I never, ever, ever thought I would write a blog post about Newt Gingrich's chances as Republican nominee for President, except perhaps to laugh at him. Yet here I am.The Republican establishment is lining up against Gingrich, claiming that he is not conservative enough. This is laughable and a red herring. As opposed to Mitt Romney? Instead we should listen to those who were swept into office and/or positions of power with him in the...
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Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)
Christopher Hitchens has died. The world has lost one of its most luminous minds.He will be acclaimed for his literary criticism, his political stances, and his raw physical courage as a writer-journalist, entering dangerous battlespaces from Belgrade to Baghdad. Not to mention his wit, occasional rudeness, his filthy limericks, and his dignified and reflective meditations on his coming death. His greatest work, I think, was Why Orwell Matters...
RIP: Habeas Corpus . . . and Normative Power
The news that President Obama plans to sign the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) permitting indefinite detention for Americans accused of supporting terrorism is a sad day for those who believe in basic civil and human rights. Equally, this move calls into question optimistic views about international norms and the power of human rights. Glenn Greenwald and others cover the threat to basic freedoms in posts that are well worth reading....
Friday Nerd Blogging
I think I did a reasonable job restraining myself while suffering through Breaking Dawn this past weekend with my daughter and her friend. I didn't vomit once!And fortunately I didn't have to. The pathetically destructive and sexist representations of romantic love, family, marriage and motherhood in the Twilight series were all the girls talked about on the way home. And they didn't even need the HP/SW allegories to notice it. The same night...
The Euro Of Magical Thinking
Kathleen R. McNamara lays out the reasons to be skeptical that the euro can survive in anything like it's current form. McNamara's brand of political economics begins from the right presumption: that in political economy, politics comes first. Models that fail to account for the role of institutions, of beliefs, or of power will fail to capture any of features that matter most when systems begin to fail. Politics is an autonomous part of social...
We Now “Know”: Diary of a Search Committee Member
I have been sitting on the search committee for a couple of positions in my department, the School of International Relations at USC, and I thought I would share some observations that come from that vantage point. Anyone who happens to have been an applicant should not take this an indicating anything about their own individual case. Rather these are general trends I am noticing. I don't know if they surprise anyone, but I will offer them...
Pop Culture and World Politics v5.0
Pop Culture and World Politics v5.09-11 November 2012Hobart and William Smith CollegesGeneva, NY 14456 USAWhat do zombies have to do with world politics? How might the Twilight sagas inform and illuminate our way of understanding world politics and changes in the global political economy? In what ways do videogames, the sales of which now exceed those of music CDs and DVDS combined, shape the identities and political understandings of frequent...
A Reminder
The United States is currently fighting wars in lands that, while distant to us, are not so distant to their inhabitants and US soldiers. I am tempted to carry on about the "new normal," or compare the experience of peripheral wars to that of imperial Britain, France, and Russia. But the fact is that US forces have been engaged in some form of conflict--whether directly or indirectly--pretty much continuously since the start of World War II....
A View to Kill: Should states engage in assassination?
I have a lengthy piece on targeted killing/assassination up at the Canadian International Council’s Open Canada blog. It touches on some of the issues I’ve raised in previous posts here and here. The short version is that targeted killing/assassination advocates tend to rest their arguments on three assumptions: first, that it is morally legitimate on the basis of reciprocity, that it is easier than launching full-scale invasions or sending in...
How to Blow a Perfectly Good Scam
One of my colleagues had his email account hacked recently. I know this because I received the infamous "I've been mugged, send me money" email. This happened to my wife once. Our friend who alerted her also sent along a transcript of a hilarious email exchange in which the spammer tried to impersonate my wife ("how are your sons doing?"; "I'm sorry to hear that the job with the circus didn't work out"; that sort of thing).My colleague is...
Crowdsource Syllabus: Advanced IR Theory (Updated)
I'm teaching a PhD-level advanced IR theory class next semester, and my syllabus is growing a bit stale. The idea of the course is to cover recent-ish topics (and necessary background, when appropriate) of importance in the subfield. For example, I usually do a week on "the practice turn," a week on "arguing and bargaining" that covers a range of approaches to the subject, and so forth. This year I'll be opening with PTJ's The Conduct of...
Kajaki and Power Politics
Like the ancient Greco-Buddhist colossi of Bamiyan, the High-Modernist era Kajaki dam is a product of foreign influences and has been a mute witness as well as an occasional victim of domestic political disarray and failed attempts to integrate and incorporate Afghanistan into contending spheres of influence. Each alternate modern (i.e., capitalist, communist, islamist, praetorian) or anti-traditional/utopian fundamentalist (i.e., Deobandi)...