Here is part one where argued that America’s 8 most important allies are, in order: Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Israel, and South Korea. I argued for 3 quick-and-dirty reasons for that ranking, but I got some criticism on these in the first post, so here is some elaboration :1. National Security: Some places, like SA and Mexico, may not appeal much to Americans, but they are so obviously important, that abandonment...
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How the US is Slowly Cultivating the Conditions for a Renewed International Order
Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter’s talk in Parliament in London this week offered useful insights into how the Obama administration and foreign policy analysts around it are thinking about shaping international order. As Director of Policy Planning in that administration from 2009-11 she spoke from experience about the mechanisms being used to implement international change. While she touched on Syria, drone strikes and other newsworthy issues,...
Slow-Motion Srebrenica
The NY Times’ recent article on Obama’s “kill list” of American citizens and others suspected--not convicted--of terrorism includes much disturbing information on what our government is doing in our names. The entire “kill list” process and Obama’s central role in it has seldom been presented in such detail in a mainstream publication. It is necessary if ugly reading, even if it is written in something approaching a triumphalist tone. The...
The Mischiefs of Faction
Let's face it: academic American politics blogs get all the love. Not only do they have lots of pretty graphs, but they also make authoritative pronouncements about issues central to the political blogsphere. But that doesn't mean the we forlorn international-relations bloggers won't occasionally welcome our more wealthy cousins to the neighborhood, particularly when the blog in question involves a colleague.So go check The Mischiefs of Faction...
Duck on a TRIP
The new TRIP survey is out. While the overall findings don't hold many surprises, there are some nuggets of interest. We'll have more to say later, but for now I want to call out a particular finding. Every survey asks the question "aside from you, please list four scholars who have produced the most interesting scholarship in the past five years." In some respects, this question functions as a proxy for "most influential," as the list:Is very...
Does the ICC Need to Reconcile with Africa? Bensouda Comes Out Swinging
(Originally posted at Justice in Conflict)Photo: BBCFatou Bensouda, incoming Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, has put threatening war criminals and defiant states on notice. In several recent public statements she has directly addressed two of the Court's most significant challenges: the accusation that the Court's credibility suffers from a "pro-Western, anti-African" bias and the related issue of ensuring state...
Hanging Out on the Theory-Practice-Policy Divide
In Spring of 2006, I was nearing the end of data collection on my investigation into the human rights of children born of rape and exploitation in conflict zones, and I presented my preliminary findings on the topic atUniversity of Pittsburgh’s Research in International Politics (RIP) monthly brown-bag. In such circles, heavily dominated by empirical approaches, one does not present normative theory (that is, value-laden arguments about how the...
Happy quacking anniversary
Seven years ago today, 28 May 2005, is the day that this blog was, in an important sense, born. The previous day the day Dan officially posted the announcement that The Duck of Minerva was henceforth a collective enterprise (he said "collaborative endeavor," but whatever), and on the 28th, Bill Petti and I started weighing in with posts of our own: Bill on nuclear (non-)proliferation, and me -- in what should have been an early signal that I...
“A Little Too Softhearted”: Cheney on Mearsheimer
You don't understand the power of offensive realism. From Steve Coll's Private Empire:Vice President Cheney seemed particularly interested in China's vulnerability to U.S. naval power. His experience of the global oil market while running Halliburton had left him with a deep understanding of oil's fungible nature. But his thinking about national security was influenced, too, by historical narratives about the rise and fall of great powers, and...
Sunday Nerd Blogging
Say Ron Paul Won…Which US Allies would get Retrenched? (1)
Here is an answer to Jon Western’s good question. Here is Steve Walt saying nice things about Ron Paul, and Layne has a nice recent piece in the National Interest, and another at ISQ, about looming US retrenchment. Earlier I argued that I think lots of people in IR now both expect and want some measure of US pullback. The argument is pretty well-known by now – empirically, the US is doing more than it can afford, like the Iraq war (trillion...
There Are Two Kinds of Countries in the World: ____ and _____
This is a cross-post from my solo blog, Dart-Throwing Chimp.A few days ago, Sean Langberg blogged about a subject that's long been a pet peeve of mine: how we classify countries when we try to talk about the international system, and the labels we apply to the resulting groups. I thought I'd take the cue to air my grievances on the topic and make a couple of simple suggestions.Taxonomies require organizing principles, and the kernel of the...