The Duck of Minerva

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NATO intervention in Syria Wouldn’t be Easy

by | 17 Jul 2012 |

That's the takeaway from a new working paper by Brian Haggerty, a doctoral student at MIT. His conclusion:The United States and its NATO allies no doubt possess the capabilities required to achieve some measure of air superiority over northwest Syria and to maintain patrols over population centers to defend them from some incursions by Syrian forces equipped with heavy weapons. But as this analysis shows, an intervention to establish only...

The Sexual Scandal Factor in Military Policy Making

by | 17 Jul 2012 |

Do scandals- particularly the kind that receive international attention- inspire progressive gender policies? While there is no conclusive research on this question, there are indicators that sexual violence scandals may be as important as public opinion or operational changes in influencing policy change in the military (perhaps more so).My prediction- you can quote me on this- is that the current onslaught of sexual violence scandals in the...

Crime and Punishment in Syria

by | 16 Jul 2012 |

The ICRC has stated that the violence in Syria constitutes an non-international armed conflict. This is significant because it means the organization tasked with guarding and promoting the Geneva Conventions is declaring that at least portions of the Geneva Conventions (especially Common Article 3) applies to the conflict and unlawful attacks on non-combatants could be prosecuted as war crimes.At Lawfare Blog, University of Texas' Robert...

Should Romney Talk More About Foreign Policy?

by | 14 Jul 2012 |

In these summer months while we wait for the Olympics to start and for Romney to pick his VP candidate, the foreign policy cognoscenti has started in on Mitt Romney's campaign with conflicting advice about whether or not his announced foreign policy trip this later this summer is worthwhile and whether or not the Republican nominee should spend much time talking about the issue.While as a citizen and foreign policy wonk, I want our prospective...

Friday Nerd Blogging By Proxy

by | 13 Jul 2012 |

 Charli has volunteered me to sub for Friday Nerd Blogging duty for her for the next three weeks.  It turns out that sending her links to fun stuff is a bad idea.  That will teach me.The most important pop cultural event of the next week is clearly the return of Breaking Bad.  Too bad it does not have any dragons, super-heroes, or other Comic-con bait.  So, BB cannot count for Friday Nerd Blogging.  The good news is that there may be a spin-off...

Peter Piot’s Memoir on Infectious Disease

by | 10 Jul 2012 |

I just finished reading Peter Piot's lively memoir No Time to Lose of his time as an epidemiologist helping identify the Ebola virus in the 1970s through to his service as the first director of UNAIDS. It is an engaging read not least because Piot conveys a profound empathy for those affected by disease. Piot also projects additional warmth and humanity, from his appreciation for Congolese music to good beer.More substantively, Piot has a...

Extreme Dissertation Writing

by | 10 Jul 2012 |

Wow. If you can write a dissertation on the politics of shark attacks as an IR specialist, I think you can do pretty much anything. From the Ted website:Chris Neff is a third year PhD candidate in Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. He is conducting the world's first doctoral dissertation on the politics of shark attacks.Of course, I'm curious to know how this dissertation topic relates to IR precisely. (I get...

Fear of Relativism part three: the task of translation

by | 9 Jul 2012 |

[The following essay, posted here in three parts over several days, was solicited by and is cross-posted at e-ir. Read part one here. Thanks to Aaron McKeil for editorial input and html formatting assistance.] III. The Task of Translation In the preceding discussion I have assumed, albeit tacitly, that contradictory statements emanating from different communities of practice and different traditions of inquiry are translatable into one...

A Failure to Communicate?

by | 7 Jul 2012 |

Political science, alas, has been facing much hostility as of late.  Selected out by a Republican for de-funding, attacked by one of our own in a highly publicized and reputed piece, it is time that we wielded our tools to figure out what is going on.  Thankfully, Huber, Dowling and Hill have done some social science: surveys with some random selection to assess how people feel about Political Science compared to Psychology and Computer...