India appears to be continuing to shift its West Asia policy away from a once budding partnership with Iran, which aimed among other things to stabilize Afghanistan. It is rumored that in late March, the Indian National Security Adviser, Shiv Shanker Menon, delicately delivered a message to the Islamic Republic that India's PM would not be making a state visit later this year (Telegraph [Kolkata] 3/10/11). If the news reports are correct, the...
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Russian political humor is back
Vadim Nikitin has an excellent run down. With a possible Putin - Medvedev face-off looming for next year's presidential elections, the campaign season has already begun. This trailer shows how it all might go down in 2012 and was featured on, of all places, the Russian Communist Party's website. The clip ends with "There's always an alternative: Communist Party of Russia."Nikitin has translated the key points as they appear in the clip: ANCIENT...
A teachable moment: “provoked by rebels”
In my seminar at Amherst College today, my students discussed the status of their final research papers, their research designs, and the use of sources. One student asked what were the rules for using quotes or pulling block text from other sources. Since so many folks seem to be reading Alan Kuperman's stuff these days, I showed my students the Kuperman article that Patrick linked yesterday in which Kuperman argues the case of moral hazard in...
Boys’ Toys
The following word cloud from Crystal Smith's The Achilles Effect blog reflects the vocabulary commonly used for toy advertisements directed toward young boys (i.e. those toys in the 6-8 year old boy's section of the Toys 'R Us website were classified as "boys' toys"). While the data visualization was not meant as part of a rigorous study, it is nevertheless interesting anecdotal evidence pointing toward the ways in which gender stereotypes are...
Stuff Political Scientists Like #2 — The Strategic Logic of…. well, Everything
Before I begin, I should thank those who have offered encouragement to continue the series and note, to those few who have not, that this is satire. Like all satire, it is an exaggeration of things that nevertheless have a kernel of truth. I myself am guilty of some of these things, like collecting original data. It is not an indictment of the field of political science, only a send-up of its pretensions. OK, here we go.Political scientists...
Libya and the Threshold for War
Some questions about Libya.To clear the decks, I'm instinctively uneasy with international interventions in civil wars, given the historical difficulties of keeping such interventions limited and the unintended consequences and moral hazards of such undertakings. Not to mention the burdens that states like the US and UK are now shouldering, with the constraints and pressures on our statecraft after Iraq and with Afghanistan, the global...
Introducing myself
Hello, readers of the Duck!Dan Nexon has very kindly invited me to do some guest blogging at this site.Introducing myself in brief: I'm an Australian academic with an over-fondness for cigars. Working at King's College London at the Defence Academy, as a Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies. In September I'll be moving to Reading to take up a Readership in Strategic Studies.My main interest these days is in the history and theory of US grand...
Political Geography Lesson 101
In my American Foreign Policy class, I typically try to find some time to engage students about Puerto Rico. After all, most of them never have cause to think about Puerto Rico's quasi-colonial status in the US geostrategic orbit. Some Puerto Rican nationalists seek freedom from US domination, but even progressive activist American students interested in global affairs tend to overlook the plight of Puerto Rico in favor of other...
Un-Civil Military Relations
Starbuck's away and has various guest bloggers filling in at Wings Over Iraq. David Costelloe of Never Felt Better is among them, and his latest post is one more for my dataset on BSG analogies in Egypt commentary. In particular Costelloe argues Egypt can learn from the flaws in Colonel Saul Tigh's character and the absence of civilian supremacy it represents: Let’s break it down. He shows hesitance when handed some responsibility during a...
Standing Up for Multiculturalism? or “Where I find myself agreeing with the Prime Minister of Canada and that the dirt won’t come off.”
I am very, very ethnic.For those of you who weren’t following Canadian politics this week (I’m assuming that’s 98% of the Duck audience) the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC or “Tories”) took a lot of flack this week for calling up supporters and asking them to wear “ethnic” costumes. This is, of course, to make the Tories look more diverse and possibly have another colour of hair in their audience than white. The flack, in my opinion, is well...
Whither NATO?
Steve Metz concludes a sharp piece on NATO thusly:It is time for this debate over NATO’s viability to take place. While NATO may serve as an institutional reminder of the shared democratic values of the Atlantic community (and NATO’s not-so-Atlantic new members) and help with interoperability between its members’ military forces, the Alliance, in its current form, has proven it cannot lead and execute complex, sustained operations in today’s...
Benghazi: What were the signs?
Why did the Obama administration really intervene in Libya? Andrew Sullivan and Steve Walt both reject the administration's claims (again) that we were on the verge of a mass slaughter in Libya if Qaddafi's forces had been allowed to move into Benghazi. Walt also wants us to read Alan Kuperman’s op-ed “A False Pretense for War?” As usual, Kuperman has an interesting take: First, he argues that there was no credible evidence of an imminent...