Some of you might have seen the summer 2009 issue of International Relations; a retrospective on Man, the State, and War, by Kenneth Waltz, and its fiftieth anniversary. Among those essays was one by Jean Elsthain, entitled “Women, the State, and War,” where Elshtain asks whether gender as a category of analysis or as a central feature of a logic of explanation alters in significant ways Waltz’s levels of analysis, and answers in the negative....
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Why we need to debate foreign policy in elections: Lessons from the UK 2010 General Election
FYI: I am blogging on Canada-related issues at the Cana-blog. It basically satiates my desire to engage with Canadian issues without boring Duck readers to death about our various neuroses from North of the 49th Parallel. Do check it out though, eh?Last year I blogged about the UK General Election as a “Johnny Foreigner”. I thought it would be a very dull affair, but it ended up being pretty interesting with the first televised election...
Safe Conducts, Immunities and International Crimes
The arrival in the UK of the Libyan Foreign Minister and former Head of Intelligence, Moussa Koussa, raises some interesting questions. Consider the facts: one the one hand, although Moussa Koussa has, apparently, been a force for moderation in recent years, in his heyday he was an unapologetic defender of the use of force against Libyan dissidents and other opponents of the regime. Quite possibly he planned the Lockerbie and Niger airline...
Civ-Mil Relations in the 21st Century–Back to the Past
2011 has already energized much thought and scholarship about contentious politics, R2P, the efficacy of force, and, zombies. Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya (and the other countries in the region) are also bringing civil-military relations back into fashion. When we speak of civ-mil relations, we can think of: The most classic question: who guards the guardians (Janowitz, Huntington, Finer) ? Will the army support the government and perhaps shoot...
My Final Word to Dan Drezner On Zombies
For those who were unable to squeeze into the packed room for Stephanie Carvin's "Zombie Holocaust" panel at ISA, here is the video blog version of my remarks on Dan Drezner's new book Theory of International Politics and Zombies.This panel, by the way, was voted among the "Top 20 ISA Panels of All Time" by a "senior academic sitting in audience" via Twitter. My post-ISA content analysis of the conference Twitter hashtag also shows that...
The Limits and Future of R2P
Small Wars Journal published a longer version of my argument about the criteria associated with the R2P doctrine and why the "If Libya Why Not Bahrain" argument is specious. However, particularly in light of evolving events, I think it's important to qualify this argument by emphasizing that I'm describing an existing (and limited) set of standards, not necessarily endorsing it as currently constituted. In fact it would surprise me if Operation...
The Infected Zone
UK Movie Poster for "Monsters" (2010). Source: Wikipedia.The post-9/11 generation sci-fi film "Monsters" (Gareth Edwards, 2010) is a kind of "Cloverfield" for the US-Mexican border (or if you're a real film buff, it is a "Sin Nombre" journey film with real aliens, i.e. gigantic extra-terrestials). But this is more than just a monster flick.The film takes the notion of a militarized zone and an alien invasion along the US-Mexican border quite...
Theses on Consistency and Intervention
Since Stephanie has quoted me on the subject, I thought I’d share some thoughts on intervention and consistency. 1. Consistency is a virtue – but it isn’t the only virtue. Sometimes good judgement points us in the direction of inconsistency; this is so in personal life as well as domestic and international politics. We (most of us) overlook failings in our friends which would upset us in our enemies. In the realm of sexual politics, we...
Grand Doctrine and Very Large Strategy
-- Sir Thursday, Garth NixI'm tired of demands for an articulated "Obama Doctrine."Don't misunderstand me. I think it would be nice if the Obama Administration had an overarching vision for US foreign policy. It might even be a good thing if it could produce something resembling a coherent document on the subject instead of the stream-of-consciousness bureaucratic filler it tends to publish.What I emphatically reject is the idea that Obama...
Morality, R2P, the nature of conflict and the emerging “Obama Doctrine”
There’s been some really interesting posts here on R2P in the last few days. At the risk of kicking a dead horse – although I hardly think this horse is dead - I’d like to raise a few points. (I've actually been writing this post over the past few days, and was going to post it later in the week, but Obama's speech tonight made me want to post it earlier. You know, because hasty blogging is always a good thing.)Most of my thinking has been on...
More On the Gap Between Feminist IR and Gendered Foreign Policy Debates
Foreign Affairs has published a longer version of my original remarks about the so-called "Lady Hawks" who supposedly "ball-busted" our presumably lily-livered president into a war ostensibly "not of his choosing." We'll see how he deals with all this, among other things, tonight at 7:30 EST - (my guess: with his own brand of tough-and-tender masculinity) - but in the meantime, here's the capsule version of my scholarly take translated into...
Truth Will Win
For those keeping score on where the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East are headed and how to understand it all, it is worth noting that today marked the 30th anniversary of Solidarity's first national warning strike. On March 27, 1981, more than 12 million Poles took to the streets in a peaceful protest action and in defiance of the Communist regime -- a testimony of the power of non-violence. At the time, it was the largest...