitive traces and triggers become intertwined with representations -- images, narratives, and so forth -- found in local and mass culture.This applies to macro-collective events, such as election nights, massacres,...
by Dan Nexon | 11 Sep 2012 | Featured
This is an open thread to discuss what the world of 2012 would look like absent the 9/11 attacks. The counterfactual proposes that they never happened, not that the US government thwarted them. In general, I think the world is a better place. A lot of people who are now dead -- in, for example, New York, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq -- remain alive. A viable peace process might be underway in Israel-Palestine. The US international position...