So, we're almost in October, and it's still 100 hundred degrees here in Texas. We have just endured the hottest summer on record for any state in the United States. Just last month, thousands of acres burned in a series of wildfires just outside Austin.September 2011 Texas FiresOur governor Rick Perry is running for the Republican nomination for president, and though climate change is not high on the agenda, he took time out of his busy...
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Lest we forget about Somalia
The musician K'naan's haunting elegy for his country Somalia, wracked by famine:So, 20 summers after I left as a child, I found myself on my way back to Somalia with some concerned friends and colleagues. I hoped that my presence would let me shine a light into this darkness. Maybe spare even one life, a life equal to mine, from indifferently wasting away. But I am no statesman, nor a soldier. Just a man made fortunate by the power of the...
Obama Reveals his Superhero Powers at the UN
The world has been watching this week as the Palestinian Government prepares to make a bid to the Security Council for recognition as an independent state. Many thought Obama had backed himself into a corner with a statement last year declaring his support for Palestinian statehood. But never fear, the President's propensity to dilute astute political goals to the point of meaninglessness appears to be limitless. In fact, if Obama was a...
End of DADT
Today is a good day to mark the passing of a true injustice.
Be Concerned but not Informed: Radical Islamic Terrorism and Mainstream Media since 9/11
The website e-IR asked me to review how mainstream media have represented radical Islamist media in the past decade, and what this means for the spread of radical discourses more broadly. Here is my reply, and you can read the original at e-IR here. Mainstream media’s presentation of radical Islamic terrorism since 11 September 2001 is simply a continuation of how mainstream media have represented political violence for many decades. Moral...
Stuff Political Scientists Like #9 — Being Liked, or Citations
Political scientists love citations, or, more accurately, to be cited. Actually compiling citations is a tremendously tedious chore that political scientists leave to the very end of any paper, one marked by a bitter struggle with Endnote. Citations are the best marker political scientists have of success. As political scientists come in both male and female varieties, they cannot simply measure penises. And even if all political scientists...
Mortenson declines Education Grawemeyer
In addition to filling an open faculty line in international relations (IR), I was hired in 1991 by the University of Louisville with the idea that I would eventually direct the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. The World Order award was then one of four Grawemeyer Awards and at the time I was hired, I knew virtually nothing about any of them. The prize was worth $150,000, making it the largest award in Political Science....
Luck and a Fair “International Talk Like a Pirate Day” To You!
Not to make light of ongoing troubles in the Horn of Africa and beyond, but... well.If you want to go beyond the five A's, click here.
R2Paternalism
The banner image of the ICRtoP (International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect) website features a photo of seven boys under the protective gaze of a UN peacekeeper as he carries his bottled water, while other soldiers patrol ahead on the pathway that they all share together. From a structural perspective, the image is compelling because it situates the viewer as the rear-guard of the mission.Unfortunately, there is absolutely no...
Learn to Love Lawfare
Photo courtesy of Etsy. The perfect lawfare key chain!Over at the Lawfare blog, Jack Goldsmith recently offered up a "mea culpa" on his changing views of the concept and practice of lawfare. I don't want to address the specifics of that post, but this and the Libya situation got me thinking again that a non-pejorative conceptualization of lawfare needs to be put forward. Particularly in the context of the International Criminal Court. Stay...
On Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the Construction of a Liberal International Order
Debate over NATO's military intervention in the Libyan civil war has reinvigorated discussion among observers of international relations on the merits (or demerits) of the United Nations's Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine. You can find links to important entries in the current debate at the end of this post, but I'm going to react here to one part of it. In a rejoinder to her critics, including IR student and Slouching Towards Columbia...
Conflict prevention and early warnings: closing the gap through communications?
The catastrophes of Rwanda and Bosnia led to a debate in the 1990s about the warning-response gap. Conflict prevention and early warning systems did not seem up to scratch. Third parties intervened too late, if at all. Spending was skewed towards mitigating the effects of conflicts, not on stopping them happen in the first place. The spread of satellite television brought conflicts into more immediate public vision. It was feared this created a...