by Robert Kelly | 12 Jun 2012 | Featured
I found the above image here. A hat-tip goes to Andrew Sullivan for referencing this debate yet a second time.Here is part one of my response to two recent, heavily-trafficked posts (one, two) on hypothetical retrenchment under Ron Paul. (So yes, that makes 4 total posts, including this one.) I got some flak on how I ranked US allies in order of importance, with the implication that those further down were more likely candidates for a...
by Steve Saideman | 12 Jun 2012 | Featured
Slate posted a piece on the academic study of pop culture. It found that academics studied Buffy the Vampire Slayer most. Well, actually, no, it found that more folks studied the Buffy than the Matrix, the Simpsons, Aliens or The Wire.This led to a Facebook discussion of selection bias. We can discuss the merits of these five and ponder why the Simpsons did so poorly (perhaps we need a consistent plot progression?), or why the Wire is...
by Jay Ulfelder | 12 Jun 2012 | Featured
The Institute for Economics and Peace is making a big splash today with the release of the 2012 edition of its annual Global Peace Index (GPI)---"the world's leading measure of global peacefulness," according to its web site. The launch event for the 2012 edition included several people whose work I respect and admire, and the Institute identifies some of the heaviest hitters in the global fight for peace and human rights---Kofi Annan, Desmond...
by Rational Insurgent | 11 Jun 2012 | Featured
So I recently read Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games” series after being pleasantly surprised by the movie. I easily breezed through all three books on plane rides, on which I prefer reading fiction (yes, even teen fiction) rather than my typical literary fare.Collins is no Steinbeck.Nonetheless, I (slightly hesitantly) confess that I was impressed with many of the underlying themes within the series—particularly with how well Collins seems to...
by Dan Nexon | 11 Jun 2012 | Featured
Alex Cooley -- whose book on power-political competition in Central Asia is due out soon -- had an interesting op-ed in Friday's New York Times. He argues that the apparent success of the 12th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit masks ongoing Sino-Russian tensions in the region:Since the financial crisis, China has displaced Russia as Central Asia’s leading trading partner, and Beijing would welcome using the S.C.O. framework to...
My GOP gone by, I miss it so.Conservatives are fond of the saying widely, but probably falsely, attributed to Everett Dirksen: "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." Of course, the saying hasn't kept up to date with inflation or with the growing size of the federal budget--in 1962, a billion dollars was just under 1 percent of the entire budget; these days, it would be well under 1/1000th of a percent of...
by Rational Insurgent | 8 Jun 2012 | Featured
Barbara Walter and I have started a new blog called Political Violence @ a Glance. Check out the About page to see, well, what we’re about. We have a great group of contributors lined up (including Duck's own contributor Steve Saideman), a handful of posts already published, and plenty more on the way. Feel free to cruise by.--reposted from the Monkey Cage--
by Robert Kelly | 7 Jun 2012 | Featured
Two of my posts this week (one, two) on hypothetical retrenchment under Ron Paul got a lot of traffic and comments. (H/t to Stephen Walt and Andrew Sullivan.) So here is some follow-up.The OP was intended as an emergency exercise if the US were to face a truly significant crisis that forced retrenchment. The purpose was to ask who are the most important US allies and commitments if we were forced to choose. Right now, the US is not choosing. We...
by Charli Carpenter | 4 Jun 2012 | Featured
Guest post by Katherine Boom, University of Massachusetts-Amherst As Bashar al-Assad’s violent crackdown on civilian protesters unfolds, the international community agonizes over how to punish the Syrian government. But while the debate rages over whether to respond to Assad through sanctions, military intervention or a punitive tribunal, few are questioning how to treat his third-party supporters. No case of mass atrocity occurs in a...
by Vikash Yadav | 2 Jun 2012 | Featured
Starbucks in the Ibn Battuta MallGreetings Ducklings! Just sending y'all a little post-card from the United Arab Emirates where I am spending a couple of weeks in Dubai and the neighboring emirates trying to learn more about the political economy of this fascinating and dynamic country particularly since the housing bubble burst in 2008.Between meetings I seem to find myself visiting a lot of malls. With the summer time heat, the many malls...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 1 Jun 2012 | Featured
I have long been intrigued by Orson Scott Card's typology of relations to the other, as expressed in his novel Speaker for the Dead. I like it so much that I used it as a central part of my argument (in Chapter 2 of this forthcoming edited volume) that the depicted relations between Colonials and cylons in Battlestar Galactica can tell us something about how to construct a more humane social order. But teaching the novel for the umpteenth time...
by Josh Busby | 1 Jun 2012 | Featured
Are there major differences between Democratic and Republican elites on multilateral cooperation? This question animates a new study that I carried out with my frequent collaborator Jon Monten and my colleague William Inboden. In mid 2011 and early 2012, we were able to conduct a unique survey of about 20 Democrats and 20 Republicans, nearly all of whom had served in fairly senior positions in the U.S. government, mostly the Executive...