I see there’s some naysaying about the use of force to protect civilians in Libya. Among various refrains is the claim that “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine lacks moral strength if applied selectively: the international community can’t legitimately go after Qaddafi if it won’t/can’t also go after every other dictator.So just a reminder that the doctrine, as laid out by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty...
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Of Lords and Flies
The release of the first three of a reported 4,000 photos and videos from an American "kill team" in Afghanistan threatens to become the next "Abu Ghraib." The horrific images of civilian corpses being photographed with grinning American troops raises important questions about the American military's ability to maintain professional standards and discipline; soldiers' (racialized) understanding of and ability to engage with foreign societies;...
Libya and ‘the shadow of Iraq’
At the beginning of every war, journalists must quickly find a frame that makes the new violence intelligible to their audiences. It is often convenient to compare new events to old events, to see what looks similar and what looks different (journalists routinely follow the principle of comparison earlier articulated by Sesame Street). In 2006, during the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman employed the...
Libya and Feminist Peace Theory
At the Daily Beast John Avlon gestures quizzically at the presence of women among those influencing the Libyan intervention:The Libyan airstrikes mark the first time in U.S. history that a female-dominated diplomatic team has urged military action. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and the influential Office of Multilateral and Human Rights Director Samantha Power to argue for airstrikes against Libya....
Things I Learned at ISA
In descending order of seriousness but not necessarily importance:1) According to a study presented at this workshop by Helen Turton (a whip-smart student at Exeter) the most commonly used methodological approach in the field is not quantitative analysis but rather interpretivism. Also (this from preliminary findings by Daniel Maliniak and Ryan Powers - I look forward to the published version): the most widely cited papers in the discipline of...
Saudi and Emirati Intervention in Bahrain
Saudi APCs and Emirati troops are now on the streets of Bahrain attempting to squelch what was formerly a non-violent, secular, youth-led, economically rooted, democracy movement as America does little other than urge restraint from its allies. Such mealy mouthed statements toward a regime which is using live ammunition against unarmed protesters and then denying the victims of its rampage access to medical facilities indicates that the US...
“There is no such thing as constructivism”
I was fortunate enough to participate in an ISA panel yesterday morning entitled "The Third Generation of Constructivist Thought: Boundaries, Distinctions, Limits -- Social Theory, Philosophy, and Constructivism," organized by Benjamin Herborth and Oliver Kessler. I decided to take the opportunity to deliver a little sermon on the counterproductive enterprise of trying to sharply define "constructivism" as a single coherent theory of anything,...
Libya: R2P or Regime Change?
On CNN this Saturday morning, the day after the United Nations Security Council voted for Resolution 1973 (2011) to authorize a "no-fly zone" in Libya, the debate has centered around whether or not the United States and its allies want regime change in Libya. After all, a few days ago President Obama said "It's time for Qaddafi to go." Similarly, British Prime Minister David Cameron has declared: "It is almost impossible to envisage a future...
The Rebels and Foreign Supporters
With the UNSC approval of the NFZ+ and the announcement of a cease-fire by the Libyan government, a slaughter in eastern Libya may have been averted. I don't want to weigh in on the NFZ+ as other Ducks are much more qualified to discuss the potential strategic and diplomatic challenges ahead. I did however want to flag a few scattered items about the rebels themselves and purported links with foreign patrons which some readers may have missed...
Nuclear Disarmament: Looking Back at Reykjavik
I've been looking at some of the documents in "The Reykjavik File" at the National Security Archive. This coming October will mark 25 years since Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev almost completed a startling nuclear disarmament deal. Had they been successful, both superpowers would have been disarmed 15 years ago!The US proposal at Reykjavik was fairly startling, as reported in the Memorandum of Conversation, Reagan-Gorbachev, Final Meeting,...
No Nukes: Arms Division
In February, Bill Clinton's second Secretary of Defense, William Perry, spoke at Harvard's Belfer Center and continued his ongoing campaign against nuclear weapons. With former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger and former Senator Sam Nunn, Perry has for many years been seeking a "world free of nuclear weapons." After describing his personal experience working behind the scenes during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Perry...
Multiple meltdowns?
Most of the members of the Duck are at the ISA conference in Montreal this week.Meanwhile, Japan is trying to deal with a horrific series of nuclear accidents, triggered by natural disaster -- the 9.0 earthquake and resultant tsunami. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on nuclear engineering or physics. However, I can recommend some writing by specialists who are closely following the situation and describing the events in understandable...