So President Obama has his own doctrine now, because Wolf Blitzer tells us so. It is basically what Ross Douhat of the New York Times called the “liberal way of war” in a column on March 20. Libya is the “beau ideal of a liberal internationalist intervention” – humanitarian, multilateral and limited. This is the same columnist who just six weeks before called claimed that the President’s “foreign policy has owed far more to conservative...
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Why it sucks to study political psychology in international relations
So this is my first foray into this brave new world of blogging, at the invitation of Charli and others at the Duck of Minerva. I think my main credential is having called Dan Drezner something profane at a workshop in Montreal, which is to say, my outspoken personality. What I exactly said to him said escapes me, but I suppose that same limited memory speaks for my potential as a blogger as well. For the record, I do not even own a cell phone...
The Obama Undoctrine: A Response to My… Critic?
If I read him correctly, Armed Liberal thinks that I advanced an argument for intervening in Libya and that this makes some people who opposed the Iraq War a bunch of hypocrites.Or that my description of Obama's justifications are accurate and that those justifications don't sufficiently distinguish Libya from Iraq.I'm not entirely sure. Probably because I'm still kind of sick and I'm very tired. Regardless, AL raises some key issues after...
Kindle Fraud
A large and growing problem, apparently. Via Jim MacDonald, who brings greater publicity to the plight of S.K.S. Perry, a self-published author who discovers that his book is already being sold by someone else on Amazon... and finds that Amazon doesn't seem to give a damn.Many of our readers our academics who, I assume, have discovered -- or will soon discover if they use the right search terms -- that their own books are available in the form...
New Guest Bloggers!!!
We're very excited that Steve Saideman and Brian Rathbun have agreed to join the Duck as guest bloggers - the first of a few new voices that may be trickling into the guest blogging pool over the next few months. You may already know Steve him from his blog--Steve Saideman's Semi-Spew--or from his extensive publication record. His first post, on, the Tom Rick's criticisms of Peter Faever's recent International Security article, appeared earlier...
A Reply to the Reply: Jean Elshtain, Gender, and IR (Part I)
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....
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...