by Jon Western | 4 Jan 2011 |
I just finished reading Dominic Tierney's new book How We Fight: Crusades, Quagmires and the American Way of War. As the title suggests, he presents the standard American exceptionalism argument about why and how the US begins wars -- that both the public and elites hold deeply entrenched beliefs of America's "benign power" to transform the world. But, these same wars often end when the public and elites turn against these "crusades" after...
by Dan Nexon | 4 Jan 2011 |
Erik Voeten, one of my colleagues at Georgetown, writes at the Monkey Cage that:International relations, and especially (inter)national security, is the subfield of political science where the gap between policy makers and academics is most frequently decried. This is not because political science research on security is less policy relevant than in other subfields. Quite the contrary, it is because political science rather than law or...
by Charli Carpenter | 3 Jan 2011 |
Clay Shirky has the lead article in this month's Foreign Affairs on social media and world politics. Although both governments and activists both seem to be assuming that the effects are a boon to civil society, Shirky begins by pointing out that the record of such effects on political mobilization is a mixed bag:"The use of social media tools - text massaging, email, photo sharing, social networking and the like - does not have a single...
by Bill Petti | 3 Jan 2011 |
Just wanted to let everyone know that starting January 4th I will be writing a weekly baseball column (sometimes twice weekly if I am feeling especially opinionated) at Beyond the Box Score.Beyond the Box Score is a fantastic site, examining baseball from an analytical perspective. The authors definitely embrace sabermetrics, but they don't beat readers over the head with complex statistics. As with most things that I do, the subject of my...
by Charli Carpenter | 1 Jan 2011 |
It hasn't exactly been getting great reviews: the 1982 version had a plump, red thumbs-up rating of 69% on Rotten Tomatoes, whereas the sequel is at a festering, sickly 49%. Most of the bad reviews fall into the "meh" category: all glitz, no story. But there's also push-back by those who see some 'big ideas' embedded in the film. Let me use one articulation of Tron: Legacy's big ideas in particular as my foil - the following is written by a...
by Charli Carpenter | 29 Dec 2010 |
On the road home from South Carolina I posted notice of Laura Sjoberg's critique of militarized masculinity in her analysis of DADT-repeal discourse. Now that I'm settled in, I've realized it's the comments thread on that post where the real action is and I feel compelled to throw in my two cents.Laura's key argument:That the military now includes gay people and (kind of) women openly does not mean that it is some how gender-equal or gender...
by Rodger Payne | 28 Dec 2010 |
What would the world be like after a nuclear attack of some type? That's the question answered by the President's National Security staff in the June 2010 second edition of the Planning Guidance for Response to a Nuclear Detonation. I haven't read the entire 130 page document, but I did read a chunk of it, as well as an interesting article about it by Ira Chernus, a professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Here's...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 27 Dec 2010 | Featured
Courtesy of our friends at The Economist:PhD graduates do at least earn more than those with a bachelor’s degree. A study in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management by Bernard Casey shows that British men with a bachelor’s degree earn 14% more than those who could have gone to university but chose not to. The earnings premium for a PhD is 26%. But the premium for a master’s degree, which can be accomplished in as little as one...
by Vikash Yadav | 26 Dec 2010 | Featured
Continuing the Duck series on highly improbable dystopian scenarios, here is an advertisement for the not yet released video game, "Homefront." The story is set in 2027 when a united Korea under the rule of North Korea's Kim Jong Un invades a severely weakened United States.Cold War buffs will note that the video game's narrative is from the writer of the awful 1984 film, "Red Dawn." Personally, I would have preferred a scenario in line...
by Dan Nexon | 25 Dec 2010 |
by Dan Nexon | 25 Dec 2010 |
Whatever your relevant holiday is, if it happens tonight and tomorrow, then very merry.And remember -- put Mithras back in Christmas!
by Dan Nexon | 24 Dec 2010 |
Rob Farley notes the existence of long-standing conservative opposition to arms control. While the hacks at the Heritage Foundation lost this battle, Rob argues, their influence on Republican international thought is waxing rather than waning. Thus, more of opposition to New START was principled than many observers recognize, and this bodes ill for future arms control.The New START debate over the last month has been held largely under the...