by Kate Weaver | 12 Jan 2012 | Featured
I can't resist sharing this wonderful news clip from Malawi. I challenge Duck readers to have fun with this: What might the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street movements learn from Malawi?Malawi protests scheduled for January 15, Chilembwe Day12 January 2012tags: chilembwe day, malawi, protestby dadakimThe following call to protest in Malawi on January 15 (Chilembwe Day) was sent as an email, and has been reported on by opposition online news...
by PM | 11 Jan 2012 | Featured
It's bad form to criticize otherdisciplines' journals based solelyon titles, but Annals of Tourism Research? This is the sort of thing libraries spend their budgets on?Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) is trying to end taxpayer access to publicly-funded research. The article is worth reading, not least because it is the only time that you'll ever see the term "powerful publishing cartels" in this age of disruptive new-media innovation.And...
by Dan Nexon | 10 Jan 2012 | Featured
Writing in Foreign Policy, Paul Pillar makes the case that most so-called "intelligence failures" stem from bad leadership rather than problems with the US intelligence community. He touches upon a number of cases, but Iraq looms large:Had Bush read the intelligence community's report, he would have seen his administration's case for invasion stood on its head. The intelligence officials concluded that Saddam was unlikely to use any weapons of...
by Brian Rathbun | 10 Jan 2012 | Featured
If you are running for the nomination of the Republican Party for President, there are a fewindispensables – you have to hate welfare recipients, oppose gay marriage, and have fired a gun at an animal at some point. (But apparently you no longer have to support a robust military presence overseas. Or have fired a gun against another person in a foreign war. That has not been a requirement since Eisenhower.) But it seems there is another sine...
by Cliff Bob | 7 Jan 2012 | Featured
The Pentagon is remarkable for its ability to contrive reasons to justify its bloated budgets. In recent years, it and the gaggle of contractors, analysts, and journalists that support it have found military-security risks in everything from “hot zone" diseases to global warming. But with looming budget cuts, the defense establishment is being forced to downsize, albeit modestly. To protect itself, it has now taken to fear-mongering. Some of...
by Dan Nexon | 7 Jan 2012 | Featured
Last year I mentioned an editorial in the Washington Post decrying the District's decision--prodded by a small number of wealthy Georgetown residents--to force the University to meet unrealistic targets. A refresher:A recommendation by the city’s office of planning would require the university to provide housing for 100 percent of its undergraduate students by 2016; failure to do so would force cuts in enrollment starting in 2015. Georgetown...
by Steve Saideman | 5 Jan 2012 | Featured
The twitter-verse, or at least, one of the corners I follow, had heaps of tweets dedicated to the rollout of the US defense review, with Obama playing a starring role. Apparently, Obama briefing at the Pentagon is a new thing. Anyhow, it raised all kinds of questions, so I thought I would answer them all here. Yes, all of them. Ok, some of them.Q: Is the review really a review of what the US wants to do, or is it a gloss over the...
Given some of the recent discussion on the Duck about the use of force in the Arabian Gulf, I thought I'd point out something interesting from the recent TRIP survey of international relations scholars. It turns out that between 60 and 90 percent of IR scholars surveyed simply reject the U.S. use of force in five hot-button regions. Asked "Would you approve or disapprove of the use of U.S. military forces in the following situations?",...
by Josh Busby | 5 Jan 2012 | Featured
So, in my last post, I critiqued Rosasto and Schuessler's realist take on the causes of World War II, repeating the IR conventional wisdom of liberal internationalism (that it was reparations and beggar-thy-neighbor policies that worsened the Depression and created the conditions for the rise of Hitler). I ran that interpretation by one of my colleagues at the LBJ School, Frank Gavin, a historian who knows this literature much better than me...
by Vikash Yadav | 5 Jan 2012 | Featured
Building on PM's earlier post, "Cultural Weapons and International Relations" I'd like to look at an example that helps to illustrate the ways in which Realism misunderstands the role of culture in global politics. In his blog post titled, "China's War Against Harry Potter," Stephen Walt analyzes President Hu Jintao's attempt to defend Chinese culture by increasing its production of local culture. What is interesting is that Walt has plenty to...
by Josh Busby | 4 Jan 2012 | Featured
In my last post, I offered a friendly critique of Nuno Monteiro's piece on how unipolarity has been less peaceful than other periods (debatable) and that U.S. power alone explains why minor states feel insecure and trigger conflicts with the unipole (same - the domestic politics of the U.S. and minor states are important in my view). In this post, I want to provide a similar albeit friendlier critique to Rosato and Schuessler's article (not...
Unless... Nothing.Nothing at all.Four years ago, we knew neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum would be president.Six months ago, we knew neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum would be president.One month ago, we knew neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum would be president.Two days ago, we knew neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum would be president.This morning, we know neither Ron Paul nor Rick Santorum will be president.Given the cavalcade of crazies...