My review essay on the protection of civilians is out in Foreign Affairs. I discuss two books - Michael Gross' Moral Dilemmas of Modern War, and Stephen Rockel and Rick Halpern's edited volume Collateral Damage. All these authors clearly care deeply about protecting civilians in armed conflicts, and worry in different ways that the existing laws of war are flawed. I have somewhat more faith, particularly in the ability of global civil society...
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Middle Eastern Dictator Speech Bingo: Threatened by Revolution Edition
From LSE to the ICC?
Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi's second son and purported successor, Saif Al-Islam Alqadhafi fueled the protests the other night with his disjointed speech. The irony of Saif's complicity in all of this is that he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation under David Held at London School of Economics titled: "The Role of Civil Society in the Democratisation of Global Governance Institutions." From the Abstract: This dissertation analyses the problem of...
Notes on Libya, etc.
If you've been paying any attention to the news, you undoubtedly know that Libya is in the midst of a revolution. The Libyan government understands that all too well; hence, the increasing force deployed against opponents of the regime. Tripoli can't be pleased that some of its military and its diplomatic corp are defecting from the regime.Anne Applebaum has written a column comparing the revolutions to 1848. That's not a terrible comparison,...
Ducks in London
Dan and I spent the last few days in London doing a variety of talks that might be of some interest to the general Duck readership.On Wednesday I gave a book talk at SOAS; I'm quite pleased at the way this one turned out. Podcast here; q and a here. And the sci-fi author part of the session is available to listen to here.On Thursday Dan and I participated in the LSE's Literary Festival on a pair of roundtables entitled "Science Fiction an...
India’s soft power is unclear
India has soft power to the extent that its values, its way of managing its affairs and its vision for the international system are so attractive to other nations that the latter start doing what India wants without India having to use the sticks and carrots of traditional international relations. By achieving relatively stable democracy in such a geographically large and religiously diverse polity, for instance, India may inspire others to...
Apocalyptic Thinking in IR
I do not see the discussions about zombies as a type of new or out-of-the-box thinking. If anything, the discussions of zombies that I have noted so far are completely "in-the-box" thinking, except with a touch of geeky humor, parody, and wit that is usually lacking in the discipline. In fact, the discourse seems to consist mainly of exercises in applying existing theoretical tools to an impossible scenario for pedagogical purposes or to...
Baron von Cut-and-Paste
Ooops. The young, charismatic, German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is in trouble for allegedly plagiarizing parts of his dissertation. He announced that he is temporarily dropping his doctoral title. His defense? -- there were mistakes, but nothing plagiarized:"It was compiled over the course of about seven years while I was at the same time working as a member of parliament and while I was a young father. It contains mistakes,...
Human Rights: The Last Utopia?
I’ve just finished reading Samuel Moyn’s The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History and would highly recommend it to those interested in rights and norms. I have written a review of it that will eventually appear in the American Historical Review. Meanwhile, for those who just can't wait, my main points: Samuel Moyn’s The Last Utopia is an erudite and impressive intellectual history, portraying the core principle of contemporary human...
Zombie Hunt!
In an public-service-minded attempt to hone our skills for the zombie outbreak due any day, Bloggingheads has embedded a zombie-detection tutorial within this diavlog:Win a copy of “Theories of International Politics and Zombies"! Hidden in this diavlog are five different images from well-known zombie features (four movies, one TV show). The first reader of this blog to correctly identify when those zombie scenes appear in the diavlog and from...
A Truth Commission for Iraq
Back in 2003, the name Ricardo Sanchez appeared in several posts on my personal blog. At the time, the now-retired General was "the top U.S. military official in Iraq." Over the years, Sanchez provided honest and forthright assessments of the Iraq war. Even though I didn't always agree with his analysis of what should be done, I respected his contributions to the political debate. Lately, he's been pushing a "truth commission" for Iraq and I...
Science Fiction and International Orders – Live Blog [UPDATED]
[podcasts of ProfPTJ and DHN's contributions to the afternoon sessions are now up:PTJ: https://kittenboo.com/blog/2011/02/21/science-fiction-and-international-orders-ptj/DHN: https://kittenboo.com/blog/2011/02/21/science-fiction-and-international-orders-dhn/Also: the sci-fi author part of the session is available to listen to here.]Okay things are getting underway here at the LSE. I have never live-blogged before, but I'm told there is a first...