Usually when I blog about drones and extrajudicial execution, someone leaves a comment to the effect that terror suspects are "legitimate military targets" under the re-envisioned laws of war. The question of whether they are or aren't is a bit tricky, but since the number of bloggable stories is vastly outweighing the time I have to post at present, I've called in my colleague Betcy Jose to explain. - Charli Carpenter Guest Post by Betcy Jose,...
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The US will not ‘Pivot’ much to Asia (2): We don’t really care @ Asia
This is my Asian pivot.Here is part one, where I argued that there is no constituency in the US to support an Asian pivot besides the some businesspeople. 2. Connected to the first point is that Americans don’t know much about Asia. Of course, it’s true Americans don’t know a lot about the world generally. We are a superpower, so we don’t have to know about others; others have to know about us. That’s why ‘they’ learn English, and we think Urdu...
If At First You Do Not Succeed
Lots of posts these days about whether to go to grad school for a PhD, including by Dan Drezner. Drew Herrick has a nice post that not only presents his views but heaps of links to past posts by various folks (including myself) on this topic. What these blogs have largely omitted is any discussion of what happens to the aspirants who do not get in or who get in but without funding (which most folks then say "run away!").When I was applying to...
KONY 2012: Bandwagon Empowerment
Invisible Children's "Kony 2012" campaign provides many of us professors with a unique opportunity to address and learn how students respond to such campaigns and engage with human rights issues. College is an opportunity for students to feel empowered by activism and knowledge that we partly provide, shape and encourage. We do have a responsibility to course correct this empowerment when the knowledge is incomplete or skewed and the call to...
Friday Nerd Blogging
Simpsons Game of Thrones intro from tuan nguyen on Vimeo.
Should I get a Ph.D.?
Matt Groening's Life in Hell comic strip is requiredby federal law to be posted in all grad studentlounges. There's a reason for that.By now, acceptance and rejection letters (or emails) have begun to filter back to graduate school applicants.I want to offer some advice for people who want to be graduate students. I begin by making it clear: I'm loving graduate school; it's been on balance the best time of my life; and nevertheless there have...
Anger in America
Rush Limbaugh, the teaparty, OWS, all the way to the seven sisters -- a deeply misguided Smith College alumna, an open feud between Barnard and Columbia... and so it goes... Bobcat Goldthwait's new dark satire, God Bless America is supposed to be an hysterical look at the mixing of stupidity and anger. I just hope its funny....
International Women’s Day: Cupcakes and Hateraid
I did not make these to destroy feminism.Duck readers, I have a confession. I bake cupcakes. Thousands of them. I love doing it, I love icing them, I love decorating them and I really like eating them.This is not something that I would typically share with a blog on international politics. Normally I write about things that blow up or try to calmly argue that twitter is not going to stop a war lord. But you see I am compelled. I am compelled to...
How Dare the Federal Government Set Minimal Standards for a Consumer Product!
When elements of the Republican noise machine decided to call Sandra Fluke a slutty naughty sex fiend for suggesting--in public, no less--that all health-insurance plans ought to cover hormonal birth control... so that women wouldn't suffer from ovarian cysts, here's what I thought: "this is such a bunch of obviously crazystupidinsanemisogynistselfimmolating craziness that it has got to go away soon."But left-ish groups smell a fundraising...
The US will not ‘Pivot’ much to Asia (1): We don’t really Want to
I found this image here. So the US pivot toward Asia is all the rage in foreign policy now. Obama and Secretary Clinton genuinely seem to believe in this, and there good reasons for it. Briefly put, Asia has the money, people, and guns to dramatically impact world politics in a way that no other region can now. But I think the US Asian pivot won’t happen much nonetheless, because: 1) Americans, especially Republicans, don’t care about Asia,...
Invisible Children – Pretty Dang Visible
KONY, WE GON' FIND YOU - as soon as I buy my bracelet!Anyone who has been on Facebook and Twitter over the past 24 hours has probably seen impassioned pleas to watch a high-production video by Invisible Children, an American NGO (whose Board of Directors just happens to be entirely white American males). And anyone who is following many of the IR tweeters out there, you have also probably began to see the backlash.For those of you who do not...
Primary Politics and Foreign Policy: Super Tuesday Edition
This is cross-posted from the University of Texas website.As the March 6 Super Tuesday Republican primary looms, foreign policy issues understandably are likely to play a marginal role in the decisions of most voters. Since the middle of 2008, Gallup pollshave found that more than 60 percent of voters identified economic issues as the most important problem facing the country. In their February 2012 poll, for example, less than a half a percent...